Table Of ContentArtificial Paranoia :
A Computer Simulation of
Paranoid Processes
KENNETH MARK COLBY, M.D.
University of California School of Medicine
Los Angeles
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Copyright © 1975, Pergamon Press Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Colby, Kenneth Mark.
Artificial paranoia; a computer simulation of
paranoid processes.
(Pergamon general psychology series, 49)
Bibliography: p.
1. Paranoia. 2. Electronic data processing-
Psychiatry. 3. Digital computer simulation. I. Title.
[DNLM: 1. Interview, Psychological. 2. Models,
Psychological. 3. Paranoia. WM205 C686a]
RC520.C64 1975 616.8'97 74-8815
ISBN 0-08-018162-7
ISBN 0-08-018161-9 (pbk.)
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Preface
Something "artificial" is manmade. Someone "paranoid" believes others
have malevolent intentions toward him. Artificial paranoia represents an
attempt to computer simulate naturally-occurring paranoia. Such an
attempt is of interest to psychiatrists, psychologists, computer scientists,
and behavioral scientists in general.
The significance of this simulation model lies in its (1) appropriateness,
(2) systemicity, and (3) testability. (1) Psychiatrists deal with their patients
at the symbolic level of natural language communication. It is at a
symbolic level of analysis that explanations of symbolic behavior are the
most appropriate and useful in providing understanding. (2) Since the
model consists of an algorithm running on a computer, the consistency or
systemicity requirement for a conjunction of hypotheses is met. (3)
Theoretical ideas formulated in natural language can be made more
precise, consistent, and testable when embodied in a symbolic model. If
relevant empirical tests yield disconfirmatory instances, the model is
rejected and abandoned as unworkable. If the tests result in confirmatory
instances, the model merits working with further as a promising possibil
ity. Improvements in the model result from increasing its precision,
consistency, and extension.
The simulation model to be described represents a new conjunction of
hypotheses. It is the first model of psychopathology that has been tested
by comparing its linguistic behavior in a psychiatric interview with the
linguistic behavior of paranoid patients.
A computer simulation of paranoid processes involves the construction
and testing of a complex symbolic model. To fathom such a model and its
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vili Preface
functions, it is first necessary to understand the perspectives of symbol
processing and computer simulation. I shall try to present some back
ground information sufficient to orient a reader unfamiliar with these
perspectives.
I am indebted to co-workers who collaborated with me in constructing
and testing the model. Sylvia Weber Russell, a graduate student in
Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, wrote the original
version of the program. Franklin Dennis Hilf, a psychiatrist and research
associate in the Department of Computer Science, Stanford University,
was primarily responsible for the validation studies. Helena Kraemer,
research associate in biostatistics, Department of Psychiatry, Stanford
University, assisted in the design of the experiments and in carrying out
the statistical methods used.
Also I am grateful to Bruce Anderson, Bruce Buchanan, Franklin
Dennis Hilf, Roger C. Parkison, Charles J. Rieger III, and Yorick Wilks
for their comments on the entire manuscript and to Margaret A. Boden,
Horace Enea, and Abraham Kaplan for suggestions regarding specific
chapters. Because I made them, I bear full responsibility for the errors.
This research was supported by Grant PHS MH 06645-12 from the
National Institute of Mental Health and by (in part) Research Scientist
Award (No. 1-K05-K14,433) from the National Institute of Mental Health.
K.M.C.
The Author
Kenneth Mark Colby (M.D. Yale University) is currently Professor of
Psychiatry at the University of California School of Medicine in Los
Angeles and Director of the Higher Mental Functions Project in the
Department of Psychiatry there. He was formerly Senior Research
Associate in the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University
and Research Scientist sponsored by the National Institute of Mental
Health. His primary research interests are in the use of computer models
in psychiatry and psychotherapy. He is the author of five books and
fifty-three papers, and coeditor (with Roger C. Schank) of Computer
Models of Thought and Language. In 1973 he received the Freida
Fromm-Reichmann Award from the American Academy of Psycho
analysis for research in childhood autism.
CHAPTER 1
The Paranoid Mode
THE CONCEPT OF PARANOIA
Like ourselves, the ancient Greeks called one another paranoid. The
term "paranoia" (Gr: para = beside; nous = mind) referred to states of
craziness and mental deterioration. For roughly the next two thousand
years the term disappeared from classifications of mental disorders.
Historians have not seemed curious about what persons with persecutory
delusions were called all that time. (It is doubtful that there were not any
such persons.) In the 18th century the term reappears in German
classifications to refer to delusional states categorized as disorders of
intellect rather than emotion (Lewis, 1970).
Little agreement about the meaning of the term "paranoia" was
reached until this half of the present century, when it achieved a solid
adjectival status, as in "paranoid personality" and "paranoid state." At
present the category "paranoid" has high reliability (85-95% interjudge
agreement). The term is generally used to refer to the presence of
persecutory delusions. To distinguish: somatic, erotic, grandeur, and
jealousy delusions are simply identified as such without characterizing
them as paranoid.
To introduce what being paranoid is like, let us first consider two modes
of human activity, one termed "ordinary" and the other termed
"paranoid."
In the ordinary mode of human action a person goes about his business
of everyday living in a matter-of-fact way. He deals with recurrent and
routine situations in his environment as they arise, taking things at their
1
2 Artificial Paranoia
face value. Events proceed in accordance with his beliefs and expecta
tions and thus can be managed routinely. Only a small amount of attention
need be devoted to monitoring the environment, simply checking that
everything is as expected. This placid ongoing flow of events can be
interrupted by the detection of signs of alarm or opportunity at any time.
But the predominant condition is one of a steady progression of events so
ordinary as to be uneventful.
In contrast to this routine ordinariness is the arousal state of emergency
termed the "paranoid mode," characterized by a continuous wary suspi-
ciousness. To appreciate the nature and problems of this state, imagine
the situation of a spy in a hostile country. To him, everyone he meets is a
potential enemy, a threat to existence who must be evaluated for
malevolence. To survive, he must be hypervigilant and fully mobilized to
attack, to flee, to stalk. In this situation appearances are not to be taken-at
face value as ordinary events or routine background but each must be
attended to and interpreted in order to detect malevolence. Events in the
environment, which in the ordinary mode would not be connected to the
self, become referred to the self and interpreted as potentially menacing.
The unintended effects of other persons may be misinterpreted as
intended and the undesigned tends to become confused with the designed.
Nothing can be allowed to be unattendable. The dominant intention of the
agent is to detect malevolence from others.
When dividing the world of experience into conceptual classes, we sort
and group together objects and events according to common properties.
The members of a class resemble one another in sharing certain proper
ties. The resemblances are neither exact nor total; members of a
conceptual class are considered more or less alike and there exist degrees
of resemblance. Further, humans are neither subjective nor objective;
they are projective. In forming classifications, they project their inten
tions onto the world. Thus the world of experience consists both of our
interactive relations and the objects to which we relate depending on our
interests.
Observations and classifications made by clinicians regarding naturally-
occurring paranoid disorders have been thoroughly described in the
psychiatric literature. Extensive accounts can be found in Swanson,
Bohnert, and Smith (1970) and in Cameron (1967). I shall attempt to give a
condensed description of paranoid phenomena as they appear in, or are
described by, patients in a psychiatric interview. It is many of these
phenomena which the proposed simulation model attempts to explain.
The Paranoid Mode 3
CHARACTERISTICS OF CLINICAL PARANOIA
The main phenomena of paranoid disorders can be summarized under
concepts of suspiciousness, self-reference, hypersensitivity, fearfulness,
hostility, and rigidity. These class-concepts represent common empirical
indicators of the paranoid mode.
Suspiciousness
The chief characteristic of clinical paranoid disorders consists of
suspiciousness—a mistrust of others based on the patient's malevolence
beliefs. The patient believes others, known and unknown, have evil
intentions toward him. In his relationships he is continuously on the
look-out for signs of malevolence, some of which he infers from the
results of his own probings. He is hypervigilant; people must be watched,
their schemes unmasked and foiled. He is convinced others try to
humiliate, harass, subjugate, injure, and even kill him. In an interview he
may report such beliefs directly or, if he is well guarded, he offers only
hints. He does not confide easily. Disclosure may depend upon how the
interviewer responds in the dialogue to the patient's reports of fluctuating
suspicions and/or absolute convictions.
He is greatly concerned with "evidence." No room is allowed for
mistakes, ambiguities, or chance happenings. ("Paranoids have a greater
passion for the truth than other madmen."—Saul Bellow in Sammler's
Planet.) Using trivial evidential details, his inferences leap from the
undeniable to the unbelievable.
The patient may vary in his own estimate of the strength of his
malevolence beliefs. If they consist of weakly held suspicions, he may
have moments of reasoning with himself in which he tries to reject them
as ill-founded. But when the beliefs represent absolute convictions, he
does not struggle to dismiss them. They become preconditions for
countering actions against tormentors who wish and try to do him evil. He
seeks affirmation of his beliefs. ("It is certain that my conviction increases
the moment another soul will believe in it."—Joseph Conrad in Lord Jim.)
He wants sympathy and allies in positions of power such as clinicians or
lawyers who can help him take action against his oppressors.
The malevolence beliefs may involve a specific other person or a
conspiracy of others such as the Mafia, the FBI, Communists, Hell's
Angels. The patient sees himself as a victim, one who suffers at the hands
of others, rather than as an agent who brings the suffering on himself.
4 Artificial Paranoia
Other agents subject him to, and make him the object of, their evil
intentions. He dwells on and rehearses these outrages in his imagination.
He schemes to defeat or escape his adversaries. The misdeeds of others
are denounced, disparaged, condemned, and belittled. He feels interfered
with and discriminated against.
The specific content of the beliefs may not be directly expressed in a
first interview. The patient may be so mistrustful of how their disclosure
might be used against him that he cautiously feels his way through an
interview offering only hints that an interviewer can use to infer the
presence of persecutory delusions.
Using his own credibility judgments, the interviewer attempts to
determine whether the patient's malevolence beliefs are delusions (false
beliefs) or not. Experienced clinicians realize that some malevolence
beliefs can turn out to be true. Others may represent correct estimations
oft the part of the patient who, however, fails to see that the malevolence
of others is a secondary consequence of his tendency to accuse and
provoke others to the point where they in fact become hostile toward
him.
Self-Reference and Hypersensitivity
The patient may believe many events in the world pertain directly to
him. Other observers of his situation find his conviction hard to accept.
For example, he may be convinced that newspaper headlines refer to him
personally or that the statements of radio announcers contain special
messages for him. Hypervigilant and hypersensitive, he reads himself into
situations that are not actually intended to pertain to him and his
particular concerns.
References to the self are misconstrued as slurs, snubs, slights, or
unfair judgments. He may feel he is being watched and stared at. He is
excessively concerned about his visibility to eyes that threaten to see
concealed inadequacies, expose and censure them. Cameras, telescopes,
etc. that may be directed his way unnerve him. He may feel mysteriously
influenced through electricity, radio waves, or (more contemporaneously)
by emanations from computers. He is hypersensitive to criticism. In
crowds he believes he is intentionally bumped. Driving on the highway he
feels repeatedly followed too closely by the car behind. Badgered and
bombarded without relief by this stream of wrongs, he becomes hyper-
irritable, querulous, and quarrelsome.
He is touchy about certain topics, flaring up when references to
The Paranoid Mode 5
particular conceptual domains appear in the conversation. For example,
any remarks about his age, religion, family, or sex life may set him off.
Even when these domains are touched upon without reference to him,
e.g., religion in general, he may take it personally. When a delusional
complex is present, linguistic terms far removed from, but still conceptu
ally connectable to, the complex stir him up. Thus, to a man holding
beliefs that the Mafia intend to harm him, any remark about Italy might
lead him to react in a suspicious or fearful manner.
Fearfulness and Hostility
The major affects expressed, both verbally and nonverbally, are those
of fear, anger, and mistrust. The patient fears that others wish to
subjugate and control him. He may be fearful of physical attack and
injury even to the point of death. His fear is justified in his mind by the
many threats he detects in the conduct of others toward him. He is hostile
to what are interpreted as insinuations or demeaning allusions. His
chronic irritability becomes punctuated with outbursts of raging tirades
and diatribes. When he feels he is being overwhelmed, he may erupt and
in desperation physically attack others.
The affects of fear, anger, and mistrust he experiences blend with one
another in varying proportions to yield an unpleasant negative affect-state
made continuous by fantasied rehearsals and retellings of past wrongs.
Depending on his interpretation of inputs, the patient may move away
from others and become guarded, secretive, and evasive; or he may
suddenly jump at others with sarcastic accusations and arguments. His
negative affect-states become locked into self-perpetuating cycles with
other people in his life space who may take censuring action toward him
because of his uncommunicativeness or outbursts.
Rigidity
Another salient characteristic of the paranoid mode is excessive
rigidity. The patient's beliefs in his sensitive areas remain fixed, difficult to
influence by evidence or persuasion. The patient himself makes few
attempts to falsify his convictions. To change a belief is to admit being
wrong. To forgive others also opens a crack in the wall of righteousness.
He does not apologize nor accept apology. He stubbornly follows rules to
the letter and his literal interpretations of an organization's regulations
can drive others wild. It is this insistent posture of rigidity and inflexibility
that makes the treatment of paranoid processes by symbolic-semantic
