Clonal pluralization of self, relatives and others

Abstract

Delusional misidentification syndromes are a fascinating aspect of the psychopathology of psychotic patients. Recent psychiatric literature has mentioned a new variant of misidentification syndrome. Termed 'clonal pluralization', it differs from the typical misidentification syndromes. Essentially, the basic assumption of clonal pluralization is the belief that there are many physically and psychologically identical copies of a given original. This report presents a patient with schizophrenia who believed in triplicate copies of herself and others.