Known As The Truman Show Delusion, Some People Firmly Believe They Are Being Filmed, And Footage Of Their Lives Is Being Played For Others’ Enjoyment
One of the most beloved films of the late 90s is “The Truman Show” starring Jim Carrey.
If you’ve never seen it, the film surrounds a man, Truman Burbank, who slowly comes to realize that his life is the center plot of a soap opera television show and that the world around him is one big television set.
In Truman’s life, he is the ‘main character’ of the show, and in his world, everyone around him is a paid actor.
While many of us sit back and watch “The Truman Show” with fascination and enjoyment, knowing its plot is purely fictional, there are some people who genuinely believe they’re in a “Truman Show” of their own and that their lives are being broadcasted for someone else’s entertainment.
This experience has been dubbed the ‘Truman Show Delusion’ by doctors Joel Gold and Ian Gold for the Cognitive Neuropsychiatry journal.
The delusion, which they named in 2003, is described as when a person firmly believes they are being filmed and the footage of their lives is being played for other people to see.
It’s almost like these people believe they are the stars of a reality television show, only there are no cameras on them.
The Golds studied several cases of people who experienced Truman Show Delusion (TSD), and it is fascinating to see how their experiences differ.
One patient was a journalist with a history of depression and mania who believed everyone around him was a paid actor.
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He also believed all the news stories he was seeing on television, in newspapers, or online were specifically written for his own enjoyment and amusement.
Another patient was diagnosed with a type of bipolar disorder and believed his daily life was being recorded and broadcasted nationally, with the idea that a fictional woman at the top of the Statue of Liberty in New York City would be the only person capable of saving him from being broadcasted.
The Golds’ research suggests that people with underlying mental illnesses and other disorders who watch reality television and consume this kind of media may be more likely to develop this delusion.
It’s a psychological phenomenon that may very well expand and change as technology and media do.
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