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Developments in cognitive therapies and theories for paranoid psychosis have constituted a significant breakthrough in our understanding of this disorder, offering a valid psychological alternative to biomedical approaches, which have been criticized on scientific, pragmatic, and ethical grounds. However, we have recently found evidence for two types of paranoia which, together with other conceptual and empirical work, show these cognitive theories to be insufficient. We propose an interpersonal theory of the self, which places the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral aspects of paranoia within a broader context of the person. In this article, we (a) survey cognitive theories and the alternative Interventions they imply; (b) describe new findings on two types of paranoia, which imply the need for significant theoretical adjustments; and (c) propose and describe a modified theory of paranoid threat and defense of the self, which, we argue, more adequately explains the phenomena.
Trower et al. (Sun,) studied this question.