On Delusions....

It is indeed heartening to follow the discussions on the basis of psychiatric diagnosis, and the relationship between creativity and mental illnesses. Let me go into a little more details on delusions. A delusion is defined as a false and unshakable belief that is not explainable by the persona's socio cultural factors. It can be explained
1) False belief - the belief in question can be shown to be false by objective methods or verification by others.
2) Unshakable - The person refuses to accept any proof contrary to his belief and holds on to it.
3) Not explained by socio cultural factors - This criterion may have been added for social or political reasons than based on science. The most difficult issue at that time may have been 'how to keep religious belief out of the domain of psychopathology'. Without this criterion it will be difficult to do this. Cultural beliefs (for example, a local belief that God resides on top of a nearby mountain) may have to be labelled as psychopathology.

Richard Dawkins explains why he chose the title of his book as 'The God delusion'. He admits that delusion is a technical word used by psychiatrists, but justifies his title seeing no reason not to call belief in God as a delusion. We need not discuss this further. What I am trying to convey is that psychiatric diagnosis have a social/ political/ cultural angle to it and safeguards should be there to prevent abuse of psychiatry by totalitarian regimes.