DELUSION, med. jurisp. A diseased state of the mind, in which persons believe things to exist, which exist only, or in the degree they are conceived of only in their own imaginations, with a persuasion so fixed and firm, that neither evidence nor argument can convince them to the contrary.
2. The individual is, of course, insane. For example, should a parent unjustly persist without the least ground in attributing to his daughter a course of vice, and use her with uniform unkindness, there not being the slightest pretence or color of reason for the supposition, a just inference of insanity, or delusion, would arise in the minds of a jury: because a supposition long entertained and persisted in, after argument to the contrary, and against the natural affections of a parent, suggests that he must labor under some morbid mental delusion. 3 Addams' R. 90, 91; Id. 180; Hagg. R. 27 and see Dr. Connolly's Inquiry into Insanity, 384; Ray, Med. Jur. Prel. Views., Sec. 20, p. 41, and Sec. 22, p. 47; 3 Addams, R. 79; 1 Litt. R. 371 Annales d'Hygiene Publique, tom. 3, p. 370; 8 Watts, 70; 13 Ves. 89; 1 Pow. Dev. by Jarman, 130, note Shelf. on Lun. 296; 2 Bouv. Inst. n. 2104-10.

A Law Dictionary, Adapted to the Constitution and Laws of the United States. By John Bouvier. Published 1856.

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References in periodicals archive

This axis is contained in the space of a golden circle, though: Angelica's bracelet is not simply instrumental in bringing delusory rationalization to an end.

Morgana's Bracelet: Memory Games and the Plight of History in Ariosto's Final Edition of the Orlando Furioso (1532)

DEBKAfile's military sources find Ya'alon's comment delusory. They don't see why Assad would treat Israelis differently from his own people--especially since the IDF has presented him with no real deterrent.

Israeli forebodings over widening Russian-Hizbullah-Iraqi intervention in Syria

In literary and cultural criticism, various re-assertions and assumptions about "the political" now serve as a delusory ground of justification, while "those wedded to tropes of 'emancipation' soldier on" (102):

The deconstructive turn in environmental criticism

Psychiatric and entomological aspects of delusory parasitosis.

Sindrome de Ekbom en consumidor de metilfenidato intravenoso

Innovation, less threateningly than earlier in the poem and than in "Absalom and Achitophel," is a delusory escape that only distracts the trivial or the foolish.

The substance of fables: Dryden's "of the pythagorean philosophy"

See God: an Uncommon Conversation, a set of dialogues between Mailer and Mike Lennon, for some of Mailer's misunderstandings of Buddhism.) Anyway, the word kyans actually means "public record," and the language is weird, one learns with enough study and insight, because it cuts through the delusory dualisms through which we live our lives.

Why Mailer mattered, why Mailer matters

If Israeli Jews sincerely desire a just and lasting peace they would do well to first shed once and for all this pervasive and pernicious colonial mentality and its accompanying delusory supremacist language and learn to see Palestinians as their full equals, nothing more and nothing less.

From Balfour to Obama: Colonial Thinking on Palestine

Schopenhauer eschews suicide as an inadequate solution to the problem of existence, because "suicide denies merely the individual, not the species," but he understands its apparent, if ultimately delusory, rationale (World 1.399):

"Astray amongst the Passion of the Earth": Lord Jim as Schopenhauerian Passion Play

Delusion