@izzythepush,
Are you acting as a Folie imposée, where a dominant person (known as the 'primary', 'inducer' or 'principal') initially forms a delusional belief during a psychotic episode and imposes it on another person or persons (known as the 'secondary', 'acceptor' or 'associate') with the assumption that the secondary person might not have become deluded if left to his or her own devices?
If so, may you be assured that the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders states that a person cannot be diagnosed as being delusional if the belief in question is one "ordinarily accepted by other members of the person's culture or subculture”.
It is not clear to me at what point a belief considered to be delusional and escapes from the folie à... diagnostic category and becomes legitimate because of the number of people holding it.
However, when a large number of people come to believe obviously false and potentially distressing things based purely on hearsay, these beliefs are not considered to be clinical delusions by me and are labelled instead as cacoëthes loquendi.
Sir, are you unaware that as a first-rate ship of the line HMS Victory has three masts and not two as depicted in the poster?
