"Folie à deux (English pronunciation: /fɒˈli ə ˈduː/, from the French for "a madness shared by two") is a rare psychiatric syndrome in which symptoms of a delusional belief are transmitted from one individual to another. The same syndrome shared by more than two people may be called folie à trois, folie à quatre, folie en famille or even folie à plusieurs ("madness of many"). Recent psychiatric classifications refer to the syndrome as dependency psychotic disorder (DSM-IV) (297.3) and induced delusional disorder (F.24) in the ICD-10, although the research literature largely uses the original name. The disorder was first conceptualized in 19th century French psychiatry."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Follie_a_deux)
What is more interesting is that it can be imposed, simultaneous, and even contagious. In my family, it seems like it has been contagious, amplified, and worsened by the psychotic disorder of schizophrenia.
A little background history is required here. My family during my childhood (and my parents still today) believed in a set of very strange spiritual beliefs, headed and led by my father. These strange beliefs stretched from a belief in the inhabitation of demons in everything (including ourselves), and the need to 'cleanse' these from our houses, our things and ourselves, on a constant basis, to the belief that one can change the world through faith. Just before and during my adolescence, my parents became great believers in the evangelical faith movement, the main belief of which is that the physical world can be changed through faith and belief that it is not how it appears, but how one would like it to be. Practices surrounding this belief include 'confessing' how one would like things to be (saying things are what they currently are not in order to bring about change), and acting as if things are as they are not, but as one would like them to be (in order to live more entirely in the spiritual world in which one believes wholeheartedly). As well, my parents habitually isolate themselves from others psychologically and physically, having no real close friends, and often shrouding their beliefs in secrecy from the 'world.' The fact that these practices smack mightily of psychosis and delusion has clearly interwoven with my sister's schizophrenic delusions to create a situation that is at once frustrating and poisonous for her, as well as for my mother, and the remaining siblings who are endeavoring to help our parents toward a sound medical solution.
The current state of things is that my father, unwilling to truly admit to the problem of schizophrenia, and wanting desperately to heal my sister through 'faith healing' (a miracle), constrains my mother to not speak about my sister negatively; that is, to not discuss her symptoms or problems with others outside the house, and not often within it. As all the children have left (fled?) the house and chosen to live sane lives, my mother is left within the situation to slowly be convinced, even as I was during my 2 and 1/2 year period with my schizophrenic sister, that my mother herself is the one who is mad. She is left to slowly drift into a folie a deux (or a trois, if you include my father's less-involved, yet definitely delusional state), with my sister. And that is certainly the case at the moment. She is feeling the dark pull toward madness, even as she is trapped in the situation with little recourse.
When I finally left my parents' house and my sister when I was 20, it took me some months to fully extricate myself from the strangest of my sister's beliefs. Unfortunately, I am still working toward a place of balance and reality in the more intimate areas of my life which my sister violated: my self-esteem, my belief that I have a firm grasp on reality, and more than anything, a supportive relationship with my parents and my other siblings. This last is the most difficult for me, because it is out of my control. And because I am the one not enabling la folie, and furthermore, the one most feared by my sister, it is I who live with the brunt of familial coldness, and betrayal, as my mother clings to a husband who is hurting her, and my siblings endeavor to not allow this process to rule their lives. In my life, it is not a question of ruling, but of healing. And if I don't work to heal, then I will live in a sort of folie myself: the delusion that it is I who am to blame.
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