[Logic of delusional person misidentification. "Mental illness" as disorder of subjective time]

The two types of delusional misinterpretation of persons described by Pauleikhoff (1954) are here examined under the hypothesis that the so-called mental illnesses are disruptions of the subjective conceptions of time. It is assumed that concrete subjective time normally develops from the dialectic relationship between predictive-emanative and retrospective-evolutive time structures. The delusional misinterpretation of an unknown person as a familiar person arises from the exclusively emanative interpretation of the perception of another individual (who is developing evolutively). In the delusional misinterpretation of a known person as an unknown person, on the other hand, other persons cannot be perceived as independent subjects developing evolutively. In addition the sick person produces a purely emanative interpretation by experiencing the person perceived as his own physical area of reality. Such considerations, especially when applied to endogenous psychoses, open new avenues for the study of subjective time-pathologies.