From Evolutive Paranoia, by August Wimmer (1902)

Literature on the history of ‘paranoia’ (as a clinical concept) is large and confusing. This is partly explained by the fact that over the centuries the word ‘paranoia’ has been made to participate in several convergences (clinical constructs), and hence it has named different forms of behaviour and been linked to different explanatory concepts. The Classic Text that follows provides information on the internal clinical evolution of the last convergence in which ‘paranoia’ was made to participate. August Wimmer maps the historical changes of ‘Verrücktheit’ as it happened within the main European psychiatric traditions since the early 19th century. After World War II, that clinical profile was to become reified and renamed as ‘delusional disorder’.