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[[Delusion]]s ([[French]]: ''[[délire]]'') are usually defined in [[psychiatry]] as firmly held, incorrigible [[false ]] [[belief]]s, inconsistent with the information available and with the beliefs of the subject's social group.<ref>see American Psychiatric Association, 1987: 395; Hughes, 1981: 206</ref> Delusions are the central clinical feature of [[paranoia]], and can range from single ideas to complex networks of beliefs (called delusional systems).

[[Delusion]]s are the central [[clinical]] feature of [[paranoia]], and can range from single ideas to complex networks of [[belief]]s. In Lacanian [[Lacan]]ian terms, the [[paranoiac lacks ]] [[lack]]s the [[Name-of-the-Father]], and the [[delusion ]] is the [[paranoiac]]'s attempt to fill the [[hole ]] left in his [[symbolic]] universe by the [[absence]] of this primordial [[signifier]].  Thus the [[delusion ]] is not the 'illness' of [[paranoia ]] itself; it is, on the contrary, the [[paranoiac]]'s attempt to heal himself, to pull himself out of the breakdown of the [[symbolic ]] universe by means of a [[substitute formation]].  As [[Freud]] commented in his work on [[Schreber]], : "What we take to be the pathological production, the delusional formation, is in reality the attempt at recovery, the reconstruction."<ref>Freud, 1911c: SE XII, 71</ref>  [[Lacan ]] insists on the significance of the [[delusion ]] and stresses the importance of attending closely to the [[psychosis|psychotic]] [[patient]]'s own account of his [[delusion]].  The [[delusion ]] is a form of [[discourse]], and must therefore be understood as "a field of signification that has organised a certain signifier."<ref>{{S3, }} p.121</ref>  For this reason all delusional [[delusion]]al phenomena are "clarified in reference to the functions and structure of [[speech]]."<ref>{{S3, }} p.310</ref> The [[paranoid delusional ]] [[delusion]]al construction may take many forms.