“And I am myself. And I am another.”

— Patti Smith, from Birds of Iraq

Monkeys and Parrot in the Virgin Forest (Singes et perroquet dans la forêt vierge) by Henri Rousseau, The Barnes Foundation

Barnes Foundation (Philadelphia), Collection Gallery, Room 11, North Wall Medium: Oil on canvas

Healing of Lazarus by Westphalian Master, The Barnes Foundation

Barnes Foundation (Philadelphia), Collection Gallery, Room 20, North Wall Medium: Oil and gold on wood panel

The Truman Show is a 1998 movie starring Jim Carey. The plot follows Truman, played by Carey, who has no idea that his life is constantly being filmed by hidden cameras and broadcast as a relating TV show. Everybody in his life is a paid actor and he soon discovers that nothing in his life is real and that the whole world is watching him. When he discovers the truth, he fights to find an escape from this phoney life. 

In 2008, Joel Gold, a psychiatrist, and Ian Gold, a neurophilisopher, coined the term “The Truman Show delusion.” There have been over 40 recorded instances of people suffering from this delusion in which they believe their every waking moment is being filmed for a secret reality show. One patient flew to New York City following 9/11 to make sure that the terrorist attacks were not a plot twist in his reality show. Another patient wanted to climb the Statue of Liberty because he believed that in doing so, he would be released from the “show.”

British psychiatrists described the disorder in the British Journal of Psychiatry as:

The Temptation of St. Anthony (detail), 1515, Matthias Grunewald

Jan Voss