Paranoia is defined as a mental disorder characterized by delusions and the feeling of hostility from others...sometimes progressing to extreme disturbances of consciousness and aggressive acts believed to be rendered in the name of self-defense or as a mission...it is a baseless or excessive suspicion of the motives of others...The infamous Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was an apparent victim of such a thing...early into his leadership, he distrusted others as might be expected in such an environment and was suspect of those who he deemed a challenge of his leadership...he found ways to charge them with ‘crimes’ and have them removed from their posts...they were exiled to Siberia or just blatantly killed to eliminate any competition...in many cases, it was pointed out by historians that most of these people had no intention of doing anything...but, that didn’t stop Stalin from taking action...later in his life, his paranoia is said to have increased...so much as to where members of his own family became targets of his paranoia...son-in-laws, daughter-in-laws, cousins, and others were sent to prisons or gulags, work camps, or simply disappeared...their fate unknown...in an episode of ‘The Twilight Zone’, Peter Falk plays a new dictator who has taken power and then has all his friends and colleagues killed because he fears they are going to kill him...their ‘intentions’ can be seen in a mirror that shows their ‘true’ feelings..of course, you don’t have to be a world leader or dictator to have paranoia...many regular people have been afflicted...a neighbor who is innocently mowing his yard could be suspected of trying to look into the windows of your house for some devious reason...a credit application could be construed as an attempt to get personal information about you to share with the government...someone knocking at the door, or ringing your doorbell could be a possible criminal who must be dealt with...there have been times when this has been imagined and acted upon...and with tragic consequences to the innocent...probably at one time or another, we all have felt that it was us against the world, but only in a brief, not too serious sense...but for others, it becomes all too real and they actually think that everyone is against them...as though the world has hatched some kind of a plot to destroy them.
