The Genesis of Delusions: Clinical Notes

Men and women hold to and have faith in certain opinions as the result of long thinking around and along certain lines. Our social and political tendencies are the outcome of an analysis more or less critical, and believed by the individual to be impartial. A scattered phrase or an apparently insignificant incident may attract attention, and be the beginning of a prolonged mental conflict which is finally determined by a definite line of thought. It does not follow that the reasoning is always logical, or the argument conclusive to people of other opinions, but nevertheless a conclusion is arrived at, and it is final.