Unsettling as it may be, every person is controlled by psychological effects. Some are common, while others are thankfully rare. Either way, many of these complex processes are strong enough to override logic and empathy.

There are deep roots to why sexists rarely change or certain strangers win trust more easily. As with all mental arenas, things can also get deliciously weird. Science has discovered that humans can psychologically hibernate, that a person’s dark side has a number, and that the trauma of Santa Claus destroys trust in parents.

10 Why Reverse Psychology Works

Parents who use reverse psychology to make kids eat broccoli tap into an interesting psychological phenomenon. It is part of something called “reactance,” which is how easily someone reacts when they feel their freedom is threatened.

That, in a nutshell, is reverse psychology. You make someone think that something valuable is going to be taken away. In a kid’s eyes, broccoli is not valuable. Broccoli sucks. But the ability to choose is priceless. When a parent tells them not to eat the vegetable, choice is removed. That green horror suddenly looks a lot more alluring—eating it returns one’s ability to make choices.

Reverse psychology is not an ironclad form of manipulation. It depends on age and reactivity. Some kids will see right through their parents’ tactics. Others, mostly toddlers and teens, are reactive enough to get duped.

Agreeable adults with calm natures are less likely to be manipulated. Those who are fiery-tempered and emotional are more prone to fall prey to reverse psychology.^[1]

9 Distraction Erases Beauty

Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa hangs on a bare wall in the Louvre. One could be forgiven for thinking the iconic canvas needs more fanfare. However, there exists a reason for the minimalism.

Scientists are starting to understand something that art museums have understood for decades—distraction dulls one’s appreciation of beauty. As is sometimes the case, researchers arrived at a conclusion that ancient philosophers already expressed very well.

Immanuel Kant, an influential philosopher from Germany, once said that beauty is not a trademark of an object but rather subjective to the beholder. In other words, how many pleasing details the eye detects in a painting or another lovely item depends on how conscious the viewer’s thoughts are at that moment. Distraction blocks something in the mind, causing a person to see about 15 percent less beauty.^[2]

8 Familiar Strangers Effect

These days, strangers cannot be trusted on sight. However, a brain quirk works against the rules of safety.

In 2018, scientists found that people trust strangers faster when they resembled someone trustworthy from their past. Even if that “someone” was a beloved sitcom character. Similarly, a stranger resembling an abusive ex-husband or a movie gangster might struggle to win the trust of the wife who divorced her partner and was always creeped out by Al Capone.

Surprisingly, no dead ringers were required to trigger this nearly automatic effect. People judged strangers despite a minimal resemblance to good or bad past experiences. Researchers even discovered that study participants made these calls while unaware of the subtle links.

Volunteers were trained to mistrust certain “partners” on a screen who behaved selfishly during a money game. Even when the thieving characters were digitally morphed, participants subconsciously recognized them and made the choice to stay wary.^[3]

For some reason, this visual system has a bigger say than logic. The latter would dictate that there is no information available about the stranger to classify him as either good or bad.

7 Santa Scars Are Real

A surprising analysis found that there are plenty of mistrustful, angry adults—because Santa Claus was a lie. A large survey found that most children stop believing in Santa around age eight.

They had discovered the truth in different, sometimes bizarre ways. Some were told the truth. Others caught parental Santas in the act or realized that the fable’s facts failed to hold up against science—like flying reindeer and a man who manages to deliver presents to millions in a single night.

Most children survive this disillusionment. However, some develop real trust issues later on. At the core of this bewilderment rests the question, “What else did my parents lie about?”

Seems like no big deal, but this effect flares in some. The survey found that around 15 percent of adults still felt deeply betrayed and 10 percent were downright angry. It would appear that for some, their parents’ attempt to perpetuate a magical tradition is pure trauma.^[4]

6 Future Time Slack

Nearly everyone has experienced the following. A particular day is so full of commitments that it seems logical to reschedule some to a later date. After all, things should be less hectic by then. But then you arrive at said point, and life is as maddeningly busy as it was last week when the item was rescheduled.

This delusion that the future holds more time is called “future time slack.” The term was coined in 2005 when studies showed a curious human reaction. The participants believed that they would have more leeway in their schedules in the coming weeks or months but not money.

Apparently, more time did not equal more money. It could be because time is the primary concern. At the moment of rescheduling, one might not be in dire financial straits but instead uncomfortably strapped for time.

Future time slack is not just about getting backhanded by the things one postpones. Often, a person works hard to clear their coming days to enjoy free time. Unfortunately, this creates the same delusion. Life is unpredictable and busy. Despite the sacrifices to empty a schedule, even holidays are not as free as one imagined.^[5]

5 Invisibility Cloak Illusion

A curious conviction occurs whenever people get together. The “invisibility cloak illusion” happens when people wait in line, work with colleagues, or take the bus with strangers. One notices the mannerisms and details of these fellow passengers and workers while believing that they don’t take the same notice of you.

A 2016 study proved that people watch you more than you know. Participants were asked to wait in a room before an experiment. However, letting strangers sit together in the waiting room was the experiment, although they were only told afterward.

Each participant could describe intricate things that they noticed about the others in the waiting room. But they were convinced that nobody paid them much attention in return.

For some reason, this illusion makes people believe that they are the only ones absorbing information about those around them—kind of like wearing an invisibility cloak. The truth is that nearly everyone in that same room or waiting line also takes account of everyone else in the same studious way.^[6]

4 Transient Global Amnesia

Human memory remains a mysterious thing. One interesting link exists between emotions and memory. More precisely, emotions and other psychological factors appear to play a role in a medical mystery. Called transient global amnesia (TGA), it annually hits less than 10 people in every 100,000.

Amnesia hits out of the blue and wipes months of memories. Those around the victim might be concerned about a stroke or the start of dementia, but TGA lacks the accompanying muscle weakness, slurring, or permanent forgetfulness. In fact, every person with TGA regained their memory in full, and thus far, nobody has ever experienced the phenomenon twice.^[7]

This frightening episode is truly benign without any long-lasting effects. Nobody knows the cause, although researchers have identified possible triggers. They range from strong emotions and stress to people who had sex that wiped their minds. This rare condition remains one of the most mysterious neurological conditions in medical literature.

3 The D-Factor

The G factor measures someone’s intelligence. A bunch of tests leads to a number that can predict a person’s future success, income, and even health.

In 2018, researchers found they could accurately measure a person’s dark side. The D-factor is based on the fact that sadists, psychopaths, and narcissists all have a “dark core” within their personalities. At the very least, despite some differences, all three tend to put themselves first at the expense of other people. This harmful tendency is the D-factor.

To formulate an effective way to measure it, researchers looked at nine dark traits. They used three studies with thousands of participants to gain more information on narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, egoism, moral disengagement, psychological entitlement, sadism, spitefulness, and self-interest.

This epic amount of data was then analyzed to see if several traits clustered together in a single person. Very often, they did. More importantly, the study successfully designed a test that anyone can take. It measures the D-factor and likelihood of going to the dark side during an ethically questionable situation.^[8]

2 Why Sexists Rarely Change

Most women (and their male friends and family) can attest to the deeply damaging effects of gender discrimination, harassment, and sexual assault. In the past, this was pretty much the gold standard for masculinity.

Science recently confirmed that clinging to this outdated standard causes mental problems for men. A study of 20,000 men found that three traits encouraged a sexist’s higher tendency to harm women, dysfunctional social behavior, and toxic mental health issues. These included dominance over women, ultra self-reliance, and being a playboy.

Since this harmful behavior promotes violence and other unpleasant situations, such men are increasing isolated by society. Most offenders are not likely to change. Seeking help goes against social norms for ideal men to be independent and less emotional.^[9]

The more isolated and angry they get, the more they tend to break down others (such as women) and seek out like-minded men who validate them. It is a vicious cycle.

1 Winter-Over Syndrome

Humans do not hibernate, although something similar manifests in people facing long-term isolation. A 2018 study followed 27 researchers in Antarctica. Their 10-month stay included the dark winter months.

This revealed more about a coping mechanism that most people would never have to call on: winter-over syndrome. A form of extreme psychological hibernation, it develops whenever humans are stuck for long periods of time in situations like Antarctica.^[10]

The research staff had to fill out psychometric questionnaires, keep sleep diaries, and have their emotional health gauged as well as their personal coping strategies. It was not surprising that staying indoors during the winter interfered with sleep and killed their perkiness.

The unexpected part was how everything slowed down. Problem-solving abilities curved downward, and so did depression and denial of the situation’s reality. The last two were expected to rise. This unexpected dip induced indifference that kept worse psychological problems at bay.

There is a caveat: Winter-over syndrome can only develop if someone knows their isolation is not permanent.

Just about everyone reading this has likely heard of psychological maladies like obsessive-compulsive disorder and schizophrenia. Conditions such as anxiety disorders and depression are everyday terms. However, there are some strange mental illnesses that you’ve probably never heard of.

Some of these are location-specific and only affect people visiting a place. Others affect anybody but are just as weird. Imagine a disorder that makes a person believe they do not exist, that their house is a clone, or that they are outside their own bodies. You might be surprised that some of these disorders even exist.

10 Jerusalem Syndrome

Jerusalem syndrome is a mental disorder that affects tourists who visit Jerusalem. Sufferers believe they are Biblical characters or are somehow related or affiliated to Jesus.

In one instance, an Irish woman went to a hospital, claiming she was about to give birth to Baby Jesus, even though she wasn’t pregnant. Another man from Canada thought he was Samson and tried to destroy a wall. An Austrian man asked chefs at the hotel in which he was staying to prepare him the Last Supper.

There have also been reports of tourists thinking they are Biblical characters like King Solomon. Others suddenly start giving sermons or just shout on the streets. One notorious case involved a British man who planned to get himself killed by Satan in order to trigger the end of the world.

The syndrome affects about 50 tourists every year, but those are just the ones that are documented. Authorities believe that many more cases actually occur. Interestingly, most sufferers recover from the disorder the moment they leave Jerusalem.^[1]

9 Stendhal Syndrome

Stendhal syndrome (also called Florence syndrome or hyperkulturemia) is a psychosomatic disorder that can affect people visiting art galleries. Sufferers become so overwhelmed by the beauty of the exhibited artworks that they suddenly develop symptoms.

Their hearts beat faster, and they become dizzy and confused. Some behave like lunatics, hallucinate, or even faint. Some sufferers do not need to be in an art gallery for the syndrome to occur. They will exhibit the symptoms when they are in any beautiful environment.

Stendhal syndrome was first noted by author Henri-Marie Beyle (who wrote under the pseudonym “Stendhal”) in his 1817 book Naples and Florence: A Journey from Milan to Reggio. Beyle wrote that he became so overwhelmed by the beautiful ceiling frescoes at the Santa Croce Cathedral in Florence, Italy, that he exhibited some symptoms of the disorder now named after him.^[2]

8 Fregoli Delusion

The Fregoli delusion is a psychological disorder that makes a person believe that other people are actually the same person in disguise. Someone with the Fregoli delusion will say that the differences in others’ clothing and looks are just an elaborate disguise to make the sufferer think the others aren’t the same person.

The disorder is named after Leopoldo Fregoli, an Italian actor known for doing many impersonations. It was first observed in an unnamed patient who believed everybody was one of two actresses called Sarah Bernhardt and Robine. The patient was so convinced that she attacked a stranger she believed was Robine.

It is very difficult or even impossible to convince people exhibiting the Fregoli delusion that they are suffering from a disorder. One ten-year-old sufferer believed everybody he saw was his father in disguise. When somebody pointed out that the nurse could not be his father because she was a woman, he said his father was clever enough to disguise himself and claimed that the doctors could not detect it.^[3]

7 Clinical Lycanthropy

Clinical lycanthropy is a mental disorder that makes people think they are turning into animals, most notably wolves. To adjust to their supposed transformation, clinical lycanthropy sufferers will usually grunt like animals and attempt using their fingers like claws. They will complain of hair growing on their arms and will sometimes mistake their reflection in a mirror for an animal’s.

The first case report was published in 1852, when a man thought he had turned into a werewolf. He believed he was covered in hair and had grown sharp, wolf-like teeth. Both were untrue. He insisted on eating raw meat but did not eat it when it was served because he only wanted rotten meat.

Thankfully, clinical lycanthropy is rare. Only 13 cases of people believing they are wolves have been reported since 1850. However, it jumps to 56 when we consider other cases involving people who thought they’d turned into other animals. Doctors believe some cases have been missed, since psychiatrists will misdiagnose clinical lycanthropy as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or psychotic depression.^[4]

6 Cotard Delusion

Cotard delusion is a mental disorder that makes sufferers think they are dead. They’ll believe they are not in control of their bodies and may even assume they are already rotting. However, some sufferers know they are alive but will wrongly believe that some parts of their bodies are dead or do not even exist.

Cotard delusion is often caused by a traumatic incident like an accident or fainting. Sufferers believe they actually died during the incident. And they will often believe they cannot die again since they are already dead. The disorder was first observed in an unnamed Frenchwoman only identified as Mademoiselle X (depicted above).

In 1880, Mademoiselle X visited Doctor Jules Cotard and complained that she thought she was dead. Doctor Cotard took interest in her disorder and studied it extensively. He called her condition “the Delirium of Negation,” but it would later take his name. Mademoiselle X ultimately died of starvation, as she refused to eat due to the false belief that she did not have a stomach, nervous system, or torso.^[5]

5 Folie A Deux

Folie a deux (French for “madness of two”) is a psychological condition in which the delusions of one person essentially spread to others. Folie a deux can also be called “folie a trois” when it affects three people, “folie a quatre” when it affects four people, or “folie en famille” when it affects an entire family.

Folie a deux was first documented in the 19th century, when a couple named Michael and Margaret thought someone was sneaking into their home and wearing their shoes. They believed this so much that they started convincing themselves that somebody was truly sneaking in.

In another case, three sisters believed some parts of the Bible were wrong and that God wanted them to live in a house that belonged to somebody else. They were arrested after vandalizing the home and held in a cell, where they stripped themselves naked and sang worship songs.

In one recent case that happened in 2016, a couple fled town with their three children over the erroneous belief that somebody was trying to kill them. Two of the three children also believed the story, making it a folie a quatre.^[6]

4 Reduplicative Paramnesia

Reduplicative paramnesia is a rare mental disorder that makes sufferers think their house or another building has been cloned. Sometimes, they believe their house has been disguised to look like another building. Many sufferers believe the hospital in which they are receiving treatment is actually their disguised home.

Sometimes, sufferers wrongly assume something has been taken away from their homes and taken somewhere else. One woman who had a temporal lobe stroke suffered from the disorder after her discharge from the hospital. She claimed that some furniture had been taken from her home to the hospital.^[7]

3 Factitious Disorder

Factitious disorder (aka factitious disorder imposed on self or Munchausen syndrome) motivates people to fake illnesses. Sufferers will often go to extreme lengths to make people think they are truly sick. They will readily add foreign substances like blood to their urine samples and add heat to a thermometer to make people think they have a fever.

In extreme cases, sufferers will injure themselves and even undergo surgery for nonexistent conditions. They usually understand that they’re not sick, but they don’t understand why they are pretending to be sick. Even when they do, they just cannot stop pretending to be sick, even when challenged with evidence proving they’re not ill.

Factitious disorder imposed on another (also referred to as Munchausen syndrome by proxy) is a subcategory of factitious disorder. It involves a person claiming another person is sick. Most of the time, it is usually a parent saying a child is sick. This is just as dangerous, since the parent could injure the child just to prove they are truly sick.^[8]

2 Delusional Parasitosis

Delusional parasitosis is a mental disorder that makes a person think their skin is infected with parasites and animals like lice, fleas, worms, and spiders.

Sufferers will usually scratch their skin until they become injured. More desperate patients will use dangerous substances on their skin just to get rid of the creatures. They’ll even take skin and hair samples and put them under microscopic slides before presenting them to the doctor.

Those affected are so convinced of their delusion that they will confidently explain how the creatures entered their bodies. In some instances, they will even claim that the parasites have crept from their bodies and into their homes.

Delusional parasitosis often affects elderly people and is more common in women than men. It is usually the result of an underlying illness, like an anxiety disorder that makes the sufferer afraid of getting sick. In rarer instances, it is caused by other conditions like schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Sometimes, it is just the sufferer being paranoid or could be the result of drug abuse or alcohol withdrawal.^[9] Delusional parasitosis can sometimes become folie a deux when a person believes they are suffering from the disorder because their partner is suffering from it. The situation is worsened when the partner reinforces their belief that the nonexistent creatures are really there.

1 Depersonalization-Derealization Disorder

Sufferers of depersonalization-derealization disorder (aka depersonalization disorder) think they are outside their bodies. It can also occur when a person believes the things they see around them do not really exist. Sometimes, they even think their memory does not belong to them.

Some sufferers believe they are floating above their bodies. Others understand they are inside their bodies but will usually consider themselves as more robot than human, since they assume they do not have any control over their actions. They will usually feel that their heads are covered with soft materials like cotton and assume their body parts are bigger or smaller than they appear.

Depersonalization-derealization disorder is more common in people who’ve been through traumatic experiences and can last anywhere from hours to months. Sufferers often have troubled relationships, since they are usually more concerned about their supposed nonexistence than with interacting with their families and friends. They will frequently check themselves and the things around them to confirm that they truly exist.^[10]

Psychological warfare misleads, intimidates, and demoralizes the enemy. This use of threats, propaganda, and subtler strategies has been employed for millennia to influence adversaries’ thinking. Civilians and soldiers alike are targets of this cunning. Those who can control their targets’ emotions and reasoning emerge victorious over superior forces.

10 Aztec Death Whistles

Aztec death whistles sound like the “scream of 1,000 corpses.” Twenty years ago, archaeologists unearthed two of these skull-shaped instruments in Mexico. They were clutched in the hands of a sacrificed man at the temple of the wind god.

Initially believed to be toys, the whistles were used in rituals and war. Designed to sound like a human howling in pain, death whistles were reserved for rare occasions.

Some insist that death whistles were used in sacrifices and to guide the recently deceased to the land of the dead. Others believe that their main use was psychological warfare.

At the beginning of a battle, the whistles’ unnerving sound would break the resolve of the enemy. Some experts believe that these death whistles allowed listeners to enter a trance state. Aztec physicians frequently employed sound in healing.

9 36 Stratagems

The 36 Stratagems is an ancient collection of Chinese proverbs on warfare. Most are based on the art of deception and use subtle psychological techniques to undermine an enemy’s will to fight.

The work contains proverbs so universal that they have become cliches. It contains sections on “Attack Strategies,” “Chaos Strategies,” “Desperate Situation Strategies,” and many other scenarios. All modern versions of 36 Stratagems are derived from a ragged copy discovered in Szechwan at a book vendor’s stall in 1941.

The work’s author and publication date remain unknown. Most experts trace the work’s origins to the Warring States Period between 403 and 221 BC. Some of the proverbs refer to specific events as early as 35 BC. In addition, most experts now believe that there was no single author and that 36 Stratagems was compiled over centuries.

8 Sacred Shields

In 525 BC, the Battle of Pelusium marked Egypt’s decisive defeat by the Persians and a milestone of psychological warfare. Led by Emperor Cambyses II, the Achaemenid Persians swept in from the east and exploited the Egyptians’ reverence for felines.

The invaders drew cats on their shields. Some speculate that they may have pinned real cats to their protective gear. The Egyptians worshiped the feline god Bastet and refused to harm their sacred symbol. In Stratagems, Polyaenus insists that the Persian front line contained dogs, ibises, sheep, and cats—all sacred to the Egyptians.

According to Herodotus, Cambyses invaded because he had been tricked by the pharaoh. Cambyses had requested the hand of Amasis’s daughter in marriage. Assuming she would become a concubine, the Egyptian ruler disguised the daughter of the former pharaoh in her place.

When Cambyses discovered the charade, he attacked. Polyaenus believed that Cambyses’s victory was due to psychological warfare.

7 Terror Tactics Of Tamerlane

Born in 1336, Timur the Lame (aka Tamerlane) was a 14th-century Uzbek chieftain. Despite the paralysis of half his body, he conquered Central Asia, most of the Muslim world, and parts of India.

Legends of Tamerlane’s terror tactics are legion. Historians estimate that his forces slaughtered 17 million people—5 percent of the world at the time. He became infamous for building pyramids with the skulls of his vanquished. The technique was intended to spread fear in anyone who dared to oppose him.

Some say that he beheaded 90,000 residents of Baghdad and built 120 pyramids with their skulls. After he defeated Delhi, Tamerlane slaughtered the city as a lesson to India. It took nearly a century for Delhi to recover from the devastation.

After defeating the Ottoman Empire, Tamerlane took the Byzantine gates home with him. He also took the sultan in a cage, which he kept on display in his parlor.

6 Vlad The Impaler

Vlad III (aka Vlad Dracula or Vlad the Impaler) was one of the most adept students of psychological warfare in history. The 15th-century Romanian prince spent much of his youth as a political hostage of the Ottomans.

Although he was treated well, Vlad developed a bilious hatred of his captors. Some speculate that the Ottomans even taught him his favorite method of psychological warfare: impaling.

In 1462, Sultan Mehmet II invaded Vlad’s territory. Upon entering the capital, the sultan was greeted by what looked like a forest of Ottoman POWs’ festering corpses impaled on spikes.

Nearly all records of Vlad were written by his enemies. While far from factual, they provide insight into the fear he inspired. Vlad was forced to find ingenious means of fighting with limited resources. Psychological warfare offered the solution. It might seem cruel, but it was an effective tactic against a force much larger than his own.

5 Philip II Of Macedonia

Philip II of Macedonia laid the groundwork for the “greatness” of his son, Alexander. When Philip took the throne in 359 BC, Macedonia was a fractured backwater subject to the whims of foreigners. In less than a year, Philip quashed all internal threats and set up Macedonia to become an ancient superpower. He was a master of psychological warfare.

When doing battle with the Chalcidian League, Philip destroyed the city of Stagirus. According to ancient accounts, it would have been hard for a visitor to tell that the city had ever been inhabited. The remaining Chalcidian cities surrendered without resistance.

During the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC, Philip employed two strategies of psychological warfare. First, he tired out the Athenian and Theban rebels through boredom, forcing them to wait in the blistering sun. Then he made a false attack, which drew them toward a slowly retreating front line that ensnared them.

4 Genius Of Genghis Khan

Terror was Genghis Khan’s greatest tool. He destroyed cities that opposed him—slaying soldiers and civilians alike. During the siege of Merv, each Mongol soldier was ordered to decapitate 400 inhabitants before burning the city to the ground. The death toll may have been inflated tenfold, but Genghis wanted it that way.

Genghis often exaggerated the size of his forces. He placed dummies on horseback and had each soldier light a string of bonfires at night. When attacking both Samarkand and Europe, he advanced on fronts over 1,300 kilometers (800 mi), preventing the enemy from knowing his numbers.

Genghis’s feigned retreats lured pursuers into a prepared position where archers annihilated them. Without fail, Genghis knew more about his adversaries than his enemies knew of the Mongols. Genghis exploited this lack of information to create division and fear. He also terrified opponents with camel-mounted kettledrums thundering with Mongol cavalry charges.

3 Suicide Army

King Goujian of Yue reigned between 496 and 465 BC, the latter part of the Spring and Autumn Period that was marked by a conflict with the state of Wu. During this battle, Goujian had his front line decapitate themselves as a bizarre form of psychological warfare.

According to a history of ancient China called the Shiji, Goujian’s suicidal front was composed of condemned criminals. However, some believe that “criminals sentenced to death” should be read as “soldiers willing to die.” This reflects an ancient Chinese worldview that one would be compensated for sacrifices made during life.

Decapitation might be better translated as “committing suicide by cutting your throat.” This was a common technique in ancient China. However, others believe that the self-decapitating soldiers are nothing more than a legend.

Either way, after years of struggle, Goujian overcame his adversary and annexed their territory.

2 War Chariots

During the Battle of Kadesh in 1274 BC, Hittite forces used heavy chariots to crash through the lines of Ramses II’s Re division (aka Army of Re), causing chaos and terror.

In contrast, the lighter Egyptian war chariots were manned by a driver and a fighter, usually with a bow and arrow and occasionally a spear. They could maneuver more quickly than their enemies in heavier chariots, which could allow the Egyptians to dispatch their enemies before the enemies returned to their own side.

Most experts believe that the invading Hyksos introduced the chariot to Egypt in the Second Intermediate Period. By the 15th century BC, Thutmose III had over 1,000 chariots at his command. These were used against infantry and had an enormous psychological impact on untrained and inexperienced soldiers. By 1000 BC, mounted cavalry replaced the war chariot.

1 Hannibal’s Folly

Carthaginian General Hannibal Barca drove the Romans mad with his psychological warfare techniques in the Second Punic War (218–201 BC). During the Battle of Trebia in 218 BC, Hannibal lured the Roman forces across the Trebia River with an attack of Numidian horsemen.

Hannibal lay in ambush on the other side and slaughtered the Romans, who emerged disorganized, tired, and freezing. At the Battle of Lake Trasimene the following year, he goaded Flaminus into battle by exploiting the Roman general’s headstrong nature.

Hannibal’s name is almost synonymous with his march over the Alps with war elephants. Curiously, this bold attempt at psychological warfare was actually a blunder. Elephants were not adapted to the cold environment. Those that survived the trek were weak and ineffective.

Abraham Rinquist is the executive director of the Winooski, Vermont, branch of the Helen Hartness Flanders Folklore Society. He is the coauthor of Codex Exotica and Song-Catcher: The Adventures of Blackwater Jukebox.

Psychological horror films delve into the darkest recesses of the human mind, often blurring the lines between reality and insanity. These films explore themes of fear, paranoia, and the unknown, creating a sense of dread that lingers long after the credits roll. Here are the top 10 psychological horror films that you can’t miss in 2024.

1. The Babadook (2014)

Director: Jennifer Kent

Plot: Amelia, a single mother plagued by the violent death of her husband, battles with her son’s fear of a monster lurking in the house. However, she soon discovers a sinister presence all around her.

Why Watch: “The Babadook” is a masterclass in building tension and exploring the psychological trauma of grief and motherhood. Jennifer Kent’s debut feature is both a terrifying monster movie and a poignant exploration of mental illness.

See also; 10 Best Teen Movies of All Time.

2. Hereditary (2018)

Director: Ari Aster

Plot: After the death of her secretive mother, Annie and her family are haunted by tragic and disturbing occurrences. The film delves into the family’s dark secrets and their hereditary curse.

Why Watch: “Hereditary” is a deeply unsettling film that combines supernatural horror with the horror of familial legacy. Toni Collette’s powerhouse performance and Ari Aster’s meticulous direction make it a must-see.

See also; Top 10 highest grossing Hollywood movies.

3. Midsommar (2019)

Director: Ari Aster

Plot: A couple travels to Sweden to attend a fabled mid-summer festival. What begins as an idyllic retreat quickly devolves into a surreal and disturbing experience.

Why Watch: Known for its bright, daytime horror, “Midsommar” uniquely blends psychological horror with folk traditions. Ari Aster crafts an unsettling atmosphere that explores themes of grief, codependency, and cultural clash.

See also; Top 10 must watch movies.

4. Black Swan (2010)

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Plot: Nina, a committed ballerina, wins the lead role in “Swan Lake” but slowly loses her grip on reality as she becomes more like the Black Swan.

Why Watch: Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan” is a psychological thriller that explores the duality of human nature and the pressures of artistic perfection. Natalie Portman’s Oscar-winning performance is both haunting and mesmerizing.

See also; Top 10 most watched movies of all time.

5. The Witch (2015)

Director: Robert Eggers

Plot: In 1630s New England, a family is torn apart by the suspicion of witchcraft. Isolated and devout, they face paranoia and the supernatural.

Why Watch: “The Witch” is a slow-burn horror that immerses viewers in its historical setting, using period-accurate language and a chilling atmosphere to build psychological tension.

See also; Top 10 best horror movies of all time.

6. Get Out (2017)

Director: Jordan Peele

Plot: Chris, an African-American man, visits his white girlfriend’s family estate, where he uncovers a disturbing secret.

Why Watch: “Get Out” masterfully combines social commentary with psychological horror. Jordan Peele’s debut feature uses horror to explore themes of racism and exploitation in modern society.

See also; Top 10 Romantic Movies Based on True Stories.

7. Shutter Island (2010)

Director: Martin Scorsese

Plot: Teddy Daniels investigates the disappearance of a patient from a hospital for the criminally insane but soon begins to doubt his own sanity.

Why Watch: “Shutter Island” is a psychological thriller that keeps viewers guessing until the very end. Martin Scorsese’s direction and Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance create a tense and unsettling atmosphere.

See also; 10 Highest Ranked Movies of All Time by IMDb.

8. The Lighthouse (2019)

Director: Robert Eggers

Plot: Two lighthouse keepers struggle to maintain their sanity while living on a remote and mysterious New England island in the 1890s.

Why Watch: “The Lighthouse” is a visually stunning film that explores isolation and madness. Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe deliver intense performances, making this film a psychological tour de force.

9. The Invisible Man (2020)

Director: Leigh Whannell

Plot: Cecilia, after escaping an abusive relationship, believes she is being stalked by her invisible ex, a scientist who faked his own death.

Why Watch: “The Invisible Man” updates the classic horror story with modern themes of domestic abuse and psychological manipulation. Elisabeth Moss’s performance adds depth to this tense and thrilling film.

10. Saint Maud (2019)

Director: Rose Glass

Plot: Maud, a devout hospice nurse, becomes obsessed with saving the soul of her dying patient, spiraling into religious fervor and madness.

Why Watch: “Saint Maud” is a haunting exploration of faith and obsession. Rose Glass’s debut film is both unsettling and thought-provoking, anchored by Morfydd Clark’s compelling performance.

These films are exemplary entries in the psychological horror genre, offering more than just jump scares. They delve into complex themes, explore the human psyche, and leave a lasting impact. Whether through supernatural elements or the horrors of the mind, these movies will keep you on the edge of your seat and haunt your thoughts long after viewing.

Related

The human body is a weird and wonderful thing. But when it comes to the brain, it’s mostly just weird. Go flicking through medical journals and you’ll discover that our minds are capable of deceiving us in the strangest possible ways. Sometimes, these horrific conditions can occur without warning.

10 Living Out The Plot Of Big

Remember that Tom Hanks film Big? It’s about a boy who wishes that he was a grown-up. Thanks to some vaguely explained magic, his wish is granted. He goes to sleep one evening and wakes up the next day in an adult body. Hilarity ensues.

If you’ve ever stopped to think about the plot, you’ve probably realized that Big is kind of terrifying. Being magically granted a mature body while still having a child’s brain would be the stuff of nightmares. We know this for a fact because it really happened to Naomi Jacobs in 2008.

At the time, Jacobs was 32 and dealing with the fallout from a decade of homelessness, bankruptcy, and drug abuse. One morning, she woke up to find that the previous 17 years had been wiped from her memory.

The last thing that she could recall happened when she was 15. She was climbing into the bunk bed that she shared with her sister and trying not to worry about her upcoming French exam.

From Naomi’s point of view, she’d fallen asleep as a teenager and awakened as an adult. To make matters worse, her adult mind had no recollection of 21st-century technology or even her 10-year-old child.

Interestingly, there was no physical reason for Jacobs to lose her memory. She was suffering from dissociative amnesia, meaning that the mind-wipe was caused by psychological factors. It’s believed that she was so stressed out and traumatized by her past (including sexual abuse as a child) that her brain just flipped a switch and wiped it all out.

9 Seeing An Extra Dimension

Stereoblindness is a condition that affects 5–10 percent of the global population. It affects your ability to see in 3-D, so the world appears to be completely flat.

Since the ability to see things in three dimensions is learned during a narrow window of brain development when we’re young, stereoblindness is usually a lifelong condition—unless you have an experience like Bruce Bridgeman did in 2012.

Bridgeman, 67, had never seen the world in three dimensions. One day, he went out to see Hugo, the Martin Scorsese family film. Unable to find a 2-D showing, he was forced to cough up the extra bucks for some 3-D glasses that he knew he wouldn’t be able to use. Nonetheless, he put them on, went into the cinema, and sat down. When the film started, Bridgeman could suddenly see in 3-D.

Imagine finding that your human eyes had magically been upgraded to those of a hawk or maybe a superhuman who can see heat or radio waves. That’s basically what happened to Bridgeman. After nearly seven decades of being stuck in a two-dimensional world, he could see in 3-D.

The effect continued after he left the movie. In the blink of an eye, his stereoblindness had vanished. Doctors now think that his brain had developed the synaptic pathways for doing so when he was young. For some reason, they hadn’t activated until he got a big jolt of 3-D cinema.

8 Being Forced To Make Continual Wisecracks

The term “continual wisecracks” brings to mind an image like Groucho Marx firing off witticisms like a caffeinated Oscar Wilde. But imagine if that was something over which you had no control. Imagine that you could no more stop dropping one-liners than you could stop breathing.

For sufferers of Witzelsucht, that’s not just a strange thought experiment. It’s their daily reality.

Perhaps the earliest case was recorded way back in 1929. German neurologist Otfrid Foerster was removing a brain tumor when the patient suddenly came to manic life on the operating table and began cracking pun after awful pun.

Since then, others who have suffered damage to their frontal lobes have been reported to display the same symptoms. The BBC recently reported on a man known only as Derek who had suffered two strokes five years apart.

Not long after the second stroke, Derek began cracking terrible jokes. He never stopped. Not only that, he couldn’t stop. Even while sleeping, he would laugh himself awake recounting awful puns. Needless to say, it drove his wife nuts.

Interestingly, people suffering from Witzelsucht are often incapable of understanding other people’s jokes. Although they may still laugh at slapstick, wordplay that isn’t their own leaves them utterly cold. It’s believed that this may have something to do with the way that damaged brains release dopamine, responding only to internal thoughts.

7 Having Your Head ‘Explode’

Have you ever been on the verge of dropping off when you suddenly heard someone say your name? According to Mind, a mental health charity, this is a common condition that affects many of us at one time or another. For some people, though, the experience goes beyond merely hearing a voice. They can feel like their heads are literally exploding.

Known aptly as “exploding head syndrome,” the condition can affect almost anyone and occur at any time. Some may only feel it once in their lives. Others can have their heads suddenly start “exploding” night after night—like their brains are the climax of a Fourth of July fireworks show.

It’s undoubtedly unpleasant. Some sufferers have described it as seeing a bright flash of light and then feeling like they were at the epicenter of an explosion. Others have said that it was like having a grenade detonate on their pillows.

The phenomenon is surprisingly common for those who are suffering from insomnia, jet lag, or all-nighters. One study estimated that 22 percent of students suffer from this condition.

Strangely, we’re not entirely sure what causes it. The best explanation is that there is a “bump” between our waking and sleeping states that causes a lot of neurons in the brain to misfire at once.

6 Having Someone Else’s Limb Appear On Your Body

Imagine that you wake up one morning to discover that a crazed surgeon has crept into your room during the night and performed a horrific operation on you. Instead of your left arm, you now have the left arm of the old woman living across the hall. Worse yet, she’s still in control of it.

No, this isn’t a pitch for a new horror film. It’s a rare condition known as somatoparaphrenia. It can occur at any time, usually following an injury to the right side of the brain. Those suffering from it become convinced that one of their limbs is not their own. They persist in this belief even when confronted with direct evidence to counter it.

While some with this condition just consider the limbs to be alien implants, others believe that they belong to specific people. One patient—whose somatoparaphrenia was caused by schizophrenia rather than injury—thought that his right arm belonged to a woman he knew named Maria.

For some, the experience of having an alien limb is so horrible that they go to great lengths to have it amputated.

5 Meeting Your Own Double

The idea of the doppelganger is so prevalent in storytelling that it has shown up in everything from the works of Dostoyevsky to The Simpsons. Usually, the story features a moment when other characters can’t tell who the “real” person is. But if you meet your doppelganger in real life, it could be much worse than that. Even you may no longer be able to tell which is the real you.

About 20 years ago, neuropsychologist Peter Brugger reported meeting a 21-year-old from Zurich who had met his own double. He had recently stopped taking anticonvulsant medication and had spent the morning drinking heavily. At some point, he felt dizzy and stood up—and that’s when things went insane.

The young man turned around and saw his own double lying on the bed. He started shouting at his new twin, only to suddenly find himself lying on his bed and looking up at the shouting face of his doppelganger.

Unable to figure out if the “real” him was the one lying on the bed or the one shouting, he had a breakdown and jumped from a fourth-story window. Miraculously, he survived the fall.

Such moments are extremely rare but not unheard of. The man from Zurich had a tumor in his left temporal lobe. Other reports of doppelgangers have come from other people suffering similar damage to that region.

4 Losing The Ability To Remember Anything

Are you one of those people who hates going to the dentist? Well, we’ve got a whole new reason for you to avoid the experience. At 1:40 PM on March 14, 2005, a soldier known only as William walked into his dentist’s office for root canal surgery. He never came out.

We don’t mean that the dentist killed him. Something much stranger happened. At the exact moment that the dentist gave him a local anesthetic, William completely lost the ability to form new memories. His mental clock stopped dead, frozen forever in the middle of his appointment.

Creepily, there’s absolutely no reason why this might have happened. When William was rushed to the hospital, it was assumed that he’d had a severe reaction to the anesthetic. But that wasn’t the case. There was nothing physically wrong with him. It was like his brain had just stopped functioning properly.

Fast-forward to today, and William has a memory of 90 minutes. Beyond that point, everything vanishes. As far as he’s aware, it’s always midafternoon on March 14, 2005, and he’s just awakened after a dental operation.

3 Losing The Ability To Understand Mirrors

As shown in the video above, one of cinema’s greatest gags came in the 1933 Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup. After Harpo breaks Groucho’s mirror, Harpo must pretend to be his brother’s reflection so that Groucho won’t realize what’s happened.

This being the Marx Brothers, there’s a surreal moment when Harpo—still pretending to be Groucho’s reflection—hands his brother a hat and Groucho takes it without thinking. It’s a hilarious scene in a hilarious movie. It’s also a perfect demonstration of mirror agnosia.

Mirror agnosia can occur due to right parietal lesions but is more commonly associated with dementia. Sufferers lose the ability to understand mirrors or reflections.

There are cases where doctors tested this with an apple. The patient would sit in front of a mirror. Then the doctor would stand behind the patient and hold up an apple so that the patient could only see the apple’s reflection in the mirror.

When told to get the apple, the patient would try to reach through the mirror. Even after being told what a mirror was, the patient continued to believe that the apple was in front of them rather than behind.

Freakily, it doesn’t seem that mirror agnosia can be cured. For example, if you lose your ability to understand reflections tomorrow from a brain injury, you’re unlikely to ever get it back.

2 Having Your Heart Go Crazy

Right now, your body is doing too many vital things to count. You’re breathing, you’re blinking, your heart is beating, your stomach is breaking down food, and you’re not thinking about any of it. It’s second nature to you, complete background noise.

So imagine what might happen if one of those little things suddenly changed. Imagine that your heart started beating in the wrong place. You’d suddenly start noticing it, right?

For a handful of people, that has actually happened. In 2014, the BBC reported on a man known as Carlos whose heart started beating in his stomach. It wasn’t his real heart. The man was old and had just been fitted with a pump in his abdomen to keep his heart ticking. But to Carlos, the pump felt like his real heart. And that had all sorts of weird implications.

The simplest was that Carlos began to lose all sense of his chest. With his heart seemingly migrating south, he started to feel like his chest was bigger than he remembered it and was taking up valuable body room.

Crazily, it also affected his mind. With his new mechanical heart, Carlos suddenly lost his ability to feel empathy toward people in pain. Other social skills disappeared, too, including his ability to read other people’s motives. Simply by tricking his body into thinking its heart had moved, it seemed like his whole mind had gone haywire.

1 Losing The Ability To Sleep

Some people like to boast about how little sleep they need. Sufferers of fatal familial insomnia (FFI) almost certainly hate them. An ultrarare condition that occurs when a specific genetic mutation activates, FFI causes the patient to completely lose the ability to sleep. In most cases, it never comes back.

The effects are horrifying. As the sleepless nights mount up, the patients start to slip into a permanent half-dream state. Although they’re awake, they start to act out the crazy half-dreams that form in their subconscious rather than engage with the world around them.

Patients have been known to walk around in a daze as they mime putting on clothes or combing their hair. As they slip further into that deadly twilight world, their ability to speak fades, followed by their ability to walk. After many months have passed, they simply close their eyes and drift off into that permanent state of sleep—death.

The good news is that only about 40 families worldwide have the genetic defect that triggers FFI. The better news is that even those with the defect often live long, happy lives and never suffer insomnia.

The bad news for those affected is that FFI can occur at any time without warning. One night, they’ll go to bed, close their eyes, and find that they can’t sleep. Drugs won’t help, hypnosis won’t help, and seeing the doctor won’t help. They’ll simply spend the next few months in mental anguish before dying a horrible death.

Good luck not thinking about that the next time you suffer a bout of insomnia.

Warfare has been around for a very long time. As ancient mass graves have shown us, interactions between various groups of human beings haven’t always been peachy—if anything, they’ve often been nothing shy of horrific. And sometimes, horrific is actually the point of some forms of warfare, tactics intended to intimidate and scare the other side. Such is the nature of psychological warfare, and it, too, has been around since humanity’s inception, beginning way back in prehistoric times when the first group of Paleolithic men decided to scream before charging an enemy in an attempt to startle and cause a deep, primal fear within their opponents before they struck.

Psychological warfare is a blend of propaganda and actual tactics that can create a firestorm of terror in the mind of the enemy, long before the first arrow is shot or the first bomb is dropped. Carl von Clausewitz remarked in his work On War that the goal of warfare is to disarm the enemy and make them submit to the will of those conducting the war.^[1] Sometimes, through the use of psychological warfare, this can happen easily, without a fight. Long before the use of newspapers and digital media, cultures had to conduct psychological warfare using more organic and rudimentary tools, the only things that they had at their disposal at the time. Here are ten brutal methods of psychological warfare from the ancient world.

10 Occupation

Alexander the Great employed psychological warfare in ways that were quite novel at the time, and the results were outstanding, as the massive empire he forged shows us. What most people think about when they think of psychological warfare is purely intimidation, but as von Clausewitz said, all warfare is political.

Alexander used a new tactic that he invented to expand his empire, one the Romans would later use as they became a powerful military force, and that tactic contained a beautiful mixture of friendly alliances and intimidation. See, before Alexander, military leaders would march through a city, plunder the goods, often execute the men and keep the women, and then burn it to the ground. Alexander changed this by leaving a certain amount of his troops and forces behind, leaving the cities standing, and making friends with the social elites of each conquered culture so that those defeated foes could then adopt Greek culture and become assimilated into the empire.^[2]

The tactic relied on political genius, mutual friendliness, and, of course, the implied threat of having a very powerful group of soldiers occupying your hometown that could smother any dissent that came about. Alexander’s brutal method was occupation, and while it was sometimes friendly on the surface, imagine the soldiers of a foreign nation standing on your street corners, in your homes, forcing you to adopt their ways at the threat of killing you. This tactic wasn’t all nice—it was more deeply psychologically disturbing.

9 Timing

Cyrus the Great was a military leader and conqueror who would rise to become the leader of the Achaemenian (or Achaemenid) Empire, also known today as the Persian Empire. Initially, Cyrus conquered many local cities in the area of modern-day Iran, and then he set his sights on a bigger prize—the city of Babylon—and he successfully took it by employing psychological warfare. Cyrus showed through psychological warfare that if you show up at just the right time, you can win a war and claim a city with a minimal fight.

Cyrus waited until things were ripe in Babylon, an ancient city with very powerful and respected priests, who the nation’s leader, Nabonidus, had seriously pissed off right before Cyrus showed up.^[3] The Babylonians had come to believe that their leader had disowned their major god, Marduk. The priests of the Babylonian religion saw this as a major transgression, and to top all of this off, Nabonidus had been on a military conquest for 11 years, hoping to control and dominate trade routes in the area. It seems he’d been gone for so long that his own people began to dislike him, though he’d left his son in his place to hold down the fort. Cyrus not only capitalized on this but had instigated it all along, sending representatives into the city to slowly spread propaganda until the people were totally fed up with their king. This process took years.

When the timing was right, Cyrus showed up and won over the already angry, elite class of the priests of Babylon and turned them against their leader. He was also able to make nearby armies who had sworn alliances to Babylon defect and join the fight against Nabonidus. Together, these smaller towns helped Cyrus in his campaign as his Persian army rolled through the ancient city.

8 Political Clout

When it comes to a shining, lovable, political image put forth by a political and/or military leader, very few, if any, people in history come close to the political savvy displayed by Julius Caesar. From the First Triumvirate to the treatment of the Gallic tribes north of Rome at the time, Caesar was a master manipulator in the name of furthering his political and military aspirations.^[4]

The Celtic warriors of Gaul had conquered the city of Rome after laying siege to it in 390 BC. Now, in 58 BC, Caesar wanted payback after centuries of skirmishes between the loose-knit band of ethnically and culturally similar tribes that composed the unofficial nation of Gaul, and he got it by starting with a smile. Initially, Caesar was trying to attack a nearby resource-rich nation and not actually Gaul, though Gaul was always on the back burner. At first, Caesar took it upon himself to go make friends with the Gallic tribes in the area. He became well-liked among the local tribes and was welcome in the area. But little did the Gauls know that Caesar was planning on totally dominating the unofficial nation at a later point.

By 52 BC, the Gauls had grown weary of Caesar, and a lot of the tribes turned against Rome, eventually culminating in an attack by the Belgian Gauls from the north, who would consolidate Gallic military might and lead a charge against the expanding Rome. But Caesar had already been perfecting his strategy for years—his plan was laid out, and his Roman legions crushed the Gauls and pushed them far back into the territories of Northern and Western Europe.

7 Impalement

It’s quite obvious how a mass of impaled human bodies might intimidate and dissuade an invading army, making it reconsider its effort in your territory. Even if it did not, it would serve to strike fear into the hearts of the combatants who sought to conquer your land and take your riches. Thousands of years before Vlad the Impaler came on the scene, there was Assyria. Assyria was unanimously agreed upon as a violent culture, something that’s even mentioned in the Holy Bible.

Ancient depictions show us that the Assyrians not only used to impale people like Vlad did, but they took it a step further by stabbing the stake through the victim’s abdomen.^[5] All this would leave a grisly and horrifying sight for any passersby who might have considered taking on the ancient Assyrians. This no doubt terrified both criminals and foreign armies alike.

6 Gifts Of Flesh

When it comes to psychological warfare in the form of sheer brutality, impalement wasn’t the only thing the ancient Assyrians turned to—they had other methods of scaring the life out of their neighbors. Ashurbanipal was the king of Assyria from 668 to 627 BC, and he was apparently quite gifted intellectually. Ashurbanipal would use his intellect sometimes for torturous ploys which would turn out to be genius military strategies.

See, Ashurbanipal seemed to take tremendous joy in removing the flesh of his victims and rivals, but he did this for a calculated reason—to terrify others. He is quoted as saying, “I will hack up the flesh and then carry it with me, to show off in other countries.”^[6] Can you imagine the looks on the faces of today’s leaders if one nation’s highest chief met with another toting a bag of well-preserved flesh which had been systematically carved off his enemies? Needless to say, the message was loud and clear.

5 Flaying And Staking

Another notable tactic of highly intimidating psychological warfare from ancient Assyria, the real ancient kings of brutality, was called flaying and staking. Flaying and staking is mentioned in the Holy Bible, and other surviving works depict this gruesome process, which was a horrific style of execution in the name of intimidation. It began with flaying the offender, usually a provincial governor of a conquered territory who refused to bow to the mighty Assyrian rule. The Assyrians would skin the person alive but not quite until death, just enough to make them suffer and to gather enough skin to place around the walls of wherever they were in order to scare off any rival armies.

Staking was similar to impalement, but the executioner would slowly shove the stake up through the anus of the condemned, taking great care to only move the vital organs aside so as to not kill the offender.^[7] Then, in traditional impalement-like fashion, they would sometimes hoist the stake up by burying the butt end of it into the ground to put on display before their cities. The reason for the tedious process was to keep the person alive as long as possible, and sometimes, these poor condemned persons would live for several days on end.

4 Crucifixion

Crucifixion could almost be likened to cultures erecting skyscrapers of their enemies, both living and dead, to stand tall and tower, terrifying their enemies and potential adversaries—such a sight of a group of crucified, helpless victims would be enough to make anyone reconsider a challenge to the people doing the crucifying. Crucifixion was actually pretty widespread throughout the ancient world. The Persians, the Carthaginians, and other cultures practiced it as both a military and criminal deterrent.

There were many different methods of crucifixion to terrify an enemy with, and some cultures used various versions of the practice over time. In Rome, for instance, nails weren’t always driven through the intended victim, so as to prolong the suffering in the air rather than risk the offender bleeding to death.^[8] In these cases, the victim would be simply tied to the cross or T-shaped wooden crucifix. Then the bones would be bent and misshaped and often broken to increase suffering, and the victim would be erected into the air for all to see. Many people died slowly as birds ate their flesh over a series of days.

Nails were also employed in various ways. Sometimes, the victim would have their legs bent around the sides of the wooden log, and then the nail would be driven through the side to fasten the legs in a much more uncomfortable position than the one we’re most familiar with. When nails were used on the upper body and driven through the arms, the weight of the body would cause the shoulders and other bones to break or dislocate, further adding to the pain of the condemned. This definitely scared away many of far-off armies who may have sent a traveler abroad and also made occupied cultures think twice about an insurrection.

3 Siege

Siege warfare relied on extremely powerful psychological tactics to force the enemy into submission. Siege warfare still remains a potent tool in the military commander’s toolbox that is often dug out even today. A war of attrition is where the forces of one military attempt to wear down the forces and supplies of another army and has long been a very powerful weapon, trading a quick conquest for the slow and certain collapse of decay. The side with the greatest access to resources over time intentionally prolongs the war to wear down the other side’s supplies.

Laying siege to a city often meant surrounding it in the form of a blockade, to cut off all supplies inbound and outbound, and then simply waiting . . . slowly waiting . . . for the enemy within the city limits to burn through all of their available resources, such as food and fresh water.^[9] As people began to slowly starve and resemble skeletons, they more often than not became much more willing to negotiate a peaceful solution, and if they wanted to fight, their weakened, starved armies didn’t pose a very serious threat. In the most extreme of cases, cities under siege often turned to cannibalism as a last resort if their leaders refused to concede to the army surrounding them. The psychological effects of such tactics are as obvious as they are terrifying.

From beginning to end, the Romans were the masters of siege warfare in ancient times, starting with the Siege of Veii, a city which belonged to their culturally similar yet long-rivaled neighbors to the north, the Etruscans. After being beaten in many fights, the infant Roman nation fortified their army and moved to lay siege to Veii in 405 BC. They successfully implemented a long siege but were pushed back in 402 BC by reinforcements and continued their stronghold nearby. It should be noted here that siege warfare back then took a long time—a very long time. In 396 BC, after years of siege, the Romans devised a plan to take the weakened city and dug under the walls that surrounded it and took it from within. This was the beginning of many Roman sieges laid upon the ancient world, with devastating results for anyone and everyone on the receiving end.

2 The Helepolis

And then there came the Helepolis—the taker of cities. This ancient marvel was a terrifying sight to behold, a massive, mobile tower that could effectively take any city by giving the persons on board a higher vantage point from which to fight downward while they climbed over the walls of the enemies they fought. This mobile skyscraper would be rolled into battle on its eight wheels by hand, pushed slowly and intently toward the enemy.

Imagine that it’s the fourth century BC, and suddenly, approaching upon the horizon, you see the largest chariot you’ve ever seen, the size of a modern-day high-rise building, slowly creeping toward you as you hold out at your fortification. The terrifying sight must have been an absolute nightmare to behold, as those on the receiving end of the slow-moving Helepolis knew their city walls that they’d relied on their entire lives were absolutely useless.

The Greeks made more than one siege tower over the years, but the Helepolis was the grandest of all, with an iron exterior that couldn’t be set on fire like other siege towers, but it ultimately proved a failure in the Siege of Rhodes in 305 BC.^[10] At 40 meters (130 ft) tall and 20 meters (65 ft) wide, the Helepolis was a behemoth, but as it approached Rhodes, the people inside the city had a genius idea. Using the cover of night, they built a large pool of mud and sewage near where they thought the Helepolis was likely to make its assault—and they were exactly right. The massive machine ended up becoming stuck and was eventually abandoned.

1 The Brazen Bull

The brazen bull was a torture device used in ancient Greece. (Note that some historians believe its existence was a tall tale; others say there is sufficient evidence that it was real.) The ancient Greeks didn’t often venture into the outside world to conquer aside from Alexander the Great, a period of unification, as the various city-states were typically fighting among themselves. The brazen bull was developed in the sixth century BC for the ruler Phalaris as a method for executing criminals, all while sending a clear and tyrannical signal to any would-be rivals.

Perillos of Athens was the man who invented it, creating a brass bull that had a striking resemblance to the real thing.^[11] This brass bull was hollow on the inside, with an opening in the side of it that could be shut and locked from the outside. The carved out nostrils and mouth were the only ventilation from the inside of the bull. After someone was convicted and condemned, they would be placed inside the bull, and a fire would be set beneath it. Because metal transmits heat quite well, the brass would heat up and cook the person inside alive. The screams and cries of the condemned surely sent a clear message—don’t mess with Phalaris.

In a stunning betrayal, when Perillos of Athens presented the brazen bull to Phalaris, the king decided that Perillos would be the very first man that the bull would be tested on. Perillos was placed inside the bull but was taken out before he died. This wasn’t a reprieve, though; Phalaris is said to have then thrown Perillos off a hill. In the end, however, the people of Athens, who had long been subjected to Phalaris’s cruelty, became tired of the tyrannical ruler and turned against him, killing him with nothing other than the brazen bull.

I like to write about the dark, the deranged, the twisted, history, true crime, and macabre stuff.

The traditional image of a psychological study involves a bearded fellow observing and waving inkblots at someone lying on a couch or pondering the movement of rats through a maze. Look more deeply, and you can encounter the much more sinister Milgram or Stanford Prison experiments…but psychology can get a lot stranger than that.

Here are 10 psychology studies you might not have heard of…

Related: 10 Reminders Of The Realities Of Mind Control

10 Brain Hacking

Virtually every website and bank tells customers not to write down their passwords, instead recommending you keep them locked in the safety of your head. Unfortunately, this might be less secure than you would think. Using an EEG (electroencephalogram) cap, researchers were able to detect a P300 response—a large spike of brain activity that occurs when we recognize something. It sounds harmless until you consider the fact that you would recognize your phone number, credit card number, address, passwords…all kinds of personal information. By comparing these spikes in brain activity to what you were currently looking at, an unscrupulous individual could extrapolate many of the security details you would want to keep hidden.

To make things worse, other researchers have created a prototype glucose fuel cell that could sit in (and feed off) your cerebrospinal fluid, potentially powering a small computer or sensor. Implanting someone with a P300 sensor and fuel cell could let you steal personal data without the victim ever knowing they were being observed.^[1]

9 Animal Mind Control

Researchers at Harvard have developed a brain-to-brain interface that uses an EEG to read specific brainwaves from a human whenever they look at a pattern. These brainwaves can then be transmitted to a rat using focussed ultrasound. By aiming the ultrasound at a specific part of the rat’s brain, the human can force the rat’s tail to twitch. It is not that impressive as “mind control” goes, but it does demonstrate the potential of the technology. There is even talk of performing the procedure in reverse, though it doesn’t seem appealing to be piloted around by a rat.

A more invasive procedure has been tested on sharks, allowing dogfish, a small shark species, to be piloted by manipulating their sense of smell. Because sharks use scent to find both food and mates, activating the part of the brain responsible for detecting scent can pilot the shark, causing it to seek the source of the smell. Mounting a camera on a remote-controlled shark could potentially let it act as a biological drone, great for naval espionage.^[2]

8 Remote Killing

The advent of drone warfare has raised questions about the ethics of remote control missile strikes—and the effects on the psychology of an operator. Researchers at California State University, Northridge, looked at the willingness of people to (purportedly) kill ladybugs with a remote-controlled machine. Participants were told that the device would help produce dyes or biological samples and were asked to operate it. The machine was a conveyor belt that fed boxes of “ladybugs” into a grinder. In one condition, participants sat in the same room as the machine, while in another, they remotely operated it via a Skype call.

Participants who believed they were operating the machine at a greater distance were willing to “kill” more of the harmless creatures and reported fewer negative emotions—guilt, for example—after the experiment. Just to clarify, the machine didn’t actually kill any insects. But they did gain some insight into a human’s connection with a moral dilemma based on the distance from the subject.^[3]

7 Split Brain

One particularly extreme treatment for epilepsy is to sever the corpus callosum or the bridge between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Psychologist Roger Sperry conducted a series of experiments on eleven individuals that had undergone the procedure.

Human brains are cross-wired, with objects seen in our right field of vision or held in our right hand processed by the left hemisphere of the brain. Sperry set up a tachistoscope (like a wooden frame with a “focal point” suspended in the middle) that his participants would stare at. He would then present unusual objects or symbols to either the left or right visual field. He would then show the object again, either in the same or the other visual field. Participants would only recognize objects if they appeared in their original visual field.

A second experiment obscured vision entirely, relying on the participants’ hands to explore an object. He found that participants could describe objects held in their right hand (and thus processed by their left brain) using speech or writing. The same objects held in the left hand resulted only in guesses or denial that they were holding anything. Perhaps strangest of all, Sperry gave each hand an object to hold before burying them in a pile of other objects. Each hand was able to seek out the object they had held, recognizing it by touch. It was as though two separate people were in the same body.^[4]

6 Animal Narcolepsy

Narcolepsy is a disorder characterized by sleepiness and the sudden onset of muscle atonia—the paralysis of skeletal muscles that occurs during REM sleep—when in an emotional state. In effect, an individual suffering the disorder may slump to the ground and be rendered unable to move, simply from meeting someone they like.

What is less well-known is that the disorder occurs in animals as well—Stanford University even collected a colony of narcoleptic dogs to study, with the poor creatures collapsing as soon as they met each other or were presented with a treat. Despite looking like it was just researchers trying to make funny videos for YouTube, the dog colony did serve a purpose—not only were they useful for modeling the disorder, they could help explain and demonstrate narcolepsy to young sufferers.^[5]

5 False Witness

Psychologists Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer were interested in the reliability of human memory. Their study was based on Bartlett’s schema theory, which claims that a person’s prior knowledge can affect their memory. To support their idea, they showed people films of traffic accidents, then asked them how fast they thought the cars were going. They changed the verb used in the question between each person to see what would happen. For example, they asked, “When the car ‘smashed’…” vs. “When the car ‘contacted’….”

The results showed that estimates of speed were affected by the verb used. More dramatic verbs led to higher estimated speeds. A second experiment involved showing 150 people a short film of another traffic accident, followed by one of the following question conditions: 1. How fast were the cars going when they hit each other? 2. How fast were the cars going when they smashed each other? 3. No question asked.

A week later, the participants were asked a few follow-up questions, including “Did you see any broken glass?” It turned out that participants who were initially asked the “smashed” question were significantly more likely to report the presence of broken glass, despite seeing the same video.^[6]

4 LSD

Psychologists supported by the Beckley Foundation dosed 20 participants with LSD on one day and a placebo—something inactive like plain table salt—on another for a point of comparison. Scans were taken of the brain activity of each participant to see the effects of LSD on the brain.

It turns out that the stereotypical “open your mind” speech may have some basis in reality. The results indicated that LSD seemed to increase the “connectedness” of the brain, with normally separate sections influencing each other. The visual cortex, in particular, seemed to be thrown into overdrive, perhaps explaining some of the hallucinations experienced by LSD users.

Funnily enough, this along with a review of other LSD studies suggests that the drug could have some therapeutic uses in the treatment of some mental illnesses.^[7]

3 Foster Monkey

Psychologist Harry Harlow wanted to investigate the effects of social isolation in monkeys. He offered young rhesus monkeys (separated from their kin at birth) a choice of surrogate mothers—one made of metal mesh attached to a milk bottle and one made of warm, soft terry cloth. He found that the young monkeys spent more time with the cloth mother, despite the lack of milk. In fact, a monkey would only go to the wire mother when hungry.

In further experiments, he found that the infant monkeys would grow up socially stunted if they were stuck with the wire surrogate rather than having something they could cling to for comfort. Needless to say, this (along with his other work) is considered a very ethically suspect study.^[8]

2 Sleep Deprivation

There have been a large number of studies by psychologists looking at sleep deprivation. A review (Link 17) found that sleep deprivation has a severe negative effect on both working memory and attention. It also seems that younger people deal with sleep deprivation less easily.

It is often said that sleep deprivation can kill you, but it turns out that humans have an inbuilt safety measure called a “microsleep.” These consist of a few seconds of sleep (typically, the sleeper doesn’t even notice it occurred) and can help us stave off some of the damage caused by deprivation. Other animals aren’t so lucky—multiple experiments have found that dogs and puppies develop lesions in the brain and die within a matter of weeks of forced wakefulness.^[9]

1 Primate Junkies

This bizarre study in the 2000s involved putting a monkey in a stressful situation and seeing if they would choose food…or cocaine. The subjects were placed in a cage surrounded by the cages of unfamiliar monkeys. This meant they were physically safe but surrounded by aggression as the surrounding monkeys tried to establish dominance.

The monkey would then be allowed to choose between two levers, one of which they knew from experience would dispense food, the other cocaine. Monkeys that were less dominant in their own social group were more likely to choose cocaine than they normally would. Meanwhile, the more dominant animals didn’t seem as stressed and typically chose food.

Other experiments have found that monkeys can get addicted to morphine, caffeine, and more. Perhaps this primate cocaine habit isn’t as strange as it sounds—animals have been known to indulge in substance abuse in the wild. Given a chance, many animals seem to enjoy consuming fermenting fruits.^[10]

Getting what you want does not mean you are Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory. You don’t have to be a spoiled (rotten) kid; you can be a meticulous workhorse asking for a raise. Or a tired spouse looking for a quiet date night. Thankfully there are plenty of ways to make people do what you want; start by trying psychological tricks to get what you want. Here are 10 psychological tricks to make people do what you want.

Related: 10 Psychology Tricks You Can Use To Influence People

10Use Body Language

Your body language can influence how others perceive you; it can even help change the minds of those on the fence about you.

For example, when you look big (lean back in your chair and push one elbow to the back of the chair top), it will make other people see you as powerful, and they will do anything you want. If you attend an important work meeting, talk directly to others and don’t fidget—be confident in your body and how you can make it move. These simple actions will significantly impact your confidence and overall influence on others.

If you are seen as a leader or powerful, others will wish to emulate you; this is known as the chameleon effect. The chameleon effect will make people unconsciously copy postures, facial expressions, and mannerisms, making them more like you; you can make them do what you want.

9Favors Are Your Friend

After performing a favor for someone, they are likely to return the favor. Favors are powerful when seeking to get people to do what you want. Even if you do a small favor, it can return large dividends.

According to sociologist Alvin Gouldner, no society can escape the reciprocity principle. The reciprocity principle emphasizes the need to help those that help you. It makes people on the receiving end feel that they owe you a debt and will have the urge to repay it.

For example, if you help someone at your workplace when they are thanking you, ensure you use a phrase like “That’s what partners do for each other.” When you label your favor as an act of partnership, the phrase will make your colleague return the favor.

8Go Big!

When getting people to do what you want, offer an outrageous proposal straight out of the gate. When this offer is struck down, come in with a more reasonable offer. They will more than likely accept this because it appears to be the better deal when, in reality, it is the offer you wanted them to agree to. (Think a car salesperson with a crazy price tag on a car, but you settle on a “better” price with some back and forth.)

For example, when negotiating with your teen, say they need to complete five chores before earning their Xbox. Of course, there will be moans and groans, but they may counteroffer with two chores, and you finally offer three. They will agree, and you will still get the work done that you wanted them to do. Score one for parents!

7Maintain Eye Contact

We are often told to maintain eye contact when speaking to others. It is more than just being polite; maintaining eye contact can increase attraction, understanding, and honesty. But make sure you don’t hold someone’s gaze too long, or you may be labeled a creep.

Eye contact can:

• Display honesty
• Create a bond
• Improve understanding
• Build respect
• Increase empathy
• Foster attraction

Eye contact may be difficult for many of us, especially those with social anxiety or other disorders like autism, but even making eye contact for a second or two and then briefly looking away can have the same effect as maintaining consistent—but not creepy—eye contact. This is a skill that you can learn and practice with each interaction you have.

6Scare People into Action

People suffering from anxiety are the best to trick into doing what you want psychologically. The cognitive mentalities of the people suffering from anxiety tend to think about the potential danger they can encounter in case they fail to act.

An example is where salespeople will use the illusions of scarcity to make people buy more of their products. The psychological trick applied here is that people desire to get products when they are scarce. Companies will also make products scarce or sell on discounts to make their customers purchase products before the offer ends.

Other types of scarcity tricks companies use include:

• Seasonal offers; “Outdoor Summer Sale.”
• Shipping, sales price, or purchase countdown; “Free shipping ends in X:XX:XX”
• Low stock notice; “Only 7 in stock.”
• Limited production; “75/1000”
• Leverage real-time activity; “X shoppers have this item in their cart.”

5Like Mother Said, Use Your Words

As a general rule of thumb, it is better to use someone’s name instead of “Hey, you.” This is especially true if you want something from someone. Simply using a person’s name makes the other person listen; they will be drawn into what you have to say. After all, we have been conditioned to respond to our name from birth.

At most places of business, employees wear name tags; it is your job to utilize them. Utilize desk plaques, names on doors, online listings, etc., to make a connection. Even if you don’t have a connection, the person whose name you just used will assume you have one based on the simple fact that you used their name. This is an extremely powerful tool that is most often underutilized.

4Be Excited to Get Others Excited

To get others to do what you want, you need to be excited. Speak highly of the task, pump up the location, or sing the praise of its eventual success. When others see you are excited about something, they will inherently be excited too.

Parents and teachers are the best examples of those who show enthusiasm to achieve enthusiasm:

• No one can pump up a room of drab 7th graders like a goofy teacher talking about the cell’s powerhouse. (It’s the mitochondria, by the way).
• Parents are masterful at getting their kids to brush their teeth to the tune of a made-up song. (My kids like, “Brush, brush, brush your teeth. Brush your stinky teeth,” to the tune of Row, Row, Row Your Boat).

3Time (of Day) Is on Your Side

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Choosing the right time of day to talk to someone is essential to make people do something you want. As a young child, you knew a good time to ask your mom to go to your best friend’s house or when to pick up a broom and sweep the floor. Am I right? Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. The same is true in other situations.

You don’t have to force opportunities; instead, use the ones you have. If you know your coworker is more likely to be relaxed after lunch, schedule a meeting with them following their lunch break. They will be more likely to say yes to a new assignment when their guard is down, and their belly is full.

2Slow It Down

How you say something is more important than what you say. Speak with others, don’t just talk to them or even at them. The cadence, tone, speed, and pitch of how you speak is the most important aspect of persuasion.

For example, in movies and literature, a king is generally depicted as still. Calm. They don’t fidget while members of the court frantically relay issues to the king, fretting about what to do next. The king slowly stands and retains self-control. When they do open their mouth, it is with calculated precision.

People inadvertently listen to these cues and subconsciously react to them. Controlling the level at which you speak controls the conversation. If you speak quickly, it creates urgency, and urgency lowers your status, showing yourself at the mercy of others. But if you speak slowly, methodically, you retain status over the conversation by remaining in control. Calm is king.

1 Don’t Assume They Know What You Want

Each of us goes throughout our day giving and giving, usually in exchange for something in return, whether it’s food, money, or a healthier body. But when you want something from another person, you have to be direct. You have to be explicit. Your wants seem obvious to you, but only because you spend all day in your head. Others don’t; unless some people are mind readers—then kudos to you.

Approach the person you’re trying to get your want out of and make your case. Provide any necessary background details to strengthen why you want what you’re about to ask, and then ask it.

Be specific about what it is you want. Don’t be vague, and don’t drag it on. Keep it short; keep it sweet. For best results, keep each of the tricks listed above in mind as you make your request, like eye contact, time of day, and pace of speech.

Anyone can crack under enough pressure, but these warning signs in movies predict some of cinema history’s most iconic character breakdowns. By following multifaceted characters from the film’s beginning to its ending, we get a glimpse into their thinking patterns and learn how their interactions with themselves, the world, and the people in their lives shape their decision-making and the choices they make in the end. All this reveals to us what can make or break them.

These are 10 warning signs from movies that the main character is headed for a psychological breakdown.

Related:Top 10 Culture-Specific Illnesses And Mental Disorders

10 Apocalypse Now

Warning sign: Willard Destroys the Hotel Room

Apocalypse Now is one of those movies that people tell you to watch if you want to see a serious war movie that doesn’t hold back. Vietnam, 1969. Colonel Kurtz has built a rebel army deep in the jungle, and Captain Willard, a veteran of the Special Forces, has been given top-secret orders to locate and assassinate him. Willard struggles against the lunacy that surrounds him as he dives further and deeper into the forest and succumbs to its hypnotic powers.

Francis Ford Coppola’s groundbreaking film from 1979 opens with Captain Benjamin Willard on the edge of a nervous breakdown. He’s traumatized, and there are a few telltale indicators the viewers can see right away. All we can feel at this moment is surprise, disbelief, and confusion. The movie focuses heavily on issues of mental health, and not only for Willard. Their effects extend to Colonel Walter E. Kurtz as well (Marlon Brando), the man they’re after. Whether or not he and his crew will survive the war’s brutal conditions and complete their mission is a mystery to the audience.

The scene in the hotel room has a few clear intentions; one is to show that the mind is fallible and that everyone has a breaking point by contrasting a mental breakdown with a captain, someone who is responsible for maintaining composure. The other could be to show that the things we see and experience in our daily lives can very likely be the source of our mental instability.^[1]

9 American Beauty

Warning sign: Colonel Fitts’s Repression

A great example of a movie from this time period that skillfully addresses a challenging issue head-on by taking us on a trip through the experience of a midlife crisis is American Beauty. Midlife disillusionment has hit Lester Burnham hard. Both his wife Carolyn and daughter Jane are selfish and apathetic, which he finds all the more irritating. Disillusioned with society, Lester Burnham chooses to withdraw from it entirely and focus only on what brings him joy.

There, he meets Ricky Fitts, the son of a homophobic colonel who can’t stand the thought of his kid not being composed or precisely what he wants in his eyes. Lester chooses to befriend Ricky, and Ricky ultimately starts selling pot to Lester. Colonel Fitts, Ricky’s dad, notices and finds their frequent meetings strange. The colonel’s intolerance for individuals who are different from him is severe, leading to the realization that he has repressed his own desires about being with another man. There are clearly numerous indicators throughout this movie that the colonel is on the verge of a mental breakdown, but it takes a clash to reveal his true character.^[2]

8 Boogie Nights

Warning sign: Bill Shows No Emotion at His Wife Having an Affair

The timeless movie Boogie Nights, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson in 1999, sees the birth of the porn business in California, a moment that attracted individuals from all walks of life. Jack Horner, a porn director, hears about a young guy named Eddie Adams performing in a nightclub and quickly elevates Eddie, now known as Dirk Diggler, and his “gift” to the pinnacle of the pornographic business. The arrival of the 1980s, however, means that Dirk and his fellow pornographers must adjust not just to a new period but also to the legacy of the 1970s.

Assistant director, Bill Thompson, undergoes a psychotic break that is one of the film’s most memorable scenes. At a party where Bill and his wife are guests, he catches her having sex with another man in full view of the partygoers. Given how normally you would anticipate Bill to respond, which is anger, rapid wrath, and violence, his lack of response to his wife’s actions is almost unsettling.

This is surely a red flag, and his answer to the unavoidable question of whether he has any feelings for this is revealed in a scene from the New Year’s Eve party, where he once again walks in on his wife having sex with another man. But this time, during the final countdown, he enters the party, shooting his wife, the guy she’s with, and himself. As an intense psychological breakdown of a character, we find ourselves both disturbed and shocked.^[3]

7 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Warning sign: Billy Bibbit Breaking His Social Barriers

In the 1975 classic One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Randle McMurphy, a person with a checkered past, has once again found himself in legal hot water and is incarcerated. In order to get out of prison labor detail, McMurphy fakes insanity and is sent to a mental institution. Here, McMurphy experiences and watches Nurse Ratched’s cruel abuse of the other inmates in an attempt to raise her own prestige and power, bearing witness to it all.

To rebel, McMurphy and the other inmates establish an alliance. However, when we meet someone like Billy Bibbit, we can see right away that he is very timid and paralyzed by fear, which inhibits him from attempting to put himself out there and experience life. Fear is used throughout the film, most notably when Randle sneaks his female friend Candy into the house at night. As soon as Nurse Ratchet learns that Billy spent the night with Candy, she threatens to inform Billy’s mother.

From there, his anxiety rises as he is thrust back into the isolation and fear that led to his inability to overcome his social difficulties and, ultimately, his confinement in a mental institution. Billy’s reaction of shock and paralyzing fear should set up warning bells. His mother’s fear at learning of his connection with Candy is natural, but the audience can tell straight away that he has no need to be so frightened. The news that he commits suicide as a consequence of his mental breakdown comes as the last, devastating blow.^[4]

6 Black Swan

Warning sign: Nina Sayers’s Attempt to Break Through the Barrier of Perfection

Nina Sayers, a beautiful, delicate, and committed dancer, has worked for years in a prestigious New York City ballet company due to her unbridled desire for excellence. In his bold re-imagining of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s everlasting love classic, Swan Lake, dictatorial artistic director Thomas Leroy hires Nina as the Swan Queen after pushing his former student, Beth MacIntyre, into early retirement.

Brilliantly portrayed by Natalie Portman, her character struggles greatly against the barrier of her obsession with perfection. Through a series of hallucinations and imagined ideas, we see Nina’s mental collapse, which leads to the film’s climax and the eventual psychosocial disintegration of her character.^[5]

5 Foxcatcher

Warning sign: John DuPont’s Loss of Power Over Mark Shultz

Based on a true story, Foxcatcher is a devastating account of the friendship between two world-class wrestlers and a quirky multimillionaire. Wrestling champion brothers Mark and Dave Schultz of the United States join “Team Foxcatcher,” coached by zany entrepreneur John du Pont, to train for the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. John’s disruptive behavior, however, poses a danger of engulfment to the whole group.

This 2014 sports film, expertly portrayed by Steve Carell, tells us what happens when someone has a lot of power and no one to share it with. Brothers and Olympic wrestlers Mark and David Shultz differ in subtle ways. David has a family and a life planned out for him, while Mark, the younger and more impressionable of the two, starts to work closely with John DuPont and is eventually taken under his wing.

Mark, played by Channing Tatum, is a young and husky athlete. On the surface, he is good at what he does but is easily taken advantage of in a variety of ways, such as using cocaine with John in a helicopter and acting almost as a personal servant to him. A big notable red flag is when John finally loses control over Mark, a power he has wielded throughout the movie. In the end, we watch John Dupont’s mental collapse coming on slowly, under the influence of drugs and envy.^[6]

4 A Clockwork Orange

Warning sign: The Big Test

In the 1971 film that most notably struck a cord in the psychological community, young man Alex DeLarge lives in a Britain of the not-too-distant future. His poor luck finally runs out when he is caught and given a life sentence for murder. Alex finds out about a trial program at the prison that seeks to rehabilitate violent inmates. He may be able to return to society sooner than anticipated with a reduced sentence if he is successful in the program.

We witness the terrifying experiment conducted on him by scientists and government officials who desperately want to get their hands on his mind in the hopes of remaking him into a better member of society. We observe the manipulation of his psyche and the effort to alter him for the better when he is forced, in a claustrophobic manner, to see certain frightening moving images in conjunction with the music he used to enjoy.

The official “test” for this is putting him in a room with a cruel man and a naked woman to see whether he acts on vengeance and desire. Alex’s instantaneous nausea at even contemplating any of these acts is a glaring red flag. He is made to feel physically ill because of his animosity, which, together with the manipulation treatment, should alert the audience that something is seriously wrong with this guy’s mental health. The genuine breakdown and psychological phenomena of the horrors of the mind are shown in a combination of Alex’s internal collapse and the world’s rejection of him following his release.^[7]

3 Birdman

Warning sign: Riggan’s Ego Triumphs

The decline of a once-great actor in Birdman: or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) offers some insightful psychological truths. The main character, Riggan Thomson, has a hard time dealing with the egotism that inevitably comes with his success. The massive success of the film in which he starred, Birdman, was released many years ago, and its sequels left him in a pitiful condition at a moment in modern history when he could not bear to face the reality of growing older and changing with the times.

The fact that Riggan’s ego follows him down the mountain despite his best efforts as both a star and director in the play What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is a sobering reminder of the futility of trying to escape one’s past. Like in real life, he’s constantly reminded of his past failures, but he frantically wants to portray himself as someone capable of overcoming.

In Riggan’s fight, he is followed by Birdman, or his ego. The red flag that should jump out to the audience is Riggan’s surrender to his ego at the moment when he’s going about New York, and the Birdman is following him like a shadow. It represents the way our anxious and self-centered ideas permeate our brains. It floats “above them all” and tries to attach itself to Riggan, convincing him that his vanity will triumphantly take over and make all the choices going forward, causing Riggan’s mental health to deteriorate to the point of complete breakdown.^[8]

2 The Aviator

Warning sign: Howard Hughes’s Continual Fight Against OCD

The Aviator chronicles Howard Hughes’s life as a young, successful filmmaker and pilot, along with his lifelong struggle with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. Hughes’s OCD is shown here in some of its more extreme forms. The tragic irony of a film like this is that, in the background, he is plagued by his obsessions, which include cleanliness and solitude, but he has no qualms about flying or spending money on movies in the hopes that they will be successful.

The film gives us heavy warning signs to keep an eye out for, and although Howard’s major collapse at the film’s conclusion is the most evident, his obsessions are more subtly shown throughout the buildup to this point. Unfortunately, he lived in a period when his ailment was grossly misunderstood, which led his contemporaries and rivals in the business world to see his sickness as a sign of weakness and an opening for them to take advantage of him.^[9]

1 Taxi Driver

Warning sign: Travis’s Preference for Isolating Himself

The 1976 best picture winner Taxi Driver is the type of film that may make you scratch your head the first time you see it. Ex-Marine Travis Bickle is a loner and an impotent insomniac who spends his evenings in the 1970s New York City taxi business. His exploits as he drives and interacts with the world not only capture a raw energy he is not suited to but also prove that he is incompatible with any of it.

Through his narrations and bitter pleasure of viewing adult videos on his own terms, he underlines throughout the film how much the city sickens him. When he takes Betsy, a girl he meets, to an adult theater, we, as viewers, realize something is definitely wrong with his thinking, and his psyche is traveling in all kinds of places.

When he’s alone is when we get to glimpse the real Travis Bickle. Whether it’s his mind wandering when he drives or his getting in shape and constructing tools and gadgets to use with his firearms, he’s always thinking about something. It’s fascinating to see where this classic film’s protagonist ends up, but one thing is certain: Travis is comfortable when he’s left to his own introspective thoughts.^[1]

Paranoia is more or less mainstream these days, and not without justification. Thankfully, though, a great many fears remain baseless. Paranoid delusions like “someone has stolen my face,” or “everyone knows what I’m doing” are for the most part demonstrably false. They exist at the margins of clinical psychology, affecting only a small handful of patients, usually in conjunction with some other mental illness or head injury.

But for those suffering them, each of the ten delusions below are in fact absolute realities—in some cases confirmed over decades—and there’s no way to persuade patients otherwise. Many are even aware of how irrational they sound but continue to believe in them anyway. After all, as the old maxim goes, “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.”

Read the full list!