The Jason Arday delusion

Why are delusions so contagious? This is a question I have been asking myself since the terrible news of Jason Arday’s death. Some people seem intent on sustaining the fictional worlds he created for himself, even now. Journalist Peter Jukes is still claiming the former professor really did run “all those marathons”; a

In the Henrik Ibsen play The Wild Duck, Dr. Relling dispenses a drug that soothes the most profound self-loathing: livsløgn, a “life-lie,” a form of grandiose self-delusion that lets the pathetic figures who take it believe that they are geniuses and noble romantics. The life-lie, it turns out, is a hell of a drug—perh