Idiom
double bookkeeping
Meaning
The tendency, among those who experience delusions, to perceive reality and the delusions as both being real, while remaining unbothered by the discrepancy or inconsistencies between the two.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“The patient uses double bookkeeping to accept both his real life and his delusions.”
“His double bookkeeping makes him believe he is both a baker and a ghost.”
“The doctor noted the patient's double bookkeeping, as he spoke calmly about his job while simultaneously describing his imaginary life as a king.”
“Even though she knows she is in a hospital, her double bookkeeping allows her to believe the nurses are actually secret agents guarding her palace.”
“In a fascinating display of double bookkeeping, the subject maintained a functional daily routine while remaining entirely convinced of the impossible narrative he had constructed for himself.”
Examples
simple
“The patient uses double bookkeeping to accept both his real life and his delusions.”
“His double bookkeeping makes him believe he is both a baker and a ghost.”
contextual
“The doctor noted the patient's double bookkeeping, as he spoke calmly about his job while simultaneously describing his imaginary life as a king.”
“Even though she knows she is in a hospital, her double bookkeeping allows her to believe the nurses are actually secret agents guarding her palace.”
complex
“In a fascinating display of double bookkeeping, the subject maintained a functional daily routine while remaining entirely convinced of the impossible narrative he had constructed for himself.”
Origin
Derived from a metaphor for literal bookkeeping, the term evokes a mental echo of the double-entry method. It relies further upon the notion of maintaining two sets of books as a means of obscuring the truth, a practice otherwise described as cooking the books.
Key words
Related idioms
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