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IN April, 1990, I received a call from Dr. William Siegel at the Long Island Psychiatric Hospital. Bill is an old friend of mine, and a distinguished colleague. On this particular occasion the call was a professional one.

Bill was treating a patient who had been at the hospital for several months. The patient, a white male in his early thirties, had been picked up by the New York City; police after being found bending over a mugging victim in the Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan. According to their report his answers to routine questions were "daffy" and, after they booked him, he was taken to Bellevue Hospital for evaluation.

Although he was somewhat emaciated, medical examination revealed no organic abnormality, nor was there evidence of formal thought disorder, aphasia, or auditory hallucination, and he presented a near-normal affect. However, he did harbor a rather bizarre delusion: He believed he came from another planet. After a few days' observation he was transferred to Long Island, where he remained for the next four months.

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