Pronoia? What’s that?
I heard the term for the first time in a yoga class. It was introduced as an antonym to paranoia. Here is Wikipedia’s definition:
Pronoia is a neologism coined to describe a state of mind that is the opposite of paranoia. Whereas a person suffering from paranoia feels that persons or entities are conspiring against them, a person experiencing pronoia feels that the world around them conspires to do them good.
Pro and Con of Pronoia
This sounds good until it later references a paper by Dr. Fred H. Goldner in which he describes pronoia as a “delusion that others think well of [you] … politeness and the exchange of pleasantries are taken as expressions of deep attachment and the promise of future support.”… Read the rest