In China, there is an ancient fable derived from the idiom of “The Cup and the Shadow of the Snake”. The story is about a man who was drinking at his friend’s house when he found a small colored snake in his glass of wine. The family invited a number of famous doctors to treat him, but his condition became worse and worse. After questioning the man about his illness, a famous doctor felt that there was something strange about the cause of his illness, so he went to the man’s friend’s home to find out what was going on. He sat where the patient was sitting at the time when he was drinking and also set a glass of wine, at which time he likewise saw a small, seemingly colorful snake swimming in the glass. After he looked up, he found a recurve bow with colored paint hanging on the opposite wall. After taking off the recurve bow, the snake in the glass also disappeared, hanging up in the cup of the small snake shadow appeared again. It turned out that the shadow of the snake in the cup was the reflection of the colorful recurve bow. After finding the reason, the doctor took the patient back to his friend’s house, let him sit again in that position, filled a glass of wine, let the patient see and explained to him the relationship between the shadow of the snake in the cup and the recurve. The patient was enlightened and he was cured of his serious illness. There is another version of this story, which says that this is a real event. During the Western Jin Dynasty, Henan Yi Le Guang had a close friend in his office, but for a while, his friend never showed up. Le Guang was worried about him and visited him at home. He was surprised by what he saw, only to see his friend half sitting, half lying on the bed, his face waxy. Le Guang then knew that his friend was seriously ill, and asked him how he got the disease. The friend stammered and refused to say. After repeated questions, the friend said, “That day, when I was drinking wine in your hall, I saw a small snake with green skin and red flowers swimming in the wine glass. I was so disgusted that I wanted to stop drinking, but you repeatedly persuaded me to drink, so out of courtesy, I couldn’t refuse your kindness, so I reluctantly drank the wine. From then on, I always felt a small snake running around in my stomach, and I wanted to vomit and couldn’t eat anything. Now sick for almost half a month.” Le Guang was puzzled, how can there be a small snake in the glass of wine? But his friend clearly saw it, how did this happen? When he returned home, he paced the hall where the two of them were drinking, trying to find out the reason. When he saw a carved bow with red lacquer hanging on the wall, he wondered, “Is there something about this carved bow? So he poured a glass of wine and sat on the seat where his friend was at the last banquet, and saw that the shadow of the carved bow was clearly reflected in the wine glass, and with the shaking of the wine, it really looked like a small snake with green skin and red flowers swimming. In order to relieve his friend’s doubts, Le Guang immediately picked him up in a sedan chair. Inviting him to still sit in the same position as last time, he still poured a cup full of wine for him with the same wine cup as last time and asked, “What do you see in the wine cup again?” The friend looked down and immediately exclaimed, “A snake! A snake! Another small snake with green skin and red flowers!” Le Guang laughed and pointed to the carved bow on the wall and said, “Look up, what is that?” The friend looked at the carved bow and then looked at the snake in the cup and suddenly realized that he felt relaxed and recovered. As a psychiatrist, using my knowledge of psychiatry to analyze the above story, whether it is a fable or a true story from history, I think that the person who mistakenly believed that he had drunk wine with a live snake underwent a series of interrelated pathological changes in his mental state during the course of his illness. First, I think this person lacked a good sense of security, which is in fact a key feature of his poor psychological quality. Generally speaking, if a friend invites a guest, there must be no malice, and it is unlikely that a live snake will be placed in his wine to harm him. If he has a good sense of security and fully trust his friends, he will not form the judgment that there are live snakes in the wine. Even if he found a snake in the glass, he would have invited his friend to verify it, and together they would have solved the mystery of the snake in the wine, and of course the rest of the story would not have happened. Therefore, this psychological background of distrusting others, even friends, was the basis of his later illness. Secondly, this person was overly concerned about his physical discomfort after drinking alcohol because he was worried, which is a vivid portrayal of the old saying “suspicion breeds darkness”. Under the influence of his anxiety, he interpreted any kind of change or unusual experience in his body as the work of a live snake in his body caused by his drinking, which gradually strengthened his anxiety and the intensity of his experience, making his somatic symptoms, mainly digestive symptoms, worsen day by day and his health condition deteriorate. Finally, during the process of mutual reinforcement of anxiety and somatic symptoms, he gradually developed a paranoid delusion that a snake was swimming inside his body, which led to obvious digestive symptoms such as anorexia and vomiting. At this point, it was difficult for anyone to convince him of the impossibility of a live snake being alive inside his body. This is because his beliefs, anxiety and fearfulness and somatic symptoms reinforce each other and will not accept anything contrary to his beliefs and experiences. This is exactly the same process of formation and development of the paranoid or victimized delusions that our contemporary psychiatrists see in their patients, i.e., the constant stereotypical and repetitive focus on and experience of pathological cognitive experiences under the influence of anxiety and fear, culminating in the formation of delusions that only they are convinced of. In fact, how is this not true for the formation of other psychotic symptoms? Many patients have a similar developmental and formative process of insightful thinking and even hallucinations, but the empirical research in this area in modern psychiatry has not yet had the methodological difficulties to break through to reach such scientific conclusions.