This disorder was first defined in 1978 by Greek psychiatrist George N. Christodoulou, M.D., Ph.D, FRCPsych. Although the symptoms of subjective doubles have been described before 1978, the disorder was not given a name until Christodoulou called it the "syndrome of subjective doubles" in the "American Journal of Psychiatry". The article describes an 18-year-old female suffering from hebefreno-paranoid schizophrenia who believed that her next door neighbor had transformed her physical self into the patient's double. The syndrome of subjective doubles and its variants were not given the name "delusional misidentification syndromes" until 1981.