Paranoiac-critical method

The Paranoiac-critical method is an surrealist artistic technique, developed by Salvador Dalí in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He described it as a "spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the critical and systematic objectivity of the associations and interpretations of delirious phenomena."

The aspect of paranoia that Dalí was interested and helped inspire the method was the ability of the brain to perceive links between things which rationally are not linked.

André Breton hailed the method, saying that Dalí had given Surrealism an "instrument of primary importance, in particular the paranoiac-critical method, which has immediately shown itself capable of being applied equally to painting, poetry, the cinema, the construction of typical Surrealist objects, fashion, sculpture, the history of art, and even, if necessary, all manner of exegesis."