Examined the cultural elements of the delusions of a sample of 110 Egyptian psychiatric patients. After examining clinical records, interviewing psychiatrists, and reviewing literature, the author concluded that the content of the patient's delusion varied directly in relation to social class. For most of the lower class men and women, the delusional symptoms, either megalomaniac or persecutory, were fantasied in terms of the cultural religious institutions. Middle- and upper-class patients, however, much more frequently "secularized" their restitutive narcissistic and self-esteem delusions in terms of science and class conceptions of power. (23 ref)