Disintegration Of Thought: What It Is, Characteristics And How To Detect It
Thinking is one of the most complex cognitive functions of the human being, being a psychological aptitude that makes it possible to carry out an evaluation of reality and also the formulation of various judgments and evaluations. Likewise, thinking is responsible for organizing information through various processes.
The disintegration of thought is characterized by the existence of a loss of the guiding idea, there being a rupture of the associations of normal ideas, so that strange associations of ideas arise that are detached from the experience of the subject himself, so the listener usually does not understand his speech. Furthermore, it is not influenced by external stimuli.
In this article We will talk about the disintegration of thought and how it affects the lives of people who suffer from this type of thought disorder but first we will comment concisely what thought is for.
As we said before, thinking, broadly speaking, is an important tool for human beings, since it allows us as people to make an evaluation of everything that happens around us, as well as organize all the information that our system processes. of the brain thanks to a series of thought processes of correlation, integration, association, symbolization, correlation, etc. AND It is through our thinking the process of forming judgments, evaluations, criticisms, desires, imaginations and ideas.
Therefore, any type of psychological disorder that affects our thinking can cause serious problems that make it difficult for us to function correctly in our daily lives and could even cause us a lot of discomfort.
Thought disorders are usually divided into two broad categories: disorders related to the content of thought and formal thought disorders the disintegration of thought being classified within the latter, which is the disorder we are going to talk about below.
What is the disintegration of thought?
The disintegration of thought is one of the formal disorders of thought, and is characterized mainly by a loss of the ability to maintain the guiding idea being caused by the existence of a break in the normal associations of thought, so that thoughts flow that do not have a logical connection between them.
That is why the person who suffers from a disintegration of thought usually has a tendency to slide from one topic to a different one, there may or may not be an apparent relationship between the two. Fragments that are not related to each other may also appear in his thoughts, or it may even be the case that a deformation of the language occurred at a syntactic level, so that when the patient speaks, he only uses a mixture of syllables or words.
Likewise, it may happen that the disintegration of thought causes the patient to use a word construction that is acceptable at a grammatical level, but with a notable lack of coherence, so that people who are interacting with that person could have difficulty understanding what they want. say. On the other hand, when a disintegration of thought occurs, Thought is not usually included by external stimuli and also acquires an autonomous nuance, resulting in an incomprehensible and even absurd content.
It should be noted that thought disintegration is a disorder that usually occurs mostly in clinical cases in which patients suffer from schizophrenia (especially residual and hebephrenic schizophrenia), although it is not exclusive to this disorder, since it can be give in other types of cases.
For the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, known for being the one who coined the terms “schizophrenia”, “schizoid” or “autism”, among other contributions, the disintegration of thought is dominated by a type of association, which instead of being governed by an idea that is determinative, rather obeys a series of rules such as mere chance, the similarity of sounds or some type of unusual causality, so that this thought is affected mainly in the way of ordering the thought based on various factors (temporal continuity, logical sequence, etc.).
In short, in the disintegration of thought a loss of the guiding idea occurs because there is a breakdown of the associations of normal thought ideas, so that associations of strange ideas arise that are detached from the subject’s own experience and, therefore, the listener does not understand them; since although the sentences are usually understandable, as a whole they form an incoherent speech. Furthermore, this disintegration of thought is not influenced by external stimuli.
Therefore, the disintegration of thought produces serious difficulties for those who suffer from this formal thought disorder, due mostly to the difficulties they experience when being aware of what is happening around them, as well as being able to communicate effectively. with other people (Ex.: the clock strikes 8, how delicious this food tastes, tomorrow there is a soccer game).
Signs that allow us to detect a disintegration of thought
The disintegration of thought It usually manifests itself fundamentally by the loss or reduction of the common links for the association between each of the ideas that appear in the subject’s thinking, so we would be faced with a type of fragmentary, disjointed and even strange thinking because the associations between successive ideas do not have much logic. Furthermore, in the most serious cases of thought disintegration, a flow of ideas may develop that is totally incomprehensible to the listener, so spoken language will also be incomprehensible.
There are various examples in the language of a person who suffers from a disintegration of thought, such as those we are going to explain below.
1. Cryptolaly
Cryptolalia or “hidden speech” is one of the alterations in spoken language produced by a disintegration of thought and It is characterized by the use of a type of language that is incomprehensible and private for the listener. Although it is a type of language that can be used by some people who do not present any type of mental disorder, it frequently occurs in some cases of thought disintegration, generally being associated with some type of psychotic disorder.
In these cases, “cryptography” can also occur, which consists of a type of hidden writing, being basically the same way of expressing language as in the case of cryptolalia, but in this case instead of being expressed orally it would be through writing.
2. Neologisms
Neologisms consist of the use of condensed or even invented words being understandable only to the patient and which tend to occur quite frequently in people with some type of psychotic disorder, being closely related to the disintegration of thought.
3. Symbolisms
The use of symbolism has also been related to a disintegration of thought and basically consists of the fact that the patient has stopped using words in the sense they commonly have, but has given them a personal meaning, so that It is often difficult for people listening to your speech to understand what you are saying.
Another of the language alterations that has been most related to a disintegration of thought is the phenomenon known as “word salad,” which It is mainly characterized by the use of a mixture of words without any syntactic order, and it is also common for the use of neologisms to be included. Therefore, the patient’s speech is incoherent.
Characteristics of thought disintegration
Below we will explain the main characteristics of thought digression in order to understand in greater depth this phenomenon related to the psychopathology of thought.
1. Thought blocking
The block of thought or omission is one of the main characteristics referring to the disintegration of thought, being characterized by the fact that the ideas that follow the main thought that the subject was having eclipse each other even if there is no interference caused by other secondary thoughts.
You may be interested: “Mental blockage and stress: the fish that bites its tail”
2. Ramblings
Ramblings are other characteristics that have been quite frequently associated with the disintegration of thought, and usually manifests itself in incoherent and meaningless thoughts, words and/or actions an exchange can be observed between thoughts that are related to one’s own inner world or consciousness and those that are referred to the outside, which can trigger delusional thought formations and confusions between concepts.
3. Digression
Finally, we will talk about digression, which is another characteristic phenomenon of the disintegration of thought and It is known to cause the affected subject to deviate from the main theme of his or her story, exposition or speech moving on to another topic that has no direct relationship with the main issue that was being discussed. In other words, there is an invasion by secondary thoughts and ideas that end up replacing the main thread of the topic on which she was mainly talking.
