Disordered thinking
 Logical
sequence
Normal communication and thought require us to place one idea after
another in a logical sequence of related ideas. The schizophrenic
patient has difficulty maintaining this orderly flow of ideas. Thought
and speech are more likely to resemble a tangled mass of marginally
related themes.
Jumping or blocked thoghts
In disordered thinking, the thoughts "jump" between completely
unrelated topics or may be "blocked". The person may talk
nonsense, make up words or replace words with sounds or rhymes.
Fragmented thoghts and speech
The disordered thought in schizophrenia may be closely related to
the impaired attention. Schizophrenic patients seem to be unable
to "filter out" distracting associations in their flow
of ideas. Their thought and speech may therefor become fragmented
by the involuntary intrusion of normally inhibited thoughts.
An example of fractured language
To get an idea of the disordered thinking and fractured language
of schizophrenia, see the following example. It is an answer (by
a schizophrenic patient) to the question "What do you think
of the Watergate affair?"
|
"You know I didn't tune in
on that, I felt so bad about it. I said, boy, I´m not
going to know what´s going on in this. But it seem to
get so murky, and everybody´s reports were so negative.
Huh, I thought, I don´t want any part of this, and I
was I don´t care who was in on it, and all I could figure
out was Artie had something to do with it. Artie was trying
to flush the bathroom toilet of the White House or something.
The tour guests stuck on something. She got blamed because
of the water overflowed, went down the basement, down, to
the kitchen. They had a, they were going to have to repaint
and restore the White House room, the enormous living room.
And then it was at the reunion they were having..." (ref)
|
|
|
