Disintegration of thought: what it is, characteristics and how to detect it

Thought is one of the most complex cognitive functions of the human being, being an aptitude that makes it possible to carry out an evaluation of reality and also the formulation of various judgments and valuations. Likewise, thought is responsible for ordering information through various processes.

The disintegration of thought is characterized by the existence of a loss of the guiding idea, having a rupture of the associations of normal ideas, of so that strange associations of ideas arise that are detached from the subject's own experience, so that the listener does not usually understand their meaning. speech. In addition, 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 briefly comment on what thought is for.

• Related article: "The 8 Higher Psychological Processes"

The functions of thought

As we said before, thought, broadly speaking, is an important tool for human beings, since it allows us to people make an evaluation of everything that happens around us, as well as order all the information they process our 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.

For this reason, any type of psychic disorder that affects our thinking can cause us serious problems that reach to make it difficult for us to have a correct development in our day to day and could even cause us a lot discomfort.

Thought disorders are usually divided into two broad categories: disorders related to the content of thought and formal disorders of thought., being classified within the latter the disintegration of thought, which is the disorder that we are going to talk about next.

• You may be interested: "Metacognition: history, definition of the concept and theories"

What is the disintegration of thought?

The disintegration of thought is one of the formal thought disorders, and is characterized primarily by a loss of the ability to hold 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 with each other.

That is why the person who suffers from a disintegration of thought usually has a tendency to slide from one topic to another, and there may or may not be an apparent relationship between the two. Fragments that have no relation to each other may also appear in his thought or it may even be the case that they are produced a deformation of the language at the syntactic level so that when speaking the patient only produced a mixture of syllables or words.

Likewise, it may happen that the disintegration of thought causes the patient to use a construction of words that is acceptable at the grammatical level, but with a noticeable lack of coherence, so people who are interacting with that person might have a hard time understanding what he means. On the other hand, when there is a disintegration of thought, thought is not usually seen included by external stimuli and also acquires an autonomous nuance, giving as a final result an incomprehensible and even absurd content.

It should be noted that the disintegration of thought is a disorder that usually occurs mainly in clinical cases in which patients suffer from schizophrenia (especially in residual and hebephrenic schizophrenia), although it is not exclusive to this disorder, since it can occur 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, more either it obeys a series of rules such as mere chance, the similarity of sounds or some kind of unusual causality, so that this thought It is mainly affected in the way of ordering thought based on various factors (temporal continuity, logical sequence, etc.).

In short, in the disintegration of thought there is a loss of the leading idea 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. In addition, this disintegration of thought is not influenced by external stimuli.

For this reason, the disintegration of thought produces serious difficulties for those who suffer from this formal thought disorder due to mostly to the difficulties they experience in being aware of what is going on around them, as well as in being able to communicate effectively with other people (e.g.: the clock strikes 8, this food tastes great, there is a soccer game tomorrow) soccer).

• Related article: "What is schizophrenia? Symptoms and treatments"

Signs that allow detecting a disintegration of thought

The disintegration of thought It is usually manifested fundamentally by the loss or reduction of the common links for the association between each of the ideas that appear in the subject's thought, so that we would be facing a fragmentary, unconnected and even strange type of thought because the associations between the successive ideas do not have much logic. In addition, in the most serious cases of disintegration of thought, a flow of ideas that is totally incomprehensible to the listener can develop, so the spoken language will also be.

There are various examples in the language of a person who suffers from a disintegration of thought such as the ones that we are going to explain below.

1. Cryptolalia

Cryptolalia or "hidden speech" is one of the alterations in spoken language produced by a disintegration of thought and is characterized by the use of a type of language that is incomprehensible and private to the listener. Although it is a type of language that can be used by some people who do not have any type of mental disorder, it is frequent that it occurs in some cases of disintegration of thought, being generally associated with some type of disorder psychotic

In these cases, "cryptography" can also occur, which consists of a type of hidden writing, being basically the same way of express the language that in the case of cryptolalia, but in this case instead of being expressed orally it would be through the writing.

• You may be interested: "Cryptolalia: what is it and how is it associated with schizophrenia?"

2. neologisms

Neologisms consist of the use of condensed or even invented words., being understandable only to the patient and that usually 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 ceased to use the words in their common sense, but has given them a personal meaning, in a way what it is often difficult for people listening to your speech to understand what you say.

4. word salad

Another of the language alterations that has been most closely related to a disintegration of thought is the phenomenon known as “word salad”, which is mainly characterized by the use of a mixture of words without a syntactic order, and it is also common to include the use of neologisms. Therefore, the patient's speech is incoherent.

• Related article: "Verborrhea: characteristics and examples of this speech symptom"

Characteristics of the disintegration of thought

Next we will explain the main characteristics of the digression of thought with the In order to understand in greater depth this phenomenon related to the psychopathology of thought.

1. thought block

The block of thought or omission is one of the main characteristics referred to the disintegration of thought, being characterized by the fact that ideas following the subject's main thought overshadow each other, even though there is no interference caused by other secondary thoughts.

• You may be interested: "Mental block and stress: the fish that bites its tail"

2. Ravings

Delusions 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, being able to observe an exchange between the thoughts that are related to the inner world itself or the conscience and those that are referred to the outside, being able to 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 is known to cause the affected subject to deviate from the main theme of their story, exposition or speech moving on to another topic that is not directly related to the main issue you were commenting on. In other words, there is an invasion of secondary thoughts and ideas that ends up replacing the main thread of the topic you were mainly talking about.