Cryptolalia: what is it and how is it associated with schizophrenia?

In chronic psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia, sometimes the affected person develops a language based on incomprehensible keys for the rest, among other alterations that reflect the disorganization of the thought. We use the term “cryptolalia” to refer to this “hidden speech”, often associated with cryptography.

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What is cryptolalia?

Cryptolalia is defined as the use of a private and incomprehensible language for the rest of the people in order to prevent them from understanding it. The term is used in a specific way in the field of psychology, although its meaning is broader and we can also apply it in contexts in which there is no type of alteration mental.

From a psychopathological point of view, the phenomenon of cryptolalia is usually associated with psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia, which are characterized by the loss of contact with reality; this is manifested in symptoms and signs such as hallucinations, delusions, affective flattening or disorganization of thought and language.

However, cryptolalia does not have to be a consequence of psychological disorders. Technically the definition of the concept can include any type of alteration of oral language from a certain key, so that it cannot be understood by those who do not know it. Therefore, in some contexts it may have obvious practical uses.

Many children apply alterations to their speech based on very simple cues (such as adding a syllable extra on a regular basis) with the intention of secretly communicating with select groups of companions. On the other hand, activities such as espionage can find strategic uses for cryptolalia; In this sense it is worth mentioning cryptography.

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Relationship to crypto

The term “cryptography” can be translated as “hidden writing”; therefore, it is easy to deduce its relationship with cryptolalia, which means "hidden speech". Thus, we can define cryptography as the use of coding techniques in written language so that only people who know the interpretation keys can read the final material.

As with cryptolalia, cryptography may or may not occur in the context of a psychological disorder. When this is the case, it often appears together with cryptolalia as part of a private language. As we have previously mentioned, psychoses are usually the most determining pathologies in their appearance.

The use of cryptography in different contexts is better known than that of cryptolalia, particularly in armed conflicts. A particularly well-known example is the Enigma machine, which was used by the German military for both encrypting and decrypting messages during World War II.

Cryptolalia as a sign of schizophrenia

Scharfetter (1977) uses the concept of cryptolalia to refer to extreme manifestations of language disorders that characterize psychoses, and in particular to schizophrenia, whose main diagnostic criterion is the chronicity of psychotic symptoms.

According to this author, some people with schizophrenia seek to achieve a private symbolism that only they can understand. This would lead them to create idiosyncratic words and without an agreed meaning with the rest of society; if the level of complexity of the process is high, cryptolalia and cryptography are likely to occur.

However, the conceptualization on which Scharfetter works is difficult to distinguish from the phenomenon of the neologism, another of the typical linguistic signs of schizophrenia. In the following section we will refer to this and other similar alterations, which constitute clear reflections of thought disorganization that occurs in this disorder.

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Language disturbances in psychoses

In addition to neologisms, which in psychopathology are defined as strange words whose meaning is only known to the person using them, many other disturbances of language. It is worth noting the similarity of some of these phenomena with those that characterize Wernicke's aphasia, caused by brain lesions.

These language disorders may consist of a speech impoverishment or in the appearance of productive alterations. In relation to the first group of phenomena we can say that schizophrenia and the rest of psychoses usually behave the poverty of the content and of the form of the spoken language, consequence of the dysfunctions cognitive.

Also typical are the lack of general coherence, the forgetting of the topic or the objective of the discourse (derailment), the frequent interruptions, the tangentiality of the responses to specific questions, increased rate of speech (logorrhea), or selection of words based on their similarity to others rather than on a theme determined.

Other linguistic phenomena that occur in these disorders are perseveration around the same topic, echolalia, which consists of repeating other people's words involuntarily, assonance and alliteration (choice of words according to their sounds) and the use of excessively elaborate language and consequently pedantic and unnatural.