Disorders of thinking, types and basic characteristics of a thought disorder

Thinking is first and foremost an activity that relies on a system of concepts, has a focus on the solution of some problems, obeys the goals, taking into account the conditions in which this or that task is carried out.

Thinking disorders differ from any other disorders by complexity and tremendous variety. The study of thinking in most cases boils down to an analysis of written and oral speech, since the thinking process is very closely connected with speech. It also assesses the adequacy of performing special tests and the behavior of a person in a given situation.

All disorders of thinking can be divided into three groups:

1. Violations related to the operational side of thinking (generalization process disorders);

2. Violations associated with the dynamics of thinking (disorder of the logical course of thought);

3. Violations from the motivational component (disorder of purposefulness of thinking).

Thinking disorders: operating system violations

The level of the generalization process is distorted or reduced. In the patient's judgments, direct perceptions of phenomena and processes can predominate. The operation with generalizing features can be replaced by the establishment of a purely personal, concrete relation to the subjects. Such a patient, when performing a test task, will not be able to choose from the proposed features those that are most generalizing and significant. The level of generalization is so reduced that, for example, he does not understand what is the difference between a black and a dog, between a plate and a table.

In the case of distortion of the process of generalization, judgments will reflect only the random side of the phenomenon. When the test task is performed, the patient can identify particular properties and characteristics that do not reflect either the semantic relationships between the phenomena, nor the content between them. In most cases, these disorders of thinking are noted in patients with schizophrenia, but sometimes they can occur in other diseases.

Disorders of thinking: disturbances in the dynamics of thinking

People with severe craniocerebral trauma, as well as epileptic patients, often have violations of mental activity that are directly related to the dynamics of mental processes. In psychiatry, these violations are termed "viscosity." The patient can not change the course of his judgments and switch to some other type of activity. In addition, this patient is characterized by the slowness of all intellectual processes.

With manic-depressive psychosis in humans, there is another disturbance in the dynamics of thinking-lability. This type of violation is characterized by the instability of all intellectual processes. The patient can not consistently reason for a long time, despite the fact that he has not lowered the level of generalization. With all this, any association that arises, the view is reflected in his speech. There is a violation of logical reasoning, manifested in the form of some jumps of ideas - a person constantly jumps to another thought.

In schizophrenics, slowing or accelerating thinking is often combined with a sense of imposing thought from the outside or vice versa, by forcible removal of thoughts.

Mental disorders: impairment of the motivational component

These are violations associated with the regulatory function of thinking and criticality, which include:

1. The severity of thinking is a violation of the connections between different judgments, concepts, as a result of which, with a preserved grammatical structure, speech loses its meaning.

2. Rezonerstvo - empty reasoning, not supported by real facts.

3. Pathological detail - a slow transition from one thought to another, a jam on unimportant details and a complete loss of the ultimate goal of the whole conversation.

With such violations, a person loses objectivity, for which reason his own idea of the world appears in the form of supervalued ideas, obsessions and various types of delirium.