Disintegration of thought: what it is, how it manifests itself and examples

Thought is considered one of the highest cognitive functions of the mind, that psychic activity that allows the evaluation of reality and the formulation of judgments, with the function of putting the informative data in order, through processes of association, correlation, integration, abstraction and symbolization. Through thought we form ideas, concepts, imaginations, desires, criticisms, judgments, and it is possible distinguish two types of thought disorders: the formal ones and those related to the content of the thought.

The disintegration of thought falls into the first category of formal disorders, represented precisely by alterations in the explanation of thought, and in this article of Psychology-Online we will treat the subject to understand what is the disintegration of thought, how the disintegration manifests itself and examples in this regard.

Index

1. What is thought
2. What is the disintegration of thought
3. Elements of the disintegration of thought
4. How the disintegration of thought manifests itself

Treating thought disorders necessarily involves first trying to define what is meant by "thought." Arduous task, because thought seems to define itself as a omnipresent activity in humans, as if it were a kind of a priori of experience, which orders and makes the experience itself understandable. So much so that it is often said that "you cannot stop thinking", and perhaps this is not really true, however difficult it may seem at first glance to imagine a "no-thought". So we could say that thought is analysis, judgment, relating things, reaching conclusions and solutions, knowing, but also imagining, fantasizing to respond to internal emotional needs and not just to solve problems. In fact, along with logical-rational thinking, we have imaginative-fantastic thinking and intuitive thinking. Know here the Types of thinking according to psychology.

Let's look at the definition of the disintegration of thought. Is about a thought disorder, which consists of the inability to maintain a constant guiding idea, which results in incoherence and unproductive thinking. It is characterized by the loss of control in the way of perceiving impressions, which is why they are placed in the foreground certain details, with the consequent fragmentation of the field of experience due to the elimination of guidelines superiors.

There is, then, a loss of the guiding idea as a consequence of the breakdown of normal associations, thoughts flowing without logical connection. The person slides from one topic to another, and there may or may not be an apparent relationship between them; fragments may appear without apparent relation to each other, or a syntactic deformation that contains just a mixture of words or syllables, or a lack of coherence despite a grammatical construction acceptable.

Thought is not influenced by external stimuli and takes on an autonomous nuance, and the end result is that the content becomes absurd, incomprehensible. It occurs in a special, but not exclusive, way in schizophrenia.

This thought disorder appears in mental illness, as the schizophrenia (especially of hebephrenic and residual schizophrenias) or mania, and in intoxications by cocaine or amphetamines.

In this article, you will find more information about thought disorders, such as the flight of ideas, the tangentiality of thought or the bradypsychia.

They are part of the disintegration of thought:

• The fusion, or inclusion of heterogeneous facts, with the consequent folly of thought
• Digression, in which the invasion of secondary thoughts ends up replacing the main thread.
• Omission, or thought blockage, in which all sequences of the main thought are overshadowed even without the intervention of secondary thoughts.
• The delirium, in which an exchange is observed between thoughts about things and thoughts about things. own inner world (delusional formations with hodgepodge and confusion of concepts).

It manifests itself with the reduction or loss of common associative links between individual ideas. It is a "disjointed", "fragmentary", "strange" thought, in which mental associations succeed one another. In more serious cases, the flow of ideas can become totally incomprehensible, thus manifesting a total disintegration of the course of thought, and therefore of language, in disconnected, fleeting fragments, seemingly approaching each other random. Let's see some examples of thought disintegration:

• Mergers, that is, nonsense concepts resulting from the condensation of two or more different ideas.
• Hyperinclusions, that is, the insertion, in the course of a logical discourse, of an inappropriate or only marginally related concept.
• Neologisms (creation of new words).
• Symbolism, when the person no longer uses the words in common sense, but with a personal sense, sometimes difficult to understand by others.
• Cryptocurrency and cryptography: As a consequence of symbolism and neologisms, language and writing can be incomprehensible, up to the so-called "word salad".

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to Disintegration of thought: what it is, how it manifests itself and examples, we recommend that you enter our category of Clinical psychology.

• Fornaro, G. (2012). I will think and delirium. Recovered from: http://www.psychiatryonline.it/node/1245
• Galimberti, U. (2002). Psychology Dictionary. Cerro Del Agua: Siglo Veintiuno Editores.
• Papagni, S. (2021). Disturbi del Pensiero: eat riconoscerli. Recovered from: https://sergiopapagni.it/blog/disturbi-del-pensiero-come-riconoscerli.html
• Pifarré, J. (2011). Thought and language disorders. Recovered from: https://www.pir.es/impugnaciones2018/pregunta77/cap45%20Trast%20PENSAMIENTO%20y%20LENGUAJE.pdf