What are thought disorders? Thinking disorder: causes, symptoms, classification

Every person lives according to the individual scenario of reflection of reality. One can see the desert, another one is an island of flowers among the sand, for some the sun shines, but for others it seems not bright enough. The fact that each person sees the same situation differently depends on an important mental process - thinking. We analyze, evaluate, compare, perform mathematical actions thanks to him.

Many specialists are engaged in studying the features of thinking, most often psychologists and psychiatrists. In the plane of psychology, there are many different tests that have validity and reliability. Diagnosis of thinking is carried out to determine violations, as well as to find methods for developing thinking. On the basis of psychiatric knowledge, it is possible to determine the pathological processes of thinking. After this, medical help is provided to people who experience the pathological work of this mental process. What can be disturbances in thinking?

What is the norm of the mental process reflecting reality?

To date, many experts argue how to correctly define a complex mental process - thinking. But till now there has not been found a full and meaningful thesis that would cover all the work that it conducts in our minds. This mental process is part of the intellect along with others (memory, imagination, attention and perception). Thinking transforms all received information from the outside, translating it into the plane of subjective perception of the surrounding human environment. To express a subjective model of reality a person can, with the help of language, speech, distinguish it from other living beings. It is through speech that a person is called the supreme intelligent individual.

Perceiving various situations, with the help of speech, a person expresses his conclusions, shows the logic of his judgments. The processes of thinking in the norm should correspond to several criteria.

• A person must adequately perceive and process all the information that comes to him from outside.
• The evaluation of a person must be within the framework of empirical grounds accepted in society.
• There is a formal logic that more closely reflects the norms and laws of the whole society. Conclusions about a situation should be based on this logic.
• The processes of thinking must proceed in accordance with the laws of systemic regulation.
• Thinking should not be primitive, it is complex, and therefore normally reflects most of the concepts of the generally accepted structure of the world.

These criteria do not fit all people under the general rules of existence. Nobody canceled the individuality of man. It's about the majority as the norm. An elementary example: many believe that eating after 21.00 is harmful, so everyone who dines later does not enter into the normal framework. But on the whole, deviation does not count. So with thinking. Some incompatibilities with the generally accepted structure of the world by formal logic can be, unless it is a gross violation of thinking.

Methods of diagnosis

In order to determine the logic, flexibility, depth, critical thinking, and how developed its species, there are many ways to study this mental process. Physicians are more practiced at the organic level, diagnosis of violations of thinking is done with the help of conventional medical equipment. They look through the apparatuses, look for pathological foci, conduct an MRI, an encephalogram and so on. Psychologists use test materials in their work. Diagnosis of thinking in psychology can also be carried out with the help of a planned observation and a natural or laboratory experiment. The most common tests for determining the features of mental activity: the technique of "Excluding concepts," the Bennett test, the study of rigidity of thinking and so on. To determine the disturbance of thinking in children, you can use "Divide into groups", "Circle outline", "Find differences", "Labyrinth" and others.

Causes of violations

The reasons for the violations of a complex mental process that reflects reality in our minds can be many. Even now, experts have not come to a consensus on some pathological violations in human thinking. They arise because of organic damage, psychosis, neuroses, depressions. Let's consider the reasons of the basic deviations.

1. Cognitive disorders. They make poor quality of mental operations. These disorders can occur at different levels of the organization of the human body. At the cellular level, they prevent the patient from adequately perceiving the surrounding reality, followed by incorrect decisions about what is happening. These are pathologies such as Alzheimer's disease (dementia due to organic lesions of the cerebral vessels), schizophrenia. When the temporal lobes of the brain are affected, there is a violation of memory and thinking, which prevents the person from doing the usual activities, organizing and classifying objects. With poor eyesight, a person gets distorted information, so his judgments and conclusions may be inadequate to the realities of life.
2. Pathologies of forms of thinking originate from psychoses. Thus the person is not capable to order the information on the basis of the standard logic of things, therefore does unrealistic conclusions. There is a disconnectedness of thoughts, the absence of any connections between them, as well as the perception of information by external criteria, there is no associative connection between situations or objects.
3. Disorders of the content of thoughts. Due to the weakness of the perception system (in particular, the transformation of external stimuli), there is a "skewed" accent from real events to events that the subject has identified as having great value for him.
4. Insufficient system regulation. The thinking of a person is arranged in such a way that, in a problem situation, he looks for ways to exit on the basis of previous experience and the processing of information in a given period of time. Normally, system regulation helps a person to abstract from the surrounding discomfort, look at the problem from the outside, ask himself questions and look for constructive answers simultaneously, create a general plan of action. With a lack of this regulation, a person can not quickly and effectively find a way out of the current situation. Such disorders of thinking can be due to emotional overloads, injuries, brain tumors, toxic lesions, inflammations in the forehead.

Types of pathological thinking

Pathologies of mental activity are quite numerous, since this process is multifaceted. There is a classification of violations, which combines all the properties and varieties of the mental process that reflects reality. Types of violation of thinking are as follows:

1. Pathology of the dynamics of thinking.
2. Violations of the motivational part of the thought process.
3. Operational violations.

The pathology of the operating side of the mental process

These violations affect the process of generalization of concepts. Because of this, the logical connections between them in the judgments of a person suffer, direct judgments, ideas about objects and various situations come to the fore. Patients can not choose from the many characteristics and properties of the object most suitable for the most accurate of its characteristics. More often, such pathological processes have people who are ill with oligophrenia, epilepsy, and encephalitis.

Violations of this species can be characterized by a distortion of the generalization process. In this case, the sick person does not take into account the properties of the object, which are interrelated essentially. Only random characteristics are chosen, between objects and phenomena there is no connection based on the generally accepted cultural level. There is a violation of thinking in schizophrenia and psychopathy.

Violations affecting the dynamics of thinking

The heterogeneity of the pace of mental activity, consistency and spontaneity characterize the dynamics of a process that subjectively reflects reality. There are several signs of a violation of the dynamic side of thinking.

• Slipping. With normal and consistent reasoning about something, without losing generalization, patients start talking about absolutely other things. They can slip on another topic without completing the previous one, thinking through inadequate associations or rhymes. At the same time perceiving such reservations as the norm. Because of this process, the normal and logical course of thought is disrupted.
• Responsiveness. The process by which a patient responds to all external stimuli. He at first can reason critically and adequately, but then perceive all the absolutely irritants as addressed to him, consider the ancillary items as animate, who necessarily need help or his participation. Such people can lose their orientation in space and time.
• Inconsistency. The sick person is characterized by inconsistent judgments. At the same time, all the basic properties of thinking are preserved. A person can inconsistently express logical judgments, analyze and generalize. Such pathology is very often found in people with vascular diseases, brain injuries, MDP, and also this is a violation of thinking in schizophrenia, but they make up about 14% of the total number of diseases.
• Inertness. With the stored functions and properties of the thinking process, the pace of action and judgment is noticeably slow. Switch to another action, goals, act not out of habit for a person is extremely difficult. Often inertia occurs in people with epilepsy, MDS, epileptoid psychopathy, and can also accompany depressive, apathetic, asthenic conditions.
• Acceleration. Too quickly emerging ideas, judgments that even affect the voice (it can be hoarse because of the constant flow of speech). With such pathology, there is increased emotionality: when a person tells something, he is too gesticulating, distracting, picks up and expresses low in quality ideas and associative connections.

What is the disorder of the personality component?

For people who have deviations in the personal component of thinking, the thinking disorders described below are characteristic.

• Variety. Any value, judgment, or conclusion can be "located" in different planes of thinking. With a safe analysis, generalization and comparison in a person, any task can proceed in directions that are not related to each other. For example, knowing that you need to take care of food, a woman can buy the most exquisite dishes for a cat, and not for her children. That is, the task and knowledge are adequate, the attitude towards the goal and the task is pathological.
• Resonance. The thinking of a person with this pathology is aimed at "solving global problems". In another way this violation is called fruitless reasoning. That is, a person can spend his eloquence, instruct, and express himself without hesitation.
• Ornateness. When a person explains something, he spends a lot of words and emotions for this. Thus, in his speech there are superfluous reasoning, which hinders the process of communication.
• Amorphous. In other words, this is a violation of logical thinking. At the same time, people are confused in the concepts and logical connections between them. Strangers can not understand what he is talking about. This also includes a disconnection, in which there is no connection between individual phrases.

Content thinking - what is it?

The content of thinking is its essence, that is, the work of the basic properties: comparison, synthesis, analysis, generalization, concretization, concept, judgment, inference. In addition, the concept of content includes ways to cognize the world - induction and deduction. To the internal structure of this mental process, experts add more types: abstract, visual-efficient and imaginative thinking.

A separate class of violations, in which a person's thinking passes the path of degradation, are the pathologies of his content. At the same time, its properties are preserved in some way, but inadequate judgments, logical connections and aspirations come to the fore in consciousness. Pathologies of this class include disorders of thinking and imagination.

Human obsessions

These violations are otherwise called intrusive ideas. Such thoughts arise spontaneously, constantly occupy the attention of a person. They can contradict his system of values, do not match his life. Because of them, a person is exhausted emotionally, but nothing can be done with them. Obsessions, ideas are perceived by man as their own, but due to the fact that they are mostly aggressive, obscene, meaningless, a person suffers from their attack. They can arise due to psychotraumatic situations or organic damage of the prefrontal cortex, basal ganglion, cingulate gyrus.

Supervalued emotional ideas

These seemingly innocuous judgments, but they were singled out as a separate pathological process - a violation of thinking. Psychology and psychiatry are dealing with this problem side by side, since the most valuable ideas can be corrected by psychological methods in the early stages. A person with such a pathology has preserved properties of thinking, but one or a set of ideas that stimulate action does not give him rest. She occupies a dominant position among all the thoughts in his mind, exhausting the person emotionally and getting stuck in the brain for a long time.

Delusion as a disorder of the thought process

It is a gross violation of the thought process, because a person has inferences and ideas that do not correspond to his values, reality, the generally accepted laws of logic. The patient considers them to be correct, and it is impossible to convince them otherwise.