Hostname: page-component-669899f699-7tmb6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-27T03:25:57.984Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Conceptual Structure in Thought-Disordered Schizophrenics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2018

D. Bannister
D. Bannister*
Affiliation:
Medical Research Council Project, Bexley Hospital, Dartford Heath, Kent
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

“Thought-disorder” in schizophrenia was initially a psychiatric concept derived from clinical observation. As crystallized in standard psychiatric authorities, say Mayer-Gross, Slater and Roth (1954) the primary features of the talk (and inferentially the thinking) of thought-disordered schizophrenic patients are:

  1. (i) Inconsequential following of side issues.

  2. (ii) Tendencies for the thought to be directed by alliterations, analogies, clang associations, associations with accidents of the speaker's environment, symbolic meanings, and the condensation of several (perhaps mutually contradictory) ideas into one.

  3. (iii) Words used out of context, e.g. concrete meanings taken where abstract meanings would be appropriate.

  4. (iv) Clinging to unimportant detail.

  5. (v) The use of laconic answers, e.g. I don't know, maybe, perhaps—indicative of emptiness and vagueness of ideas.

  6. (vi) Thought is generally marked by gaps, poverty, indefiniteness and vagueness.

  7. (vii) Indications of thought-blocking.

  8. (viii) Indications of pressure of thoughts.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Journal of Mental Science , Volume 106 , Issue 445 , October 1960 , pp. 1230 - 1249
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1960 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Babcock, H., Dementia Praecox. A Psychological Study, 1933. New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bannister, D., “An application of Personal Construct Theory (Kelly) to Schizoid Thinking.” Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, 1959. University of London Library.Google Scholar
Bellak, L., and Parcell, B., “The Pre-psychotic Personality in Dementia Praecox”, Psychiatric Quarterly, 1946, 20.Google Scholar
Belson, W. A., Classification of Occupations and General Education (Appendix B), 1955. British Broadcasting Corporation. Audience Research Department Publication.Google Scholar
Bolles, M., and Goldstein, K., “A Study of Impairment of ‘Abstract’ Behaviour in Schizophrenic Patients”, Psychiat. Quart., 1938, 12.Google Scholar
Cameron, N., “Reasoning, Regression and Communication in Schizophrenics”, Psychol. Monographs, 1938, 50, No. 221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, D., “A Study of some Sensory-Motor Functions in Psychiatric Patients”, 1957. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis. University of London.Google Scholar
Curran, D., and Partridge, M., Psychological Medicine, 1955. Edinburgh and London: E. and S. Livingstone Ltd. Google Scholar
Epstein, S., “Over-inclusive Thinking in a Schizophrenic and a Control Group”, J. Consult. Psychol., 1953, 17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, W. A., and Jones, N. F., “Judgment of Some Aspects of Schizophrenic Thinking”, ibid., 1958, 14, No. 3.Google Scholar
Kasanin, J. S. (ed.), Language and Thought in Schizophrenia, 1946. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kelly, G. A., The Psychology of Personal Constructs, 1955. Vols. 1 and 2. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Kretschmer, E., Physique and Character: an Investigation of the Nature of Constitution and the Theory of Temperament, 1936. London.Google Scholar
Landfield, A. W., “Self-predictive Orientation and the Movement Interpretation of Threat”, J. Abn. soc. Psychol., 1955, 51, No. 3.Google Scholar
Levy, L. H., “Personal Constructs and Predictive Behaviour”, ibid., 1956, 53, No. 1.Google Scholar
Lovibond, S. H., “The Object Sorting Test and Conceptual Thinking in Schizophrenia”, Australian J. Psychol., 1954, 6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayer-Gross, W., Slater, E., and Roth, M., Clinical Psychiatry, 1954. London: Cassell ' Co. Ltd. Google Scholar
Moran, L. J., “Vocabulary Knowledge and Usage Among Normal and Schizophrenic Subjects”, Psychol. Monographs, 1953, 63. No. 20 (whole No. 370).Google Scholar
Osgood, C. E., Suci, G. J., and Tannenbaum, P. H., The Measurement of Meaning, 1957. University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Payne, R. W., “An Investigation into the Possibility of Defining ‘Dissociation’ as a Personality Trait by Means of Objective Tests”, 1954. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis. University of London.Google Scholar
Idem , Mattussek, P., and George, E. I., “An Experimental Study of Schizophrenic Thought Disorder”, J. Ment. Sci., 1959, 104, No. 437.Google Scholar
Rapaport, D., Gill, M., and Schafer, R., Diagnostic Psychological Testing, 1945. Vol. I. Chicago: Year Book Publishers.Google Scholar
Shapiro, M. B., and Nelson, E. H., “An Investigation of the Nature of Cognitive Impairment in Co-operative Psychiatric Patients”, Brit. J. Med. Psychol., 1955, 28.Google Scholar
Siegel, S., Nonparametric Statistics for the Behavioural Sciences, 1956. New York, Toronto, London: McGraw-Hill Book Co. Inc. Google Scholar
Vigotsky, L. S., “Thought in Schizophrenia”, Arch. Neurol. Psychiat., 1934, 31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yates, A. J., “The Use of Vocabulary in the Measurement of Intellectual Deterioration—A Review”, J. Ment. Sci., 1956, 102, No. 428.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zaslow, —., “A New Approach to the Problem of Conceptual Thinking in Schizophrenia”, J. Consult. Psychol., 1950, 14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.