Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Describing schizophrenic speech
- 2 Thought disorder as a syndrome in schizophrenia
- 3 The differential diagnosis of thought disorder
- 4 Thought disorder as a form of dysphasia
- 5 Thought disorder and communicative competence
- 6 Thought disorder as a dysexecutive phenomenon
- 7 The dyssemantic hypothesis of thought disorder
- 8 Some conclusions and a few speculations
- References
- Index
8 - Some conclusions and a few speculations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Describing schizophrenic speech
- 2 Thought disorder as a syndrome in schizophrenia
- 3 The differential diagnosis of thought disorder
- 4 Thought disorder as a form of dysphasia
- 5 Thought disorder and communicative competence
- 6 Thought disorder as a dysexecutive phenomenon
- 7 The dyssemantic hypothesis of thought disorder
- 8 Some conclusions and a few speculations
- References
- Index
Summary
The symptoms of schizophrenia are on the whole anything but subtle, but even so thought disorder stands out from amongst them. There is something about it which arouses curiosity and demands explanation. Part of the reason for this immediacy may be, as the psychologist Harvey has pointed out, that it is one of the few signs in psychiatry – an objectively observable abnormality as opposed to a subjective description of some aspect of one's inner mental state. But whatever it is, a great deal of ink has been spilled by psychiatrists trying to describe and psychologists trying to explain just what it is that makes the patient difficult to follow.
Unfortunately the answer to these questions appears to be ‘more than one thing’. The price of describing thought disorder reliably has been the acceptance of a large and unwieldy set of abnormalities, and this book has only narrowly avoided finding support for every theory ever proposed to explain it. In such circumstances integrative models are customarily reached for. For integrative one can usually read complicated, and the term model conjures up something which is not testable and accompanied by flow diagrams. Without resorting to models, and resisting any temptation to inflict flow diagrams on the reader, what follows offers some not very systematic suggestions on how the different elements of thought disorder and their underpinnings might be reduced to something more manageable.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Schizophrenic SpeechMaking Sense of Bathroots and Ponds that Fall in Doorways, pp. 172 - 185Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005