Paralogical thinking: features, varieties and manifestation

A healthy brain, perceiving words and phrases, automatically translates them into a mental image. Inability to sort and correctly interpret the incoming signals leads to distortion of reasoning, loss of logical connections, errors. It's about paralogous thinking.

In psychology, paralogy (Greek paralogos - unreasonable, nasty to reason) include to disorders of thinking, impaired cognitive function. Cognitive activity with a similar pathology is characterized by defective judiciousness, strange to others by the logic of the narrative and an erroneous analysis of the most common facts and events. Violation of laws and rules of logic occurs unconsciously, unintentionally.

Paralogic thinking indicates a mental disorder arising as a result of mental disturbances, because of which the logic of reasoning suffers. It can manifest itself in a systematic delirium or overvalued ideas. This type of thinking is characteristic of people with paranoia and schizophrenia. Patients strive to prove to everyone their exclusivity and rightness.

People with paralogical thinking do not notice their logical mistakes, they don’t perceive alternative opinions of outsiders, ignore the objections of the interlocutors, as they are confident in the reluctance of others to understand the real situation. They proud, self-centered, touchy.

The hallmarks of paralogic thinking are bias and “curvature” of reasoning, since any information that contradicts the target presentation is excluded. Other facts and events are considered one-sidedly.In the event of a conflict with the basic idea, the information is deliberately distorted.

In the course of reflection, attention is drawn to individual events or random aspects of phenomena. For example, the loss of any thing is regarded as a theft. Other causes of extinction are not even considered. Sometimes a separate expression is snatched from the text on which the falsity or veracity of a statement is built. The proof is an isolated phrase taken out of context.

Often a man who thinks paralogically comes to unexpected and strange conclusions.. For example, during a walk a breath of light breeze brings the following reasoning: “A cold wind blows from the North Pole. He wants to destroy the universe, to destroy all life. Our land will soon be empty. ”

In people with mental disorders, all 3 types of paralogisms identified by Aristotle can be observed:

• incorrect reasoning due to the substitution of the thesis taken for proof;
• misconceptions in the search for evidence;
• erroneous judgments underlying evidence.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, a psychiatrist E. A. Shevalyov described varieties of paralogical thought processes.

• TO resonance type he attributed the desire to use stamped expressions, template thoughts, ready-made formulas, stencils, devoid of practical value. In their thoughts, patients try to fit all the phenomena of everyday life into paralogical schemes. The judgments of the resonators are exaggerated and not without pretentiousness.
• Symbolic view characterized by drawing an analogy between abstract concepts and specific substituting images. In psychiatry, a case has been described with toasted bread falling into the hands of a patient and serving as a symbol of fire for him. The following chain was built in the patient's mind: a burnt crust - fire - fire - a suspicion of arson falls on him.
• Autistic type mental activity is manifested in the immersion of a person in the world of his own fantasies. They can be filled with deep philosophical content, various visual images. Often people with this type of thinking are distinguished by external coldness, indifference and detachment from real life.

Dissociation of thinking arises due to the weak connection between individual thoughts. The famous dancer Vaclav Nizhinsky, in his reasoning, pushing himself from the round form of the stage, smoothly moves to his eye. He thinks something like this: “I do not like theaters with a square stage. I prefer a round theater that looks like an eye. I will build a theater with a round stage because I like to look at myself in the mirror. There I see only one single eye in my forehead. "

In patients with schizophrenia, a violation of reasoning may be based on the phonetic similarity of words. Associations that have arisen replace concepts due to the fragmentation of thinking. For example, hearing from a psychiatrist a phrase about an alleged circular psychosis, the patient begins to prove to everyone that they want to kill him with a circular saw. The similarity in the sound of words gives rise to strange arguments, erroneous evidence. Reflections lead to the replacement of a definition that has no connection with the source data.

Each error appears due to reasoning that runs counter to normal logic. Sometimes a person uses phrases and expressions that do not correspond to the meaning and do not have any content. Lack of prudence, the ability to analyze, criticize prevents the normal expression of thought. Logical errors that occur during reasoning are difficult to correct. For example, when asked about what needs to be done by a mushroom picker who has lost his way in the forest, the patient answers: “We must go not to the rear end, but to the front of the forest.”

Paralogical Thinking Process thematic slippage is characteristic. Man suddenly during a conversation changes the subject. Often happens loss of thought. The individual begins to seem that he has run into a word and can not get around it.

During reading, there may also be a halt on any word that seemed to mesmerize the reader. This word is perceived by him in a new way. Patients themselves claim that as a result, they do not absorb it, but the word eats them.

Paralogical thinking often manifests itself in a loss of abstraction ability.. It is checked with the help of proverbs and sayings. We must ask the patient to explain the meaning of a saying. For example, the stable expression “throw pebbles into someone else’s garden”, most patients interpret as follows: “you can break the windows in the house”.

There are meaningless reasonings: “flowers are grown there”, “pebbles can destroy a house”, “neighbors will be on the street in winter”. Some personify this saying: "pebbles can break a wall, and people will see me."

Ambivalence is expressed in the inability to cope with the simultaneous presence of thoughts that are opposite in meaning. An individual suffering from the duality of experience thinks something like this: "They want to kill me, and I love them very much." Patients claim that at this moment it seems to them that their mind consists of many separate pieces. A person can leave the house, go, then suddenly stop, turn left, after a few steps back and go right. An outside observer concludes: the pedestrian's ability to make decisions is impaired.

Thoroughness of thinking is based on detail, viscosity, stuck on individual details. A cough of a casual passer-by is perceived by a patient as a certain signal or a warning message about something. There is delusional detail, in which the selection of parts depends on the content of the delirium. A wife with an obsession about cheating on her husband in the imagination arises the smallest details of the intimate relationship of lovers.

Paralogical thinking can be accompanied by verbal stereotypes and perseverations. Repeated repetition of the same words, phrases is associated with getting stuck on some phenomena.