In
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
and
psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders. These include various maladaptations related to mood, behaviour, cognition, and perceptions. See glossary of psychiatry.
Initial psych ...
, clanging or clang association refers to a mode of speech characterized by association of words based upon sound rather than concepts. For example, this may include compulsive
rhyming
A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (usually, the exact same phonemes) in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of perfect rhyming is consciously used for a musical or aesthetic ...
or
alliteration
Alliteration is the conspicuous repetition of initial consonant sounds of nearby words in a phrase, often used as a literary device. A familiar example is "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers". Alliteration is used poetically in various ...
without apparent logical connection between words. This is associated with the irregular thinking apparent in
psychotic
Psychosis is a condition of the mind that results in difficulties determining what is real and what is not real. Symptoms may include delusions and hallucinations, among other features. Additional symptoms are incoherent speech and behavior ...
mental illness
A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitti ...
es (e.g.
mania
Mania, also known as manic syndrome, is a mental and behavioral disorder defined as a state of abnormally elevated arousal, affect, and energy level, or "a state of heightened overall activation with enhanced affective expression together wit ...
and
schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social withdra ...
).
Gustav Aschaffenburg
Gustav Aschaffenburg (May 23, 1866 – September 2, 1944) was a German psychiatrist born in Zweibrücken.
In 1890 he received his medical doctorate from the University of Strasbourg with a thesis on delirium tremens. Later he worked as an ...
found that manic individuals generated these "clang-associations" roughly 10–50 times more than non-manic individuals. Aschaffenburg also found that the frequency of these associations increased for all individuals as they became more fatigued.
Clanging refers specifically to behavior that is situationally inappropriate. While a poet rhyming is not evidence of mental illness, disorganized speech that impedes the patient's ability to communicate is a disorder in itself, often seen in schizophrenia.
See also
*
Thought disorder
A thought disorder (TD) is any disturbance in cognition that adversely affects language and thought content, and thereby communication. A variety of thought disorders were said to be characteristic of people with schizophrenia. A content-thought ...
*
Word salad
References
Medical signs
Thought disorders
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