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In
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 ...
, derailment (also loosening of association, asyndesis, asyndetic thinking, knight's move thinking, or entgleisen) is a
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 ...
characterized by
discourse
Discourse is a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication. Discourse is a major topic in social theory, with work spanning fields such as sociology, anthropology, continental philosophy, and discourse analysis. ...
consisting of a sequence of unrelated or only remotely related
idea
In common usage and in philosophy, ideas are the results of thought. Also in philosophy, ideas can also be mental representational images of some object. Many philosophers have considered ideas to be a fundamental ontological category of being ...
s. The frame of reference often changes from one sentence to the next.
[P.J. McKenna, ''Schizophrenia and related syndromes'', Psychology Press, 1997, , pp. 14-15][A.C.P. Sims, ''Symptoms in the mind: an introduction to descriptive psychopathology'', Edition 3, Elsevier Health Sciences, 2003, , pp. 155-156]
In a mild manifestation, this thought disorder is characterized by slippage of ideas further and further from the point of a discussion. Derailment can often be manifestly caused by intense emotions such as euphoria or hysteria. Some of the synonyms given above (''loosening of association'', ''
asyndetic thinking'') are used by some authors to refer just to a ''loss of goal'': discourse that sets off on a particular idea, wanders off and never returns to it. A related term is
tangentiality—it refers to off-the-point, oblique or irrelevant answers given to questions.
[ In some studies on ]creativity
Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something new and valuable is formed. The created item may be intangible (such as an idea, a scientific theory, a musical composition, or a joke) or a physical object (such as an invention, a printed literary w ...
, ''knight's move thinking''—while describing a similarly loose association of ideas—is not considered a mental disorder
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 ...
or the hallmark of one; it is sometimes used as a synonym for lateral thinking
Lateral thinking is a manner of solving problems using an indirect and creative approach via reasoning that is not immediately obvious. It involves ideas that may not be obtainable using only traditional step-by-step logic. The term was first ...
.[
]
Examples
* "The next day when I'd be going out you know, I took control, like uh, I put bleach on my hair in California."—given by Nancy C. Andreasen
* "I think someone's infiltrated my copies of the cases. We've got to case the joint. I don't believe in joints, but they do hold your body together."—given by Elyn Saks
Elyn R. Saks is associate dean and Orrin B. Evans Professor of Law, Psychology, and Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at the University of Southern California Gould Law School, an expert in mental health law, and a MacArthur Foundation Fel ...
.[Elyn Saks: "A tale of mental illness — from the inside." TEDGlobal 2012. Recorded in June 2012. ]
* "I have choose right over wrong. When there are two options, I have to look to the right. I can choose left or right, but always look right."—patient interview, Mayo Clinic.
History
''Entgleisen'' (derailment
In rail transport, a derailment occurs when a rail vehicle such as a train comes off its rails. Although many derailments are minor, all result in temporary disruption of the proper operation of the railway system and they are a potentially ...
in German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
) was first used with this meaning by Carl Schneider
Carl Schneider (December 19, 1891 in Gembitz, Kreis Mogilno, Province of Posen – December 11, 1946 in Frankfurt), professor at Heidelberg University, (1933–1945) chairman of its department of Psychiatry, director of its clinic, was a senior re ...
in 1930.[ The term ''asyndesis'' was introduced by N. Cameron in 1938, while ''loosening of association'' was introduced by A. Bleuler in 1950.][Tony Thompson, Peter Mathias, Jack Lyttle, ''Lyttle's mental health and disorder'', Edition 3, Elsevier Health Sciences, 2000, , pp. 136, 168-170] The phrase ''knight's move thinking'' was first used in the context of pathological thinking by the psychologist Peter McKellar in 1957, who hypothesized that individuals with 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 ...
fail to suppress divergent associations.[Robert Spillane, John Martin, ''Personality and performance: foundations for managerial psychology'', UNSW Press, 2005 , pp. 239-243] ''Derailment'' was used with this meaning by Kurt Schneider
Kurt Schneider (7 January 1887 – 27 October 1967) was a German psychiatrist known largely for his writing on the diagnosis and understanding of schizophrenia, as well as personality disorders then known as psychopathic personalities.
Bi ...
in 1959.[
]
See also
* Nonsense
Nonsense is a communication, via speech, writing, or any other symbolic system, that lacks any coherent meaning. Sometimes in ordinary usage, nonsense is synonymous with absurdity or the ridiculous
To be ridiculous is to be something which is ...
* Non sequitur (logic) In philosophy, a formal fallacy, deductive fallacy, logical fallacy or non sequitur (; Latin for " tdoes not follow") is a pattern of reasoning rendered invalid by a flaw in its logical structure that can neatly be expressed in a standard logic syst ...
and non sequitur (literary device)
A non sequitur ( , ; " tdoes not follow") is a conversational literary device, often used for comedic purposes. It is something said that, because of its apparent lack of meaning relative to what preceded it, seems absurd to the point of being h ...
* Red herring
A red herring is a figurative expression referring to a logical fallacy in which a clue or piece of information is or is intended to be misleading, or distracting from the actual question.
Red herring may also refer to: Animals
* Red herring (fis ...
* Relevance logic Relevance logic, also called relevant logic, is a kind of non-classical logic requiring the antecedent and consequent of implications to be relevantly related. They may be viewed as a family of substructural or modal logics. It is generally, but ...
* Schizophasia
* SCIgen
SCIgen is a paper generator that uses context-free grammar to randomly generate nonsense in the form of computer science research papers. Its original data source was a collection of computer science papers downloaded from CiteSeer. All elements ...
, a program that generates nonsense research papers
Academic publishing is the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in academic journal articles, books or theses. The part of academic written output that is not formally publ ...
by grammatically combining snippets; many of the sentences generated are individually plausible
* Tip-of-the-tongue
Tip of the tongue (also known as ''lethologica'') is the phenomenon of failing to retrieve a word or term from memory, combined with partial recall and the feeling that retrieval is imminent. The phenomenon's name comes from the saying, "It's on ...
* Train of thought
The train of thought or track of thought refers to the interconnection in the sequence of ideas expressed during a connected discourse or thought, as well as the sequence itself, especially in discussion how this sequence leads from one idea to ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Derailment
Cognition
Medical signs
Thought disorders