Creativity & Schizophrenia
Antonio Preti
TIME
OUT OF JOINT
The
poor ability of the schizophrenic patient to filter and organize information is
linked to evident abnormalities in thought patterns reflected in both language
and behaviour (Frith, 1992). Language disorders are frequent in schizophrenia:
slowing of speech, and even muteness, can be observed, as well as difficulties
in starting discourse, and poverty of content and vocabulary. These
“negative” manifestations of the disorder associate with other opposite
alterations of language, like logorrhoea (verbosity), tangentiality of responses,
use of unusual associations between concepts, often resulting from consonance,
and the frequent production of new words (neologism). This often results in
alogia and incoherence, which in the more severe forms leads to production of
sequences of words without any apparent order
(so-called “salad of words”) (a comprehensive review of disorders of
language in schizophrenia in Arieti, 1974).
The
difficulty of the schizophrenic patient to evaluate the mental state of his or
her interlocutor often lead them to incongruous affirmations, whether because
the patient neglects to communicate contextual
elements of their discourse, wrongly thought to be shared by their interlocutor,
or because the patient is less inhibited in the expression of his/her inner
state. Sometimes the communication of the patient appears particularly profound
or significant, since the “normal” interlocutor tends to fill the incomplete
communication with his or her own content and meaning. It is not rare that a
schizophrenic patient amazingly guesses particular aspects of the personality of
his or her interlocutor. This ability probably depends on the characteristic
style of thought of the schizophrenic patient, used to reasoning by symbols and
to associating very distant concepts, however weak the link. The
non-schizophrenic individual usually eliminates all non-relevant associations
from reasoning, and so many consonances and links between conceptual elements
are lost or ignored.
The schizophrenic patient, instead, evaluates any link, sometimes choosing improbable ones to express his/her response. Being more in contact with archaic and primitive parts of the Self, these patients often stimulate emotional reactions in their interlocutors usually inhibited or poorly experienced by “normals”. As a consequence disquieting and archaic feelings can emerge during the relantionship with a schizophrenic patient, leading to reciprocal movements of separation from patient and interlocutor (Arieti, 1974; and, for a psychodinamic view of these aspects, Pao, 1979).
The
poor ability of the patients to select appropriate responses also influences
their behaviour, which often appears bizarre and incongruous. The behavior of
the patients often is driven by delusions and hallucinations: the most bizarre
delusions were grouped by Kurt Schneider in his definition of the “first-rank
symptoms”.