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Definition
| Thinking characterized by the ability to grasp the essentials of a whole, to break a whole into its parts, and to discern common properties. To think symbolically. |
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| Weakness and fatigability, characteristic of neurasthenia and depression. |
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| The subjective and immediate experience of emotion attached to ideas or mental representations of objects. Affect has outward manifestations that can be classified as restricted, blunted, flattened, broad, labile, appropriate, or inappropriate. See also mood. |
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| Forceful, goal-directed action that can be verbal or physical; the motor counterpart of the affect of rage, anger, or hostility. Seen in neurological deficit, temporal lobe disorder, impulse-control disorders, mania, and schizophrenia. |
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| Severe anxiety associated with motor restlessness. |
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| Lack of physical movement, as in the extreme immobility of catatonic schizophrenia; can also occur as an extrapyramidal effect of antipsychotic medication. |
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| Inability or difficulty in describing or being aware of one's emotions or moods; elaboration of fantasies associated with depression, substance abuse, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). |
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| Loss of interest in, and withdrawal from, all regular and pleasurable activities. Often associated with depression. |
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| Dulled emotional tone associated with detachment or indifference; observed in certain types of schizophrenia and depression. |
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| Concentration; the aspect of consciousness that relates to the amount of effort exerted in focusing on certain aspects of an experience, activity, or task. Usually impaired in anxiety and depressive disorders. |
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| Abrupt interruption in train of thinking before a thought or idea is finished; after a brief pause, the person indicates no recall of what was being said or was going to be said (also known as thought deprivation or increased thought latency). Common in schizophrenia and severe anxiety. |
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| Disturbance of affect manifested by a severe reduction in the intensity of externalized feeling tone; one of the fundamental symptoms of schizophrenia, as outlined by Eugen Bleuler. |
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| Condition in which persons maintain the body position into which they are placed; observed in severe cases of catatonic schizophrenia. Also called waxy flexibility and cerea flexibilitas. See also command automatism. |
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Definition
| Temporary sudden loss of muscle tone, causing weakness and immobilization; can be precipitated by a variety of emotional states and is often followed by sleep. Commonly seen in narcolepsy. |
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Definition
| Excited, uncontrolled motor activity seen in catatonic schizophrenia. Patients in catatonic state may suddenly erupt into an excited state and may be violent. |
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| Condition of a person who can be molded into a position that is then maintained; when an examiner moves the person's limb, the limb feels as if it were made of wax. Also called catalepsy or waxy flexibility. Seen in schizophrenia. |
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| Disturbance in the associative thought and speech processes in which a patient digresses into unnecessary details and inappropriate thoughts before communicating the central idea. Observed in schizophrenia, obsessional disturbances, and certain cases of dementia. See also tangentiality. |
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Term
| Clouding of Consciousness |
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Definition
| Any disturbance of consciousness in which the person is not fully awake, alert, and oriented. Occurs in delirium, dementia, and cognitive disorder. |
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Definition
| False perception of orders that a person may feel obliged to obey or unable to resist. |
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| Thinking characterized by actual things, events, and immediate experience, rather than by abstractions; seen in young children, in those who have lost or never developed the ability to generalize (as in certain cognitive mental disorders), and in schizophrenic persons. Compare with abstract thinking. |
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Definition
| Disturbances of consciousness manifested by a disordered orientation in relation to time, place, or person. |
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Definition
| Reduction in intensity of feeling tone that is less severe than that of blunted affect. |
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Definition
| False belief, based on incorrect inference about external reality, that is firmly held despite objective and obvious contradictory proof or evidence and despite the fact that other members of the culture do not share the belief. |
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| Gradual or sudden deviation in train of thought without blocking; sometimes used synonymously with loosening of association. |
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Definition
| Mental activity that follows a totally subjective and idiosyncratic system of logic and fails to take the facts of reality or experience into consideration. Characteristic of schizophrenia. See also autistic thinking. |
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Definition
| Confusion; impairment of awareness of time, place, and person (the position of the self in relation to other persons). Characteristic of cognitive disorders. |
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| Inability to focus one's attention; the patient does not respond to the task at hand but attends to irrelevant phenomena in the environment. |
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| Psychopathological repeating of words or phrases of one person by another; tends to be repetitive and persistent. Seen in certain kinds of schizophrenia, particularly the catatonic types. |
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| Denoting aspects of a personality that are viewed as acceptable and consistent with that person's total personality. Personality traits are usually ego-syntonic. Compare with ego-dystontic. |
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| Denoting aspects of a person's personality that are viewed as repugnant, unacceptable, or inconsistent with the rest of the personality. Also called ego-dystonia. Compare with ego-syntonic. |
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Definition
| Complex feeling state with psychic, somatic, and behavioral components; external manifestation of emotion is affect. |
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| Absence or near absence of any signs of affective expression. |
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| Aimless plucking or picking, usually at bedclothes or clothing, commonly seen in dementia and delirium. |
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| Tactile hallucination involving the sensation that tiny insects are crawling over the skin. Seen in cocaine addiction and delirium tremens. |
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| Decreased motor and cognitive activity, as in psychomotor retardation; visible slowing of thought, speech, and movements. Also called hypokinesis. |
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Definition
| Misinterpretation of incidents and events in the outside world as having direct personal reference to oneself; occasionally observed in normal persons, but frequently seen in paranoid patients. If present with sufficient frequency or intensity or if organized and systematized, they constitute delusions of reference. |
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Definition
| Thinking containing erroneous conclusions or internal contradictions; psychopathological only when it is marked and not caused by cultural values or intellectual deficit. |
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Definition
| Perceptual misinterpretation of a real external stimulus. Compare with hallucination. |
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Term
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Definition
| False sensory perception occurring in the absence of any relevant external stimulation of the sensory modality involved. For types of hallucinations, see the specific term. |
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Definition
| Diminished ability to understand the objective reality of a situation. |
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Term
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Definition
| Diminished ability to understand a situation correctly and to act appropriately. |
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| Communication that is disconnected, disorganized, or incomprehensible. See also word salad. |
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Definition
| Ability to resist an impulse, drive, or temptation to perform some action. |
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Definition
| Conscious recognition of one's own condition. In psychiatry, it refers to the conscious awareness and understanding of one's own psychodynamics and symptoms of maladaptive behavior; highly important in effecting changes in the personality and behavior of a person. |
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Term
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Definition
| Contemplating one's own mental processes to achieve insight. |
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Term
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Definition
| Mental act of comparing or evaluating choices within the framework of a given set of values for the purpose of electing a course of action. If the course of action chosen is consonant with reality or with mature adult standards of behavior, judgment is said to be intact or normal; judgment is said to be impaired if the chosen course of action is frankly maladaptive, results from impulsive decisions based on the need for immediate gratification, or is otherwise not consistent with reality as measured by mature adult standards. |
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Term
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Definition
| Process whereby what is experienced or learned is established as a record in the CNS (registration), where it persists with a variable degree of permanence (retention) and can be recollected or retrieved from storage at will (recall). For types of memory, see immediate memory, long-term memory, and short-term memory. |
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Term
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Definition
| Pervasive and sustained feeling tone that is experienced internally and that, in the extreme, can markedly influence virtually all aspects of a person's behavior and perception of the world. Distinguished from affect, the external expression of the internal feeling tone. |
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Term
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Definition
| Organic or functional absence of the faculty of speech. See also stupor. |
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Term
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Definition
| State of awareness of oneself and one's surroundings in terms of time, place, and person. |
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Term
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Definition
| Conscious awareness of elements in the environment by the mental processing of sensory stimuli; sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to the mental process by which all kinds of data, intellectual, emotional, and sensory, are meaningfully organized. See also apperception. |
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Term
| Poverty of Speech Content |
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Definition
| Speech that is adequate in amount, but conveys little information because of vagueness, emptiness, or stereotyped phrases. |
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Term
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Definition
| Increase in the amount of spontaneous speech; rapid, loud, accelerated speech, as occurs in mania, schizophrenia, and cognitive disorders. |
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Term
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Definition
| Mental disorder in which the thoughts, affective response, ability to recognize reality, and ability to communicate and relate to others are sufficiently impaired to interfere grossly with the capacity to deal with reality; the classic characteristics of psychosis are impaired reality testing, hallucinations, delusions, and illusions. |
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Term
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Definition
| Fundamental ego function that consists of tentative actions that test and objectively evaluate the nature and limits of the environment; includes the ability to differentiate between the external world and the internal world and to accurately judge the relation between the self and the environment. |
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Term
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Definition
| Reduction in intensity of feeling tone, which is less severe than in blunted affect, but clearly reduced. See also constricted affect. |
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Definition
| Pathological sleepiness or drowsiness from which one can be aroused to a normal state of consciousness. |
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Definition
| Continuous mechanical repetition of speech or physical activities; observed in catatonic schizophrenia. |
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Term
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Definition
| State of uncritical compliance with influence or of uncritical acceptance of an idea, belief, or attitude; commonly observed among persons with hysterical traits. |
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Definition
| Oblique, digressive, or even irrelevant manner of speech in which the central idea is not communicated. |
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Term
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Definition
| Incoherent, essentially incomprehensible, mixture of words and phrases commonly seen in far-advanced cases of schizophrenia. See also incoherence. |
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