Paralogical thinking refers to those cases when it is wrong in its premises, proofs and causal relationships. People with a paralogical type of thought process are distinguished by logic incomprehensible to others, defective reasoning and analysis in relation to the most ordinary phenomena.
Paralogisms
The pathological tendency to paralogisms is false reasoning, logical errors that are made unintentionally, sincerely defended and are a violation of the laws and rules of logic. Do not confuse this concept with sophism, when mistakes are made intentionally, in order to mislead others.
Types of paralogisms
This topic was studied by Aristotle. The philosopher identified three types of paralogisms:
- wrong judgments due to the substitution of the thesis being proved;
- errors in evidence base;
- errors in the process and method of evidence.
Usually all these types can be observed in people with mentaldisorders.
How do paralogisms manifest themselves?
For example, a person who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia will confidently prove that his companion is in love with a prospective rival only because he wears black trousers, and his beloved loves this color. In this situation, the part of the object is identified with the whole. Regarding the process and method of proof, the following example can be given: a person who suffers from paranoid delusions motivated by jealousy will foam at the mouth to prove that his wife is in love with a neighbor who lives one floor below just because, hanging laundry on the balcony after washing, his wife absolutely intentionally dropped, for example, a bra on the balcony of the apartment, which is located on the floor below. For a husband, such an accident is one hundred percent proof, but in fact it is nothing more than a paralogism that is based on an unproven basis. With regard to errors in the basis of evidence, the following example can be given: take a woman suffering from a mental disorder named Rose. She confidently declares that she is none other than the queen, because the rose is the queen of flowers. Of course, such a typology is conditional, and each of them is interconnected and has common points. First of all, every mistake has a kind of reasoning that bypasses normal logic.
Paraphonetic paralogical thinking
Among patients with schizophrenia, it is not uncommon that paralogisms are based on the phonetic similarity of some words. As an exampleyou can bring a person suffering from schizophrenia, who, from his attending physician, heard something about circular psychosis. He will begin to prove that they are going to kill him with a circular saw. Also, paralogisms can be accompanied by fragmentation of thinking - this is the replacement of concepts by the type of associations. They are based on the similarity of some definitions and in most cases are completely meaningless. It turns out that paralogical thinking is characterized by everything, excluding factually correct premises and proofs. Essentially, reasoning and decisions that are fundamental to he althy thinking are being replaced by considerations that have no connection with the underlying data. At first glance, such thinking may even seem creative, non-standard and correct, but at the slightest analysis, many questions immediately arise about logical defects, erroneous evidence, strange argumentation, and so on. Sometimes this behavior is difficult to distinguish from normal, especially in the early stages. Paralogical thinking is characterized by all of the above, except for the normal expression of thoughts. The individual begins to use phrases and expressions that are absolutely inappropriate in meaning, and does not try to correlate the fact that his sayings do not have any content and meaning. There is absolutely no prudence, the ability to analyze, criticism, and so on.
Paralogical thinking is characterized by everything except the following
This type of thinking is inherent in most people with a mental personality disorder, especially inparanoid form. Paralogical thinking is characteristic of persons of a certain constitutional warehouse in a mild form, as well as in schizophrenia and other serious mental disorders. It is not worth saying here that this type of thinking is typical only for psychopaths, such behavior is also observed in the most common neurotic states, when a person tries in any way to circumvent any manifestation of logical thinking in an adequate form. They perceive their invented, unproven judgments as the most significant, relevant information, while they consider logical reasoning to be nonsense.
What are the varieties?
To determine the types of paralogical thinking, you can refer to the works of E. Shevalev, who singled out the following options:
- reasoning-paralogical;
- autistic paralogical;
- symbolic-paralogical.
It is quite difficult to distinguish between these types, especially in serious mental disorders such as schizophrenia. This is because they reflect not only how thought processes proceed, but also general personality traits.
Resonance-paralogical thought processes
This form involves the use of template expressions, ready-made schemes, stamps, which are completely devoid of practical significance. This is expressed in the desire to embrace everything possible and impossible, in an attempt to define the phenomena of everyday life in paralogicalreasoning. The whole point lies in the unjustified complexity of the simplest and most obvious things - this behavior is characteristic of the resonant thought process.
Autistic paralogical and symbolic thinking
If reasoning and autistic thinking have many similar factors, then symbolic thought processes are based on a tendency to draw analogies between abstract concepts and certain images that replace them. An example of paralogical thinking in its symbolic manifestation can be given as follows: a person who suffers from depression was brought a burnt slice of bread, because of this he firmly decided that he was suspected of setting an arson. In his mind, the burnt crust was identified with the fire. It is possible to determine the elements of this type of thinking in the course of an ordinary dialogue, but it is most effective to do this in a pathopsychological analysis. The most banal way is to ask a person to compare the beginning of a proverb with its end and ask them to justify their choice. Paralogical thinking is characterized by the idea of one's own exclusivity. A person suffering from such a disorder is firmly convinced that his personality is at the epicenter of all events, everyone's attention, and his every word has serious weight for everyone, and his opinion is the only correct one.
Examples
Psychologists often give the following example to describe paralogical thinking. Sick for a long timecould not find a job, did it only with the help of his father. The work is prestigious, with a good income, by profession - he is a programmer. He always coped with his tasks with high quality and on time, he was appreciated at work. By the way, everything is going as well as possible, but time passes and our patient notices that colleagues do not miss the opportunity to throw a thing in his direction, suggestively hinting that it is time to find a wife and start a family. These can be words that with such a good salary you can start a family, at 30 the clock is already ticking, and it's time to find yourself a life partner, and so on. Colleagues did not stop at this and tried to "woo" him an unmarried employee from a neighboring department. As a result, the patient realized that his colleagues were trying to marry him forcibly, while at the moment he was not interested in the issue of marriage. What does our patient do? He goes and writes a letter of resignation. The management is shocked, because he does not respond to requests to stay, firmly stands his ground. As a result, for the next three years he again did not work. The father had to fuss again, and the guy again went to work as a programmer with a decent salary. Everything would be fine, but no! Now it seemed very strange to him the behavior of one of his colleagues, who was always late for work or tried to leave it before the scheduled time, did not submit reports on time, was rude and refused to fulfill requests. The patient eventually convinced himself that such behavior of a colleague was not accidental, namely, that it was aimed at forcing our patient to quit his job. He instilled it in himself, only lasted a couple of months.after which he quit with a firm conviction that he simply had no other choice. He was forced! Regular requests to stay, even promises to raise wages, did not convince him. It sounds crazy, doesn't it? But there is an explanation for this behavior of our ward - these are at least two pronounced bouts of illness with paranoid delusions of persecution in the initial stage.
