Associative relaxation

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Associative relaxation is the restriction / disruption of associative thinking and learning , the meaningful, cognitively controlled and socially agreed connection (association) of thought contents. The thought rules, structures and programs acquired in past experiences are not sufficiently available in the current situation. From a gestalt psychological perspective, it is about the dissolution (often collapse) of gestalt. The associative loosening affects thinking, acting and feeling.

Eugen Bleuler coined the term almost a hundred years ago to describe a central phenomenon of schizophrenia . According to Bleuler, associative loosening as a formal thought disorder is one of the basic symptoms of schizophrenia alongside affect disorders , ambivalence and autism .

Occurrence

Associative loosening occurs in a modified form, except in schizophrenia

  • with disturbed impulse control
  • with manias
  • in ADHD
  • for drug use : cannabis , classic hallucinogens ( LSD , psilocybin , DMT , mescaline )
  • In sleep : Sigmund Freud said that during dreaming there is a high degree of interchangeability of affects, since the assignment of affects and dream contents is not very regular and cognitively often incomprehensible.

The impairment of the cognitively regulating and stabilizing control causes an associative loosening of the brain functions, whereby not only already existing affective patterns can be retrieved associatively, but also new patterns can be tried out through the high interchangeability of individual affects. If new affect patterns are tried out successfully, old patterns can be overwritten and new affect patterns can be selected and neural fixed instead.

Phenomena

Associative loosening can lead to the following phenomena:

  • Rapidly changing attention
  • Dissolution of patterns of action
  • Inability to perform work processes appropriately
  • Increase in tonal versus semantic , meaning associations. So z. For example, the word table is more likely to be associated with the word fish (word sound shape) than the word chair (literal sense).
  • Resolution of grammatical structures
  • Erratic thinking
  • Thought disorders , such as tearing off your thoughts or fleeing ideas
  • Insertions in the flow of thought
  • Confusion
  • Inability to follow other people's speeches
  • Talking alongside
  • Neologisms (word formation).

Related to, but not identical to, associative loosening are forms of free association , such as those used in psychoanalysis , in projective test procedures ( Rorschach test , family in animals ), in surrealism ( écriture automatique , frottage ), in brainstorming or in games (folding pictures ) occurrence. The main difference is that with these procedures , systematic thinking is deliberately and only for a limited period of time dispensed with, while the associative relaxation is largely beyond the influence of those affected and often occurs in connection with delusions and delusions. Formal thought disorders such as associative loosening and, as an intensification, thought experience make content-related thought disorders such as delusion and hallucination possible. The loss of structure and control over the thought process also prevents delusional ideas from being checked against reality.

A special form of associative loosening can be seen in the dream of the REM phase, where the temporary associative loosening of the brain functions makes it possible to process everyday life and reorganize affective patterns.

Madness and genius - associative relaxation in the creative process

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

Meaningful communication and meaningful action are culturally shaped. A phenomenon of associative loosening can also be that things do not happen in the places intended for them or that thinking takes unfamiliar paths that nobody or only a few understood and someone does “crazy things”. “The mixed thinking doesn't have to be pointless in every respect. But it can have a meaning within the psychotic experience and can be at least partially understood if one deals in detail with the patient. "

Many inventions and artistic developments have only become possible by abandoning conventional lines of thought, by thinking of the impossible . Artists and scientists sometimes find themselves in the border area between creativity and mental illness. Many artists have been shown to have been mentally ill, and the "mad scientist" memorialized in Mary Shelley 's novel Frankenstein is not just a literary invention. The schizophrenic artist Karl Hans Janke left 2500 drawings behind for posterity, including "inventions" such as the "Trajekt" (an airplane without gasoline or electricity).

Quotes

  • "Loosened associations" exist when the patients are stimulated by individual words and concepts that they hear during a conversation to make spontaneous utterances that were not to be expected based on the previous course of the conversation ... When the meaning of the patient's utterances can no longer be understood because the stringing together of the individual words seems arbitrary or seemingly 'accidental' and no logic can be recognized, then one speaks of 'dissent'.
  • “In disorganization, thinking is incoherent and alogical. In extreme cases, one does not hear anything understandable from the patient, only incoherent words or remnants of words (word salad). The mixed thinking doesn't have to be pointless in every respect. But it can have a meaning within the psychotic experience and be at least partially understood if one deals in depth with the patient ... its bizarre and absurd nature, through contradictions in itself and through connections with the delusional experience. In this way it differs from the absolutely incoherent thinking (incoherence) in organic psychosis (delirium). "
  • "The 'associative relaxation', as Prinzhorn already describes it in the case of the mentally disturbed, should be an elementary remedy for the soul ..."

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ “The associations lose their context. Of the thousand threads that guide our thoughts, the disease irregularly interrupts here and there, now some, now several, now a large part. This makes the thought result unusual and often logically wrong. Furthermore, the associations strike new paths, […]. Two randomly coincident ideas are connected to each other in a thought, the logical form of the link is determined by the circumstances. "
    (Eugen Bleuler: Dementia praecox or group of schizophrenia. Leipzig / Vienna 1911. Reproduction: Tübingen 1988, p 10)
  2. ^ Daniela Renate Heimberg: Collapse of the figure. Münster 2002, ISBN 3-89325-942-2 , p. 11 f.
  3. ^ Franz Resch, Eva Möhler : How does the child's personality develop - contributions to the discussion about heredity and the environment. In: Michael Wink (Ed.): Inheritance and milieu. (= Heidelberg Yearbooks. 2001). Springer, Berlin et al. 2001, ISBN 3-540-42573-X , pp. 95ff.
  4. ↑ H. Geiselhart: Cannabis-related disorders and their treatment.
    http: //www.stuttgart.desdeglobalimagessde_publikationenamt53fachag_cannabisforum_3_harry_geiselhart.pdf
    E. Gouzoulis-Mayfrank: Drug intoxication     and drug-induced psychoses.
    http://www.medizin.uni-koeln.de/dekanat/daten/KF/KF-Vergift_Gouzoulis_DrogenindPsychose.pdf
  5. ↑ Ulrike Himmelsbach: Semantic and phonological activation effects in the left and right brain hemisphere in schizophrenic patients. Dissertation . Heidelberg 1998.
  6. ↑ Eckart Rüther: The soul in the neurobiology of dreaming. 2005.
  7. ↑ Bas Kast : Incredibly gifted. In: Der Tagesspiegel. July 18, 2005.
  8. ^ Josef Bäuml : Psychoses from the schizophrenic circle of forms. Berlin 1994, p. 14ff.
  9. ^ Rainer Tölle: Psychiatry. 11th edition. Berlin 1996, p. 189 f.
  10. ↑ Malte Hozzel: Image and uniformity in Surrealism: Eluard and Breton. Frankfurt 1980, p. 323.