Schizophrenic thought disorders: bizarre associations and intermingling.

The authors assessed bizarre verbalizations elicited from 37 schizophrenic and 16 nonschizophrenic patients. Interviews with subjects indicated that much bizarre schizophrenic language results from patients intermingling material from past and current experiences into their verbalizations. This intermingled material comes from many different problem areas rather than one central emotional complex. It does not arise from emotional overresponsiveness, overinvolved thinking, or delusional ideation. Two factors hypothesized as responsible for bizarre schizophrenic language are the schizophrenic's monitoring problems and difficulty maintaining perspective about his own behavior.