Dysfunctional thought processing
- Dysfunctional thought processing (DTP) refers to the ways in which a person with schizophrenia understands, perceives and interprets the world (and other people) around them
- A schizophrenic person may be unable to distinguish between the natural ‘inner voice’ that everyone is aware of on a minute-by-minute basis e.g. ‘hearing’ the words you are reading; going over a ‘to-do’ list in your head; daydreaming etc. and what they perceive to be a voice or voices speaking to them, personally and which exists outside of themselves
- Dysfunctional thought processing as suggested by Frith (1992) involves the mechanism of metarepresentation (‘meta’ meaning ‘of itself’)
- Metarepresentation involves:
- The ability to reflect on one’s own thoughts and behaviours and to know what one’s intentions, goals and motivations are
- The ability to interpret the behaviour of others and to understand that another person’s actions/thoughts are particular to that person and not to oneself i.e. I am not that person; I am a separate and distinct individual
- Leading on from the above point, representation is a type of Theory of Mind (TOM) and so to lack metarepresentation means to lack TOM
- Frith (1992) claims that the lack of both TOM and metarepresentation can produce paranoid schizophrenia which involves extreme delusions e.g. The FBI are out to get me, they’re watching me all the time
Exam Tip
It is a good idea to acknowledge that schizophrenia exists on a spectrum and that not all schizophrenics will display hostile or aggressive behaviour - this may be how the media like to portray the illness but it is rare that a schizophrenic person will behave violently.
Even the most talented people may succumb to dysfunctional, paranoid thoughts…