Paranoid and nonparanoid schizophrenia: Drive dominated thinking and thought pathology at two phases of disorder
✍ Scribed by Billie S. Lazar; Martin Harrow
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1985
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 466 KB
- Volume
- 41
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0021-9762
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
A sample of acutely hospitalized paranoid and nonparanoid schizophrenics and another sample of paranoid and nonparanoid schizophrenics studied at follow-up were compared on measures of cognitive functioning, disordered thinking, and drive dominated thinking using the WAIS, the Rorschach test, the object sorting test, and an overall index of outcome functioning (N = 67). Results suggested that cognitive regression is related more to acute psychological disturbance than to the presence or absence of paranoia, that the presence of socialized drive dominated thinking during the acute phase is related to better posthospital adjustment at follow-up, and that paranoid schizophrenics show better cognitive functioning after the acute phase. Results did not support the theory that suggests an etiological relation between homosexual conflict and paranoia.
The current research was designed to assess drive dominated and disordered thinking in paranoid and nonparanoid schizophrenics. Paranoid schizophrenics and nonparanoid schizophrenics have been differentiated according to a variety of cognitive processes, including intelligence, cognitive controls, and primary process and drive dominated thinking. Paranoid schizophrenics have been reported to perform better on cognitive and intelligence tasks, to manifest less psychological deficit, and to use more extensive scanning and field articulation strategies than nonparanoid schizophrenics (Broen, 1968; Youkilis & DeWolfe, 1975).
In attempts to validate psychoanalytic theory that ascribes paranoid processes to the projection of denied homosexual conflict (Freud, 191 1/1959), researchers have compared paranoid schizophrenics and nonparanoid schizophrenics using Wheeler's (1949) "signs of homosexuality." While some studies found that paranoid schizophrenics manifest more "homosexual indices" than nonparanoid schizophrenics, others have found no clear-cut relationship between "homosexual signs" and paranoia (Klaf & Davis, 1960; Planansky & Johnson, 1962). This issue has not been studied systematically in the post-hospital phase, when the potentially interfering effects of acute psychopathology and disorganization are no longer in effect.