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Nancy C. Andreasen, MD, PhD
The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics Department of Psychiatry 500 Newton Rd Iowa City, IA 52242

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1979;36(12):1383.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

There is perhaps more diversity in the language used to describe "formal thought disorder" than in any other aspect of psychopathology. This diversity is confusing to students and residents, as well as their "superiors," and significantly impairs communication in both clinical work and research. The letter by Michael Taylor and the scale by Endicott and Spitzer¹ to which he refers are fine illustrative examples. Endicott and Spitzer, working from a Kraepelinian and Bleulerian tradition, describe five types of formal thought disorder in the Research Diagnostic Criteria: incoherence, loosening of associations, illogical thinking, poverty of content of speech, and neologisms. Taylor, working from the German Phenomenological tradition, proposes such alternatives as paraphasias, drivelling, nonsequitive speech, verbigeration, and tangential speech. Other investigators, such as Harrow and Prozen or Chapman and Chapman, have emphasized bizarre associations or intermingling² or illusory correlations.³

The diversity is due to many factors. One major . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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