Derailment (thought disorder)
In psychiatry, derailment categorises any speech comprising sequences of unrelated or barely related ideas; the topic often changes from one sentence to another.
Disorder
In a mild manifestation, this thought disorder is characterized by slippage of ideas further and further from the point of a discussion. Derailment can often be manifestly caused by intense emotions such as euphoria or hysteria. Some of the synonyms given above are used by some authors to refer just to a loss of goal: discourse that sets off on a particular idea, wanders off and never returns to it. A related term is tangentiality—it refers to off-the-point, oblique or irrelevant answers given to questions. In some studies on creativity, knight's move thinking—while describing a similarly loose association of ideas—is not considered a mental disorder or the hallmark of one; it is sometimes used as a synonym for lateral thinking.Examples
- "The next day when I'd be going out you know, I took control, like uh, I put bleach on my hair in California."—given by Nancy C. Andreasen
- "I think someone's infiltrated my copies of the cases. We've got to case the joint. I don't believe in joints, but they do hold your body together."—given by Elyn Saks.
History