Skip to main content

Thought Insertion and the Adaptive Role of Delusions

Pablo López-Silva
I am a current PhD student at the University of Manchester Philosophy Department (Mind Group). I’m working on different philosophical problems raised by schizophrenia under the supervision of Dr Joel Smith and Prof Tim Bayne.

I became interested in the philosophical discussions surrounding schizophrenia while I was taking my clinical courses for my psychology professional degree in Chile. While attending some patients, I realized that delusions seemed to have a strong adaptive function. Although this is a matter that needs further argumentation, I think that systematic research on the structure of certain delusions can facilitate better understandings of their role (Roberts, 1992) and, quite importantly, to improve therapeutic intervention (Guidano, 1991). An example of this can be offered by looking at the structure of thought insertion, an abnormal conscious experience commonly regarded as suggestive of schizophrenia (Mullins & Spence, 2003). 

Philosophers have become interested in thought insertion for its puzzling character. For instance, this symptom seems to challenge the immunity principle, and the inseparability thesis. In addition, thought insertion is a challenge to common conceptions regarding the relationship between self-awareness and phenomenal consciousness (Billon, 2013). Roughly speaking, patients suffering from thought insertion complain of being aware of thoughts which are not their own intruding into their mind.

The structure of this abnormal experience is quite complex, however the specificity of episodes of thought insertion offers an interesting opportunity to link delusions with their adaptive role in human psychological life. The idea is that patients experience as alien only a certain kind of thought-content, but not all kinds (Gallagher, 2004). The patients’ experiences seem to be quite specific, and most of the time the contents of them are associated with significant others or with certain themes that are affectively important to their biographies. For instance, Saks (2007) describes her own first episode of thought insertion by making reference to contents that seem to be affectively important to her own personal history (self-image, relationship with their parents, etc.). 

The relationship between the specificity of the contents of inserted thoughts with the personal history of the patients seems to suggest that, at least this type of delusion would have something I shall call an 'affective adaptiveness role’ i.e. delusions serve the patient's need to deal with affectively intolerable experiences. It seems plausible to think that some degree of affective significance for the patients may be involved in the genesis of thought insertion and that clinicians and philosophers should explore further this matter in order to improve therapeutic intervention.
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Delusions in the DSM 5

This post is by Lisa Bortolotti. How has the definition of delusions changed in the DSM 5? Here are some first impressions. In the DSM-IV (Glossary) delusions were defined as follows: Delusion. A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person's culture or subculture (e.g., it is not an article of religious faith). When a false belief involves a value judgment, it is regarded as a delusion only when the judgment is so extreme as to defy credibility.
Read more

Motivated Reasoning in Science

Today's post is by Josh May (University of Alabama, Birmingham). In this post, he talks about one of his papers published in Synthese and entitled " Bias in Science ". Josh May Much discussion of the replication crisis in science has focused on the social sciences, particularly psychology. A common narrative is that the social sciences are particularly susceptible to powerful biases, such as moral and political ideology. I argue instead for a parity thesis: all areas of science are subject to bias, through the general psychological mechanism of motivated reasoning . This provides a unified framework for understanding how values influence the entire scientific enterprise. The scientific process involves numerous decisions that can be influenced by one's values--including moral, political, and prudential values--which manifest as goals or motivations. A researcher wants badly, say, to publish in a prestigious journal in order to either advance her career or maintain ...
Read more

Models of Madness

In today's post John Read  (in the picture above) presents the recent book he co-authored with Jacqui Dillon , titled Models of Madness: Psychological, Social and Biological Approaches to Psychosis. My name is John Read. After 20 years working as a Clinical Psychologist and manager of mental health services in the UK and the USA, mostly with people experiencing psychosis, I joined the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in 1994. There I published over 100 papers in research journals, primarily on the relationship between adverse life events (e.g., child abuse/neglect, poverty etc.) and psychosis. I also research the negative effects of bio-genetic causal explanations on prejudice, and the role of the pharmaceutical industry in mental health. In February I moved to Melbourne and I now work at Swinburne University of Technology.  I am on the on the Executive Committee of the International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis and am the Editor...
Read more