Intuitive Thinking

With intuitive thinking, the transition to new knowledge occurs through “insight” (illumination)

The process of thinking is unconscious and merged with the action itself. The objects of thinking are objects -

originals with which a person interacts Intuitive thinking performs the function of receiving

new knowledge

Logical thinking

With logical thinking, there is a smooth logical transition from the given to the new.

The process of thinking is conscious, separated from its product, and methods of action are isolated and turned into operations applicable to many similar objects

The objects of logical thinking are sign systems

Logical thinking performs the function of transmitting (already acquired knowledge) to another. Developed thinking is a complex unity of logical and intuitive components, closely interconnected. In problem solving intuition acts as a component of generating hypotheses and decision strategies in the form of complex search guidelines that combine semantic and logical features in non-standard combinations. These search guidelines allow, during the decision, to simultaneously take into account a number of features, each of which is not enough for a correct decision. Thus, it is achieved intuitive model, which allows you to avoid sequential enumeration of logically possible options.

Autistic thinking. The concept of autistic thinking appeared in psychiatry. E. Bleuler describes autistic thinking as one that “does not pay attention to contradictions with reality.” Autistic thinking is actively aimed at escaping reality in order to obtain affective satisfaction in the inner world. To discover and create something new, a departure from existing stereotypes is necessary. In this case, some elements of autistic thinking, such as dreams, fantasies or mental living of imaginary situations, should be considered necessary and normal “mental gymnastics”.

In modern psychology, the problem of autistic thinking is studied in connection with the study of the influence of the computer on the human psyche. The phenomena of escape from reality into computer games and the formation of “Internet addiction” are described, leading to a person’s autism and narrowing of his sphere of interests. However, modern researchers note that “informatization can lead to both autism and stimulation of creative imagination, development of cognitive abilities and self-actualization” 1 . Mythological thinking. Mythological thinking is similar in most ways to autistic thinking. Mythological

1 General psychology. M.: Gardariki, 2002. pp. 79-95.

thinking is social in nature and is based on the collective ideas of society, not the individual. This type of thinking involves certain actions (mysteries, spells, rituals, etc.) and, like autistic thinking, has a reduced sensitivity to criticism. Autistic and mythological thinking does not meet the requirements of logic and the criteria of scientific knowledge and is based on a departure from existing experience. These types of thinking are not opposed to scientific thinking, but are considered as other, independent forms of knowledge that do not cease to exist with the development of science.

Tertel A.L. = Psychology. Course of lectures: textbook. allowance. 2006. - 248 p.

Yanko Slava (Fort/Da Library) || [email protected]

Bleuler E.
Autistic thinking

One of the most important symptoms of schizophrenia is the predominance of internal life, accompanied by an active withdrawal from the outside world. More severe cases are completely reduced to dreams, in which the whole life of the patients seems to pass; in milder cases we find the same phenomena to a lesser extent. I called this symptom autism. (Bleuler, Dementia praecox oder Gruppe der Schizophrenien. Aschaftenburgs Handbuch der Psychiatrie. Wien, Deuticke, 1911). A fairly large part of autism is covered by Jung's concept of “introversion”; this concept denotes the inward turning of the libido, which in normal cases must seek objects in the real world; however, autistic aspirations can also be directed towards the external world; These are, for example, cases when a schizophrenic reformer wants to rebuild society and generally constantly strives for active participation in the outside world, when a little girl in her fantasy turns a piece of wood into a child, when a person animates objects or creates a god for himself from an abstract idea.

This article was written before the publication of Jung's work "Uber die zwei Arten des Denkens" (Jahrbuch fur psychoanalit. und. psychopathol. Forschungen, III, p. 124, 1911). What I call logical or realistic thinking, Jung calls directed thinking, autistic thinking he calls daydreaming or fantasizing. “The first works to establish contact with the help of verbal elements, it is painstaking and tedious, the second works, on the contrary, without difficulty, so to speak, spontaneously, with the help of memories. The first creates new achievements, adaptations, imitates reality and tries to modify it. The second is the opposite , departs from reality, liberates subjective desires and is completely unproductive in the sense of adaptation to real life." The essence of these thoughts coincides with my understanding. However, there are some differences, of which I will only point out the following: autistic thinking can, in my opinion, also be directed; You can also, without translating concepts into words, think directionally and realistically (logically), just as you can think autistically in words. It should be emphasized that words and their associations often play a very important role in autistic thinking.

The schizophrenic world of waking dreams has its own form of thinking; I would say, my own special laws of thinking, which have not yet been sufficiently studied; upon closer examination, it turns out that the same withdrawal from the environment in general causes the majority of schizophrenic defects in thinking and contributes to the emergence of delusional ideas. We also observe the action of these mechanisms in ordinary dreams that occur during sleep, in daydreams of both hysterical and healthy people, in mythology, in folk superstitions and in other cases where thinking deviates from the real world. From the fantasy of a boy who, sitting astride a stick, pretends to be a general, moving on to a poet who strives in his work of art to respond to unhappy love or turn it into happy love, right up to the hysteric in a twilight state, and to the schizophrenic who performs hallucinatory through one's most unrealizable desires, there is a whole scale of transitions that differ from each other essentially only in quantitative terms.

Paranoid patient B.S. in Jung’s work on dementia praecox Oung- Die Psychologie der Dementia praecox. Halle, 1907, Marholn) is Switzerland, it is also Ivikov's crane; she is the owner of the whole world and a seven-story bank note factory; she is also a double polytechnic and Socrates' deputy. At every opportunity, we tell the patient, the litigant, very definitely that we consider him mentally ill and that we have given our conclusion in this sense; At every opportunity, he declares just as definitely that we gave a conclusion about him as mentally healthy, and told him about this during each visit; in the end we have to leave him alone. The apprentice hairdresser invented the telephone, telegraph, steam engines and many other devices that were functioning long before he was born. The woman feels that she is being visited by her fiancé, Jesus Christ, and at the same time she herself is a merciful God.

All this seems, at first glance, complete nonsense, and indeed it is nonsense from a logical point of view. But if we look more closely, we will find clear connections in each case: thoughts are essentially subordinate to affective needs, that is, desires, and sometimes fears; the patient is a Willow Crane because she wants to free herself from feelings of guilt and depravity; she is Switzerland - because she should be free. The ideas of the litigant, the inventor, the bride of Christ directly express fulfilled desires. So, the delusional ideas of a schizophrenic are not a random accumulation of thoughts, not a disordered “delusional chaos”, as it may seem upon superficial examination, although they are not systematized, like the delusional ideas of a paranoid person, into an integral logical structure, the foundation or cornerstone of which is a false premise or incorrect conclusion; on the contrary, in each individual case they are the expression of one or more specific complexes, which find their fulfillment in them or which try to overcome the contradictions of the surrounding situation with their help. Of course, in the details we find many other illogical connections that are not conditioned or only indirectly caused by complexes: a purely random connection of thoughts, which outwardly takes the form of logical development, association by consonance, identification of various concepts, a conglomeration of symbols, etc.

Let's consider another case. A catatonic person, enjoying the right of free exit from the building of a psychiatric hospital, goes one day to a hotel, takes the best room and goes to bed. He is waiting for the princess who is to marry him, and persistently protests against all objections and against the violence that must be used in order to remove him from the marriage bed to a mental hospital. Our patient thought as real things that a healthy person could wish for only in a fairy-tale situation, which the good fairy promised him to realize, and what is just as important, he completely ignored the fact that he was a homely poor fellow and, moreover, an inmate of a mental hospital, which a princess can just as little as other people get married day after day without observing formalities, that an unsightly hotel is not very suitable for the situation he desires, that he will not be tolerated in the hotel if he cannot produce any evidence to support it statements, etc. The same patient writes down a huge amount of paper with different numbers over the course of a number of years. For every day that we keep him in the hospital, he claims a high reward. Our debt for each day is made up of a large series of sums, each of which is so great that he cannot express it in ordinary numbers. Each of the numbers, which in his opinion is small, occupies an entire line. But each number should not be understood in its usual meaning, it only designates the places of those numbers that will have to be taken into account, therefore, if we translate this into our usual calculus, we will get a huge number that cannot even be read. A one followed by 60 zeros thus symbolizes for him a debt amounting to decillions. With the help of these delusional ideas, the patient fulfills his desires for love, power and incredible wealth and does not take into account all the impossibilities that stand in the way of the fulfillment of his desires, and at least the fact that there are no such incredible riches on the entire globe; it is useless to point out these obstacles to him, although this man was previously quite intelligent and in some respects still remains so.

In the first case with the princess, the patient is still trying to bring his desire into connection with reality; he is preparing for the wedding. In the second case, he is content with accounting without presenting his demands; whether he thinks that in the future he will actually receive his debt or not - he himself does not know. But many patients go even further: desire is an actual reality for them. Here is one such husband of the heavenly queen, the creator of heaven and earth; he does not feel a contradiction with reality; the patient also makes no attempts to influence the outside world in the sense of his idea. Such patients live, not to mention simple functions such as sleep and food, exclusively in the world of their ideas and sometimes feel happy in it.

Thus, autistic thinking is biased. It reflects the fulfillment of desires and aspirations, removes obstacles and turns the impossible into the possible and real. The goal is achieved by paving the way for associations corresponding to the aspiration; associations that contradict the desire are inhibited, that is, thanks to a mechanism that, as we know, depends on the influence of affects. There is no need for a new principle to explain autistic thinking. It goes without saying that affectivity plays an important role here, since tendency, aspiration is only the centrifugal side of the same process, which we designate from the intracentral side as affect.

Therefore, there is no sharp boundary between autistic and ordinary thinking, since autistic, i.e., affective elements very easily penetrate into the latter thinking.

Not only a manic patient is prone to overestimating his personality due to his painfully heightened euphoria, not only a melancholic person expresses delusional ideas of self-deprecation due to his depression, but also a mentally healthy person very often makes the wrong conclusions depending on his mood, his likes and dislikes. Common ideas about psychiatric hospitals are downright autistic due to the fear experienced in front of the mentally ill, the fear of being locked up and similar affects. Even in science they often prove what they readily believe in, and that’s all? anything contrary to this evidence is easily ignored. Everything that is not beneficial for a person is rejected by him, even if the reasons for this do not have the slightest value from an objective point of view. Objections raised with great zeal by intelligent people against the introduction of railways, against the teachings of Fr. hypnosis and suggestion, against abstinence, against the teachings of Freud, constitute very interesting material for the tragicomedy of the spiritual life of mankind. In order to refute the crude sophisms that had been proving the existence of God for centuries, Kant had to appear in the world.

Even if autism can give expression to all tendencies, there is still a big difference between positive and negative aspirations, which is best revealed by the example of affects. True, negative affects also tend to be retained, promote the emergence of ideas corresponding to them and inhibit the emergence of inappropriate ideas; of course, a sad person may become so immersed in his pain that he seeks out more pain; however, in general, our aspirations are still aimed at giving ourselves as much pleasure as possible and getting rid of displeasure, if it exists, as quickly as possible. Under ordinary circumstances, we primarily strive for experiences associated not with displeasure, but with pleasure. A healthy person in a normal state of mind will not easily invent a sad fairy tale in which he would be the hero.

Thus, in itself it turns out that autistic thinking in general is practically a search for ideas colored by pleasure and an avoidance of thoughts associated with pain, and then it becomes clear that Freud could describe a completely similar, but only narrower concept called mechanisms associated with pleasure. I cannot accept the expression “mechanisms associated with pleasure” also because action and thinking in the sense of reality are also mechanisms associated with pleasure. Freud's pleasure mechanisms (like our autistic thinking) differ from the actual function in that they produce pleasure not through emotionally charged experiences, but through ideas about such experiences. Autistic thinking in our sense is governed by two principles, which, with negative affects, contradict each other, but with positive affects, they coincide in their action:

1. Every affect strives to be retained. It paves the way for the ideas corresponding to it, gives them an exaggerated logical value, and it also inhibits the emergence of contradictory ideas and deprives them of their inherent meaning. Thus, a cheerful person assimilates cheerful ideas much more easily than sad ones, and vice versa.

2. We are designed in such a way that we strive to receive and preserve the pleasant, and therefore, ideas tinged with pleasure, while we avoid the unpleasant. Therefore, ideas accompanied by displeasure, like external unpleasant experiences, encounter a protective force that can repress them in statu nascendi or when they have already penetrated into consciousness. Despite the fact that an intense affective tone in itself makes each idea ceteris paribus more capable of recollection and awareness (which is not exactly the same thing), many ideas intensely colored by displeasure are forgotten or suppressed thanks to the action of this second mechanism precisely because that they are colored with displeasure.

Freud took into account only the latter mechanisms. I believe that the concept is only in a broader sense a single genetic whole. Affects in general exert their effect in exactly the same ways as the mechanisms associated with pleasure. Depression creates delusions of self-abasement just as euphoria creates delusions of grandeur. The depressed schizophrenic is no longer a great inventor, he is the culprit of all misfortunes, he is a shark, he destroys all people; he is not surrounded with respect, but is thrown here to other patients to be destroyed. Some physically caused fear leads to frightening hallucinations in a sleepy and feverish state. The delusion of persecution not only creates negative feelings, but it itself, as will be shown later, arises under the influence of such negative feelings that already exist. All of these are processes that can be connected with the principle of pleasure only through roundabout hypothetical paths; on the contrary, they can be easily and directly connected with the action of affects in general. Thus, the antithesis remains incomplete if the reality principle is opposed only to the principle of pleasure and pain, and not to all autistic thinking in our broad understanding.

When autistic thinking tries to evoke ideas that correspond to an internal tendency, a momentary mood or any aspirations, then it does not need to reckon with reality; for these processes it is indifferent whether something really exists, whether it is possible, whether it is conceivable; they are related to reality only insofar as it has provided and continues to provide them with the material of ideas with which autistic mechanisms are associated or with which they operate.

Thus, autistic thinking can give expression to all sorts of tendencies and drives that are hidden in a person. Since logic, which reproduces real relationships, is not a guiding principle for him, the most diverse desires can exist alongside each other, regardless of whether they contradict each other, whether they are rejected by consciousness or not. In realistic thinking, in our lives and in our actions, a large number of drives and desires are ignored, suppressed in favor of what is subjectively important; many of these desires hardly reach our consciousness. In autism, all this can find expression. The most opposite desires can exist side by side with each other and even receive expression in the same autistic thoughts: to be a child again, to innocently enjoy life, and at the same time to be a mature person, whose desires are aimed at greater productivity, at achieving power, to an important position in the world; live indefinitely and at the same time replace this miserable existence with nirvana; to have the woman you love and at the same time maintain freedom of action for yourself; to be heterosexual and at the same time homosexual, etc.

Even the most just person sometimes comes up with unjust aspirations. When a person sees a pile of money, the idea comes into his head - even if it is only in the form of a joke - to appropriate this wealth for himself. Other criminal tendencies, such as, for example, the desire for death of someone who in some respect stands in our way, be it a person we previously loved or a person indifferent to us - such tendencies are not alien, in all likelihood, to anyone, although such impulses are are not directly recognized by us. It even turns out that it is suppressed drives that come to the fore with particular force in autism. Therefore, if we constantly find in autism manifestations of sexuality with its perversions, then there is nothing to be surprised about and this is not a sign of bad morality either for the person being analyzed or for the analyzer. (The "homosexual component" turned out to be quite important in most cases of schizophrenia that I examined in more detail from an analytical point of view). Certain drives, as a rule, stand in the foreground, take precedence over other drives and, as it were, drag them in tow; Especially often, erotic complexes and, secondarily, other complexes, the implementation of which is impossible for external and internal reasons and which could least of all be responded to in real life, gain predominance.

Since in autistic thinking one dominant idea does not suppress, or at least does not completely subjugate other ideas (as is the case in realistic thinking), then different ideas can take part in the production of the same autistic idea much more easily. aspirations. Thus, a certain dream picture, certain delusional ideas represent a mixtum compositum not only due to the multiplicity and heterogeneity of their component parts (“condensation”), but also due to the fact that they simultaneously give expression to various complexes. Overdetermination (as Freud called this last phenomenon) becomes a self-evident phenomenon here. However, it is not something unique to autistic thinking. And realistic thinking is also much more complex than it might seem after studying psychology manuals; thanks to a small number of determinants, an association becomes highly strictly defined if we artificially limit the possibilities of its occurrence, just as happens when solving a mathematical problem. But, as you know, in this case too we go off the rails much more often than we would like.

The second consequence of ignoring reality is that logical laws are valid for the material of thoughts only insofar as they can serve the main goal, that is, the depiction of unfulfilled desires as fulfilled. Contradictions concerning the content of thoughts are even more crude and numerous than the affective contradictions that are already familiar to us (though not to the same extent) from normal life. The same patient can be a man and a woman, he is the son, and the husband, and the father of his mother, and in the end he also identifies himself with her; the patient is the wife of her earthly lover, but at the same time the wife of the savior and, again, the savior himself, sitting at the right hand of God, as well as God himself. If such contradictions can exist side by side with each other, then we should not be surprised that autism uses the first thought material it comes across, even erroneous ones, that it constantly operates with insufficiently thought-out concepts and puts in place of one concept another, which, when viewed objectively, has only minor generalities. components with the first, so that ideas are expressed in the riskiest symbols; these symbols are often not recognized and understood in their own meaning, and instead of one representation another appears, and it comes to real movement. The patient, out of jealousy of his mother, wishes his father to die; thanks to the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe “parent”, he identifies father and mother in this combination and now sees the mother dead. Love is symbolized according to the well-known analogy with fire, which is again perceived by the schizophrenic as something real and turns into hallucinations of burning, that is, into real sensations.

It's also amazing how autism can ignore timing. He unceremoniously mixes the present, past and future. Aspirations that were eliminated from consciousness decades ago still live within him; Memories that have long been inaccessible to realistic thinking are used by it as recent, perhaps even given preference, since they are less likely to conflict with reality. In relation to reality, that is, in realistic thinking, many experiences have already been abolished; there is no logical reason to take them into account when acting or thinking. Memories have their own emotional tone, which is often intensified precisely because of its opposition to reality, and this emotional tone very easily transforms in an imperceptible way the idea “when my father was still alive” into another idea: “my father is alive.” Freud says that the unconscious does not know time, I do not agree with this, but in relation to autistic thinking this position is correct insofar as autism can completely ignore time relations, but it does not necessarily ignore them.

The opposition between the two functions is not something absolute here either. Of course, autism does not at all neglect the concepts and connections that are given by experience, but it uses them only insofar as they do not contradict its goals; what does not suit him, he ignores or discards (the deceased lover is represented as he really was, but the fact that he died does not find expression in the autistic idea). On the contrary, autistic mechanisms even influence our instinct of self-preservation; the goals of our actions are determined by anticipated pleasure and displeasure or, what is the same, by the coloring of target ideas as pleasure and displeasure; we strive for what seems pleasant, useful or good to us.

In this description of autistic thinking so far I have been one-sided insofar as I have assumed that it is essentially governed by our aspirations. Of course, in pathological cases it is unlikely to find other autistic thinking. But one can imagine that this guiding moment recedes into the background. If the sun is depicted with wings, because it moves across the sky, or even with legs, like most creatures capable of movement, then from this one can, of course, construct an affective need, a need to explain movement, or a need for representation. The first corresponds to an even more general attraction, colored by affect, the second exists, of course, only under certain circumstances. It seems downright stretched to assume here affective guiding moments in the same sense as those described so far. The immediate basis for the direction of thoughts is neither desires nor fears, but only momentary aspirations, which can just as instantly disappear again. Even if a child who has heard, for example, that the stomach is the kitchen of the body imagines that in his body there is a kitchen like the toy kitchen that belongs to his doll, and that it is served by a cook in a white cap and a gray robe, then in this case too we no longer attach significant importance to the affective guiding moment. Such ideas may be used by pathology, but they themselves never produce pathological symptoms. On the contrary, both in the mythology of an individual and in the mythology of nations they are of great importance. This purely intellectual side of autistic thinking has still been studied too little. In this regard, the entire presentation still needs an important addition, which I am currently unable to make. Until now, only Jung was interested in this topic. I refer to his work "Uber die zwei Arten des Denkens" quoted above. According to the soil on which autistic thinking grows, we find two varieties of it, concerning the degree of withdrawal from reality, which, although not sharply different from each other, still show quite large differences in their typical form. The significant difference is that in one case even firmly established concepts can be dissociated and then recreated in an arbitrary form, while in the other case this does not happen. In addition, in more severe forms, the number of autistic operations increases significantly compared to realistic ones. The autism of the normal waking person is connected to reality and operates almost exclusively with normally formed and firmly established concepts. Only mythology, in the essence of which lies the element of neglect of space and time, disposes of these concepts very easily. Dreaming during sleep and pronounced autism in schizophrenia are completely independent of reality; they use and create concepts that are made up of any features and can be modified in any way from second to second. Due to this circumstance, sleep and schizophrenia can create absolute nonsense, while other autistic products are easily understandable to any normal person, so that he can easily think about them.

Instead of whole concepts and objects, a dream often gives us only those component parts of them that it considers necessary. Even one's own personality is often not fully thought of; a person often does not know what position he was in, standing or lying, etc.; the dreamer rarely creates clothes for himself, even when he does not imagine himself naked. The persons participating in the dream are in most cases composed of characteristics characteristic of other persons. In the mind of a patient suffering from early dementia, the doctor can be thought of in his real role, and at the same time he can be thought of by the same patient as a clergyman N, as a shoemaker I, and often also as the patient’s beloved. Diana of Ephesus is different from Diana of Athens. Apollo is a single person, but there is also an Apollo who distributes only warmth and light, and another Apollo who devastates and kills, and even a female Apollo is known. The same is true with objects and objective representations, as well as with abstract concepts. Concepts are replaced by one another because they have some, often minor, common component. Thus it comes to a confusing formation of symbols. A normal person can still understand when love, and sometimes even a loved one, is depicted with the help of clearly visible and tangible burning. Other symbols are much more difficult to understand.

In these same states, the disregard for reality and logic appears much more fully. A dream, schizophrenic delirium can be completely meaningless also in the sense of connecting ideas and put the grossest contradictions on a par, while the autistic fantasies of hysterics, people suffering from pseudology, and healthy people can seem completely reasonable and understandable with the exception of individual logical flaws.

The material of representations that autism uses in dreams and in schizophrenia and which conveys reality only in fragmentary form owes its origin to the dissociation in associations that exists in both states, the nature of which I cannot expand on here.

It should, however, be noted that states accompanied by profound inattention can produce dissociations that are not particularly different from both of the above-mentioned disorders, and that mythology, which can still only in a small part be reduced to dream ideas, has recourse to the most intricate symbolisms and fragmentation of concepts.

Consequently, at present, in principle, we cannot yet separate in this respect autism in schizophrenia and in dreams from other forms of autism, however, in quantitative terms there is such a big difference that both of these groups seem to us to be significantly different.

A special place is occupied by delusional formations in organic mental illnesses. We see here a completely excessive effect of affect: manic states produce pronounced delusions of grandeur, depressive states produce pronounced delusions of self-abasement. A decrease in the number of simultaneously existing ideas and associations (sometimes incorrectly called dissociation) gives these delusions an outcome in dementia, in contrast to delusions in manic-depressive psychosis, due to which the former often acquire great similarities with schizophrenic delusions. However, there are differences between them even in cases of already formed delirium, so that in the normal course of the disease, both groups of diseases can be recognized by the structure of delirium. However, it is very difficult to give a general description of this difference. It is important for us that in organic diseases there is no actual destruction of concepts, that with them there is no split personality and withdrawal from the outside world, so it rarely comes to true autism.

In forms of idiocy, autism does not play any distinctive role; in this respect we see here the same variations as in healthy people, but only at a lower intellectual level. Difficulties can arise only with less profound degrees of dementia, in which unclear formations of concepts can be equivalent to split concepts in schizophrenia and, due to this, allow identification, for example, of completely different things.

I cannot describe autism in various epileptic conditions due to the lack of sufficient experience.

Autistic thoughts can be fleeting episodes lasting a few seconds, however, they can fill the whole life and almost completely displace reality, as is the case with a weak-minded schizophrenic who lives only in his dreams and allows himself to be fed and clothed. There are all sorts of transitions between these extremes. Does the autistic world represent something integral or does it consist of individual fugitive thoughts, isolated delusional ideas and deceptions of feelings that violate realistic thinking here and there, but insofar as it reaches consciousness, it is a reality for the patient, the relationship of which to the present reality defies general description. In a hysterical twilight state, the direct perception of the external world in most cases is invented quite consistently in the spirit of autism: the patient is in heaven, communicates with saints, and all impressions of the senses that contradict this undergo an illusory transformation in the spirit of the main idea or are not apperceived at all. The schizophrenic in most cases mixes both worlds in an illogical way; where he is aware of contradictions, the dominant one for him is the world of delusional ideas, the world to which greater reality belongs and according to which he primarily acts. True, when his energy weakens, then the long-term and consistent influences of the environment again receive an objective - but not subjective - advantage: the patient largely adapts to the surrounding environment of a psychiatric hospital and puts up with reality, with poor care for him, he is content with those unsuitable for him works, but inside his “I” he continues to be the king of Europe, around whom the whole world revolves, and the title of king is still something so important for him, in comparison with which the trifles of hospital life cannot be taken into account at all. In very many respects, although not in every (internal or external) experience, the boundaries between the real and the autistic world are blurred in the schizophrenic to such an extent that one often gets the certain impression that for the patient this opposition no longer exists. Although there is an affective preference for the autistic world, they no longer feel a logical difference, just as some schizophrenics check whether the dreams they experience in the sleep state are real, although they know that we are talking only about the experiences associated with dreams .

Outside of schizophrenia, autism has a slightly different relationship to reality. A patient suffering from pseudology also creates a fairy tale for himself more or less arbitrarily and tells it, partly following the impulse of certain external situations; he uses it, for example, to get himself money by fraud. At the same time, he feels so deeply into his fables that “he himself believes in his own lies,” and often for a long time he does not realize that he is playing a role that is unsuitable for himself, however, as soon as he wants or as soon as he is forced by the created conditions (for example, during research), he can perceive the fallacy of this fiction in all respects.

Most normal people created some kind of fairy tale for themselves in their youth, however, they could always separate it from reality, although they felt so deeply into these dream situations that they experienced the corresponding affects. This is normal autism. Fantasy play itself can be autistic or realistic. A new combination of ideas corresponding to reality, built by analogy with real connections, leads to new knowledge, which we call inventions or discoveries if they have some significance. This process is not autistic. But what is usually understood as a play of fantasy neglects reality in one or many points and uses arbitrary premises for this; this process is autistic. The more assumptions and connections that do not correspond to reality are made in the course of thoughts, the more autistic he is. Consequently, there are degrees of autistic thinking and transitions to realistic thinking, however, only in the sense that in the course of thoughts autistic and realistic concepts and associations can occur in quantitatively different relationships. Exclusively autistic thinking in the field of pure concepts, which would be newly created in an autistic way and would not be connected anywhere according to logical laws, of course, does not exist.

Hysterics can, like people suffering from pseudology, at times believe in the fairy tales they create, even without being in a twilight state; but in most cases the distinction between reality and autistic representation is made quite sharply in them, in contrast to pseudologia phantastica. Hysterical autism passes without a sharp boundary, on the one hand, into normal daydreams, and, on the other hand, into a hysterical twilight state.

A poet, a true poet at least, does the same. He will react more or less consciously to his complexes, his affective needs in artistic creativity.

In most children's games, autism takes part to the same extent as in the works of the poet. To a little girl, a few rags are a child; the boy lives out his instinctive desire for power and struggle, jumping on a stick with a wooden saber in his hands, etc. The child and the poet in most cases put more reality into their fantastic products than it might seem at first glance. The girl actually loves her rags as if they were the child they represent.

Autism and autistic thinking in a normal person are best detected by looking at dreams. And in this case there is no connection with reality and no intellectual consideration of real possibilities.

The mythological reality is remarkable. Even when it contains thoughts that seem to be absolute nonsense from a logical point of view, most people regard them with true faith; Even outstanding minds put their reality above the world perceived through the senses during conflicts. From here there is a whole series of transitions through the understanding of a symbol, behind which something more or less real is hidden, and through the recognition of purely poetic truth and the complete denial of autistic reality.

Autistic withdrawal from reality is often active. In the dream, where this withdrawal is most pronounced, it is, of course, conditioned by the sleep mechanism itself. In schizophrenia and in the hysterical twilight state, it is a partial manifestation of the autistic mechanism itself. The schizophrenic not only wants to imagine something that corresponds to his desires, he also wants to actively escape from the reality that depresses and irritates him. This desire finds its expression in negativism and in external isolation from the outside world, so striking in some severe cases of schizophrenia. Aversion to the outside world and to irritations occurring from outside blocks the patient’s thoughts from accessing ideas about reality, and sometimes even to the sensations resulting from it, delivered by the senses; on the other hand, the pleasure delivered by certain unreal ideas chains the psyche precisely to them.

Many schizophrenics who do not show negativism turn their conscious desire to the real world, however, the autistic world of thoughts is imposed on them in the form of hallucinations, delusional ideas, automatisms and similar symptoms emerging from the unconscious.

A certain escape from reality also exists, of course, in dreams containing the fulfillment of a desire in a healthy person who builds castles in the air; however, in most cases, such a departure from reality is an act of will; a person wants to surrender to a certain fantasy, which he knows is only a fantasy, and his dreams dissipate as soon as reality demands it.

Where there is no clearly expressed degree of withdrawal from reality, I cannot call the play of this same mechanism autism. Consequently, if a patient suffering from manic-depressive psychosis creates delusional ideas that correspond to his moods, then we have a pathological exaggeration of the effect of affect, similar to affective defects in thinking in a healthy person, but by no means autism in our sense. The question of whether, despite this, in this case, affective thinking can be designated as autistic, remains unresolved. If we answer this question in the affirmative, then the concept of autistic thinking becomes broader than the concept of autism.

Autistic thinking is in many ways the opposite of realistic thinking.

Realistic thinking represents reality; autistic thinking imagines what corresponds to affect, therefore, under ordinary conditions it imagines what is pleasant. The goal of realistic functions is to create correct knowledge of the surrounding world, to find the truth. Autistic functions tend to evoke ideas colored by affect (in most cases, the affect of pleasure) and repress ideas colored by the opposite affect. Realistic mechanisms regulate our relationship to the outside world; they serve to preserve life, to obtain food, for attack and defense; Autistic mechanisms create immediate pleasure, causing pleasure-tinged ideas, and prevent displeasure, blocking access to ideas associated with displeasure. Thus, there is autistic and realistic satisfaction of one's needs. One who is satisfied in an autistic way has less or no reason to act; he also has less power to act. An excellent example of this would be healthy dreamers and schizophrenic dreamers. If autistic thinking completely takes over a person, then he outwardly appears apathetic and stuporous.

The opposition of both functions is especially clearly expressed in the fact that they inhibit each other to a certain extent. Where affects gain immediate or long-term predominance, logical thinking is suppressed and distorted in the spirit of autism. And vice versa: realistic considerations in a normal person do not allow autism to win. Even if autistic ideas exist, a healthy person still distinguishes them as accurately as possible from reality, and their influence on a person’s actions is limited or completely suppressed.

If logical thinking is weakened in some way, then autistic thinking gains a relative or absolute advantage. We can divide these cases into four groups:

1) The child does not have the experience necessary to master logical forms of thinking and to understand the possibilities that lie in the external world. If a child develops imagination, then it easily gains an advantage in terms of autism.

2) In matters that are generally inaccessible or not entirely accessible to our knowledge and our logic, or where efficiency in itself becomes decisive, logic must accordingly recede into the background: in matters relating to worldview, religion, love.

3) In those cases where feelings, for some reason, acquire a meaning that is usually unusual for them, logic recedes in this regard into the background: with strong affects and with a neurotic predisposition, respectively with neurosis.

4) Where the associative connection is weakened, the associations, of course, lose their meaning: in the dream of a healthy person and in schizophrenia.

Sexual attraction has a very special relationship with autism. Already to Diogenes, who, however, had only physical needs in mind, it occurred to him that he could be satisfied exclusively in an autistic way. There are onanists, schizophrenics, neurotics, for whom physical and mental autoeroticism is a substitute for normal sexual satisfaction, and among them there are even those who find actual satisfaction only in autoeroticism. All other drives and complexes cannot really be satisfied in an autistic way; in dreams and dreams, you can vividly imagine abundant food as you like, however, hunger cannot be satisfied with this for a long time. This circumstance, along with the fact that sexual attraction is incomparably more powerful than all other attractions of a cultured person, gives serious grounds for the fact that autistic thinking, at least in pathological cases, serves primarily erotic complexes. Of course, this is also facilitated by the boundaries set for the performance of sexual actions, in the form of autistic survival.

In some respects, both of these functions also complement each other. Where reality does not fulfill our desires, autism portrays them as feasible or fulfilled. In this way, the ethics of a socially living person necessarily created the concept of justice and the corresponding need for this feeling, so that pleasure and pain are rewarded according to their deserts. But in nature, in everything that does not depend on our human routine, we do not see this justice. This gap is filled by religion, which gives reward and punishment in accordance with our principles of justice, but does this in the other world, where realistic thinking and its criticism cannot penetrate.

The individual instinct of self-preservation should have given rise to in a person thinking about the future a fear of death or, positively speaking, a desire for immortal life; religion fulfills these desires too. The need for causality, which is one of the most important stimuli of our realistic thinking, may be unsatisfied in many points that seem especially important to us: mythology fills this gap.

Logical needs determine the fact that concepts are supplemented with autistic elements where they are insufficient on their own; the sun is a man riding across the sky in his chariot. A disease is an independent being that reacts to a certain witchcraft, etc. But the sharper the thinking at the highest levels of culture, the more ideas that more accurately correspond to reality replace thinking that operates with the help of such pictures and symbols, which are too often understood in their own way. sense and which can easily be mistaken for reality.

For Freud, autistic thinking stands in such a close relationship to the unconscious that for an inexperienced person both of these concepts easily merge with each other. However, if, together with me, we understand by the unconscious all that activity that is in all respects equivalent to ordinary mental activity, except that it is not conscious, then it is necessary to strictly subdivide both of these concepts. Autistic thinking can in principle be as conscious as it is unconscious. The meaningless statements of schizophrenics and daydreams are a manifestation of conscious autistic thinking. However, in the symptom-formation of neuroses and in many schizophrenic processes, autistic work can be completely unconscious. In neuroses, its results are revealed in the form of the most distinguishable neurotic symptoms, in schizophrenia - in the form of initial delusional ideas, hallucinations, memory deceptions, obsessive urges, etc. Of course, in general, autistic thinking is often unconscious, while realistic thinking should essentially regulate our relationship to the outside world.

Autistic thinking does not always fully achieve its goal. It often contains its own contradictions. Some of our ideas, especially those that are colored by strong emotions, that is, the ideas that in most cases prompt us to think autistically, are ambivalent (that is, they are accompanied by both negative and positive feelings). What they strive for also has its unpleasant side. A loved one has his own shortcomings, for example, he has all the desirable personal qualities, but he is not as rich as he would like, or vice versa. A wife who does not love her husband or even hates him still has positive feelings for him, for example, because he is the father of her children. The desire, the idea that the husband has died, therefore brings with it severe negative feelings, which can be revealed in various ways: in the repression of the entire complex of ideas, in a feeling of fear and various painful symptoms. The most difficult in this regard are conflicts of conscience. It is quite understandable, I would even say, forgivable, if a wife, who encounters nothing but rude attitude from her husband, sometimes has a desire for her husband to no longer exist, and it goes without saying that her autistic functions someday represent to her more or less consciously in the waking state or in a dream, this desire is realized, realized with or without its help. Such processes lead a person again to a feeling of displeasure, to remorse, the origin of which the person does not know at all, since the whole process played out in the unconscious. While in realistic thinking a person reproaches himself and repents of perfect injustice, autistic thinking gives rise to the same torment in connection with the injustice that a person has only imagined; and these sufferings, in which a person has “convinced” himself, are often all the more severe because logic cannot come to their aid, partly because we are talking about an autistic function independent of logic, partly because the origin of these sufferings is unknown to their bearer . If the patient does not know why he experiences fear, then he cannot prove to himself that this fear is unfounded. It goes without saying that autism, which portrays our desires as fulfilled, must also lead to conflicts with the environment. You can ignore reality, but it always makes itself known again. Under conditions that cannot be called pathological, an autistic person does not take into account the obstacles standing in the way of the fulfillment of desires, however, he does not realize desires in the form of hallucinations or delusions; he thinks too optimistically and therefore fails in life; or life, which does not give him what he first strives for, pushes him away, and he withdraws into himself. Under pathological conditions, the nature of these obstacles must be modified by autistic thinking, unless they can be completely ignored. While autism, through the fulfillment of desires, leads primarily to expansive delusions, the perception of obstacles should give rise to persecutory delusions in the way described above.

Autism is often itself the carrier of those conflicts that arise in us under the influence of affects. An event occurs to a normal person that causes him pain. This pain, like any other affect, tends to become entrenched, to last longer than the event that caused it, to also radiate to other experiences, in short, to create a long-lasting painful mood. This mood is overcome regardless of the intended effect of time in such a way that new experiences consolidate their affects. At the same time, joy can, of course, make you forget the pain or soften it, but only as long as this joy itself exists. During these processes, an unpleasant event remains capable of memory, like any other experience. The situation is different when an autistic protective device is used against pain: in most cases, it fences off pain from consciousness along with the idea colored by pain. Whether it is possible in this way to completely turn off affect from the world of experiences - I don’t know. In any case, both under normal and pathological conditions, many such affects isolated from consciousness are found, and we see the effect of these affects even in cases where the affect, as such, is not recognized by its bearer (in facial expressions, in painful symptoms) . From this we see that, at least in many cases, the corresponding affects are only split off from consciousness, but not suppressed, and then it becomes self-evident that in this case there is an internal tendency inherent in all affects to take over mental life. Consequently, “repression” must always be supported by autistic mechanisms, and, conversely, in the manifestations of autism, repressed affects or their action always appear. A schizophrenic, or even a healthy person dreaming, mistakenly believes in the death of a loved one and is therefore inconsolable. He once had the idea of ​​​​the death of this person in the form of a desire, but it was immediately (usually even before it reached consciousness) suppressed, since it brought strong pain. Now it resurfaces in autism and, together with the fulfillment of a wish, gives the patient pain that he wanted to avoid.

Sometimes autistic thinking, fulfilling a desire, creates a symptom complex that we call a disease.

Such a pathology of thinking as autism is very often observed in mentally ill people, for example, in schizophrenics, who see the world around them in the form of hallucinations and illusions, far from reality. Autism is a special type of thinking that gives a false impression of the surrounding reality, and also forces a person to draw incorrect conclusions, clouding his judgment. There are people who occupy, so to speak, a borderline position between the norm of thinking and pathology; they are characterized by such types of states as a hypnotic state, hallucinations, and delusions. This is a less dangerous form of mental disorder, which is nevertheless very dangerous for humans. As an experienced psychologist, I can say that among all the people with whom I have worked as part of various programs, including the treatment of severe mental disorders, every person has an erroneous view of reality, this is especially true for people with limited life.

Each person has certain needs, and they are determined primarily by his natural instincts. These needs are not always satisfied, and the inability to influence the situation in such a way that it meets the needs of a person leads him to the release of associations that are far from reality, giving the green light to his actual needs. Simply put, a person begins to interpret everything around him in such a way that it lends itself to his capabilities and desires, that is, how he sees everything exactly in such a way that, if desired, he can influence it.

I observed in people with a similar pathology of thinking, signs of quite common sense, prudence, a plan of action, in general, a constructive way of thinking, without panic and hysteria, but far from reality. General weakness of the psyche is what leads to such deviations, and this weakness appears as a result of incorrect life attitudes, incorrect upbringing, and the illusory state that is imposed on people and in which they then want to be. Everything that people with autistic thinking picture in their heads is of an applicative nature, they are not constant, autism is tendentious.

When all their associations correspond to their needs and reality, when these indicators coincide, when their representation is applicable to the surrounding reality, they are more or less adequate. But as soon as perception gives rise to associations that are unnatural for such people, then others are immediately released, replacing the natural perception of associations, for which logic no longer has any meaning. In general, realistic thinking requires a person to have the correct life attitudes; here we are talking not only about the natural interpretation of reality, but also about the appropriate interpretation of events.

I would not say that all the events that happen in our lives are interpreted by us correctly, just that our associations and behavior fit within the framework of what is acceptable and not dangerous for other members of society. Therefore, the pathology of thinking has a certain line, crossing which we can find ourselves in the world of dreams, thereby calming our psyche. It was calmness and consolation for a person that was considered the main advantage of autism by the famous researcher of this disease E. Beiler, who saw in it an opportunity for a person to relieve excessive emotional stress, as well as an opportunity to strengthen a person’s desire for a positive goal.

I have always adhered to this method of influencing people with a thinking pathology similar to autism in such a way that I presented them with reality as completely acceptable for their perception. Of course, I obviously do not have the same experience in researching this illness and getting rid of it as E. Beiler may have had, but at the same time I considered it important to do what those who prepared a person at a young age for life should have done, to real life. Society itself wanders in the dark, associating reality and the world in which it lives with the correct, from its point of view, events, phenomena, people, values, goals, and incorrect ones.

On top of that, by limiting the capabilities of individual members of this society, I’m not even talking about morality and morality, which become basic in determining events and actions in people’s heads. Moving away from these norms is the very impetus for such a disease as autism, and as proof of this theory, you can simply look at the statistics of such a disease, which mainly affects people living in developed countries, where the overwhelming majority of the population lives in an illusory world.

However, this is not a rule, this is only part of the analysis that I carried out regarding the causes of such a disease, the reasons for the deviation of the human psyche from norms that are safe for it. Please note that I am not talking about normal and natural perception, since this is still distorted to a certain extent, I am talking about behavior that is safe for a person, about the form that helps him adapt as comfortably as possible in society and occupy the most privileged position in it. Autism gives rise to illusions, but illusions are different from illusions, our reality is also partly illusory for each of us, one thinks one thing about himself, while others think about him completely differently, and from an objective point of view, one’s own idea of ​​oneself in to a greater extent and in most cases illusory.

People with a pathology of thinking are, as I already said, weak people, and their weakness is caused not by their mental individuality, but by the way of thinking, by the way of perceiving the world around them, by the morality and concept of correctness that was imposed on them. A person will not live in a world of illusions if the real world does not seem hostile to him, one from which one must hide in oneself, which does not give, but takes away. This is what I consider the defining mental attitude for a person, and the method of treating a patient, which in my case always worked, although there were not so many of them.

One has only to show a person the naturalness of what he sees, the correctness of all this, point out to him his possibilities, and present all events as a pattern that fits within the framework of a normal and safe way of life. One has only to show people that all their natural needs can be realized in no time, and that this is just part of the game in which we will all still be winners, as the need for illusions, the need for consolation with their help, will disappear by itself. It’s not easy, I’ll tell you honestly, to correct what was initially done wrong, especially when it comes to the human psyche, it’s difficult. But this can be achieved, because any pathology of thinking is a mental, not a physical malfunction, unless of course the latter has occurred.

AUTISTIC THINKING

AUTISTIC THINKING

(from ancient gr. autos - himself) - a closed-in-depth type of personality or cultural phenomenon; in relation to personality, the term “schizoid” is also used ( cm. CHARACTEROLOGY). It should not be confused with the concept of "schizophrenic". A schizoid is a personality type in whose blood relatives may have schizophrenic genes, but he himself cannot get schizophrenia - this place for him, so to speak, is already occupied by his characterological type, which consists in his self-absorption (introversion) and the idea of that the inner life of the spirit is primary in relation to material life. In this sense, AM is a synonym for idealism. But AM is not a philosophical concept, but a psychological one. An autistic schizoid may not necessarily be a poet or a philosophy professor; what is important is that his consciousness works in a certain way. The concept of autistic schizoid was introduced by the Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, and the typical appearance of an autistic schizoid was described by Ernst Kretschmer in the book “Body Structure and Character” (1922). In contrast to a completely cheerful sanguine person, an autistic person has a leptosomal, that is, “narrow” physique: as a rule, he is thin and long, wiry, dryish, with somewhat mechanical movements. A characteristic autistic gesture is a bow with the entire upper body, which looks as if a razor blade is falling out of its case. In every culture, in every direction of art, its own characterological type of personality prevails. In the culture of the twentieth century. autistic-schizoid predominates, which is why we have allocated a separate article to the concept of A. m. Typical autistic people in appearance (habitus) are such outstanding cultural figures of the 20th century as James Joyce, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg, Dmitry Shostakovich, Carl Gustav Jung. In the 20th century, artistic expression was characteristic not only of individuals, but also of entire movements. Neo-mythologism and all directions of modernism have an autistic nature. (It is important to realize that avant-garde art ( cm. AVANTGARDE ART) is not autistic - its characterological basis is a polyphonic mosaic ( cm. CHARACTEROLOGY). Autistic people can be of two types - authoritarian; these are, as a rule, the founders and leaders of new directions (N. S. Gumilev, A. Schoenberg, V. Bryusov); defensive (that is, with a predominant defensive rather than aggressive attitude); this was, for example, F. Kafka - defenseless, afraid of women, afraid of his father, unsure of himself and the quality of his works, but in his own way extremely integral. Classic autistics are so indifferent to external environmental conditions that they survive easier in extreme conditions. So, for example, the composer S. S. Prokofiev, being completely internally alien to the Soviet system, nevertheless easily wrote operas on Soviet themes - “October”, “Semyon Kotko”, “The Tale of a Real Man” - he belonged to to this as something forced, like bad weather. At the same time, his soul remained completely pure and unclouded. And the anxious Shostakovich, who wrote much less to please the system, nevertheless suffered all the time for his sins, in particular for the fact that he was forced to be a member of the party. There are schizoid ascetics, such as, for example, Albert Schweitzer who, following the internal logic of his harmony, left academics and musical studies and went to treat lepers in Africa. Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus ( cm. LOGICAL POSITIVISM, ATOMIC FACT), renounced his father's million-dollar inheritance and became a primary school teacher in the village, as this was required by his internal autistic moral imperative - the philosopher must be poor, the philosopher must help those who need help most, that is, children . The meaning and specificity of AM was very accurately described by Hesse in the parable “The Poet,” where a Chinese poet studies under the guidance of a master far from his homeland. At some point, he begins to yearn for his native land and the master lets him go home. But, having seen his home from the top of the hill and lyrically realizing this experience, the poet returns to the master, because the poet’s job is to sing of his emotions, and not to live an ordinary life (an example is taken from the book by M.E. Burno, mentioned below in “Literature” ).

Dictionary of 20th century culture. V.P.Rudnev.

See what “AUTISTIC THINKING” is in other dictionaries:

AUTISTIC THINKING- 1. In general - thinking guided by internal desires and aspirations, regardless of external real facts. 2. Thinking characteristic (or better yet, assumed to be characteristic) of an autistic child... Explanatory dictionary of psychology

THINKING- THINKING, in psychology, the highest and most complex form of intellectual activity, consisting in the rational processing of experience data, in the processes of establishing connections, revealing relationships and dependencies and characterized by a unique composition,... ... Great Medical Encyclopedia

Autistic thinking- (Greek autos itself) term by E. Bleuler (1920), denotes illogical thinking associated with autism, that is, the inability of patients to take into account real properties, connections and relationships, preferring the latter images to catathymic fantasies.… …

Schizophrenic thinking- a general term that denotes thinking disorders that are more characteristic of schizophrenia than other painful conditions (amorphous thinking, fragmented thinking, symbolic thinking, autistic thinking, diverse thinking, ambivalent ... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary of Psychology and Pedagogy

Catathymic thinking- the same as catathic thinking, autistic thinking, emotional thinking. Synonym: Mayer catathymic thinking... Encyclopedic Dictionary of Psychology and Pedagogy

thinking- a process of cognitive activity of an individual, characterized by a generalized and mediated reflection of reality. The following types of M. are distinguished: verbally logical, visually figurative, visually effective. M. theoretical is also distinguished... Great psychological encyclopedia

AUTISTIC THINKING- thinking divorced from reality and not corrected by it. Accompanied by the patient withdrawing into himself, fenced off from the outside world... Forensic pathopsychology (book terms)