Schizophrenic Thinking in a Problem-Solving Situation

Abstract

The difficulties inherent in reducing schizophrenic thinking to the conditions of an experiment have led to a variety of attacks upon the problem. Of these, the attempts to subject thinking disorders to methods of quantification have so far yielded little of value. That this has been the case can be readily understood when one considers what heterogeneity of psychopathology is included under the term “schizophrenia”. Moreover, the thought of schizophrenics is apparently of the same order of complexity as the thought of normal persons, and its qualitative characteristics are even less well known. Under present conditions the qualitative approach seems to promise a greater and more useful field. Where tests have been employed with advantage in studying schizophrenia it has been chiefly their by-products that have deserved attention.