Paralogic involvement of the notion of awareness in schizophrenic thinking

Summary This paper presented four schizophrenic patients and discussed the vicissitudes of some of their thought processes. The thought mechanisms underlying the delusional ideas of these patients were mostly unconscious and had to be inferred from verbal clues elicited after inquiry into the delusional ideas. It was found that the patients employed paralogic mechanisms involving the awareness of some highly invested contents. This resulted in a variety of delusional ideas. Yet, from a nosologic point of view, the cases appeared to have an interesting homogeneity in their clinical pictures.This paper is from the Illinois State Psychiatric Institute, Chicago, Illinois.