Glosomania (speech disorder): causes, symptoms and treatment
The ability to communicate through oral language, or commonly known as speech, is the physical medium through which most human beings communicate.
This speech is the sound performance of language and one of the ways in which participants perceive the intentions and content of the other.
But sometimes this ability is truncated due to neurological problems, or certain psychopathological disturbances among others. In these cases there are alterations in verbal communication such as the glosomanía, in which the person is able to elaborate a verbal speech but without any communicative value .
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What is glosomania?
If the word glosomania is dissected according to its etymological roots, it is observed that it is constituted by two Greek roots: glossa whose current translation would be language and the suffix mania which is interpreted as having obsession, obsessive impulse or pathological habit and passionate hobby.
- Related article: "The 8 types of speech disorders"
From these roots one can already guess that its meaning will be related to an altered or distorted production of oral language.
In the field of psychology and psychiatry, glosomanía refers to the elaboration of language in such a way that the linguistic units, such as lexemes, phonemes, morphemes and sentences, are selected unconsciously by the subject and combined based on coincidences phonological or semantic, and not according to an order of coherent meaning.
This type of elaborations are typical of certain psychopathological pictures , trance states or neurological problems produced by different causes such as tumors or intoxications.
Glosomania vs glossolalia
Although both agree in the fact of being alterations in the production of language linked to psychiatric disorders, unlike glosomania, glossolalia consist of the fluid vocalization of an intelligible language, composed of words that the patient invents and in rhythmic and repetitive sequences more proper to children's speech; creating a discourse in which practically everything is neologisms.
As a curious fact, in some religious beliefs this alteration is known as "gift of tongues" ; considering discourses as a divine language unknown to the speaker, and which places the person who executes it as chosen by said divinity or divinities.
He speaks in mental illness
A characteristic of some mental illnesses is that people are not able to hold a conversation or make any kind of speech with seemingly logical connections between words and expressions; being very difficult for the patient to communicate, and for the listener to understand the ideas, the facts and the wills that this tries to communicate.
Generally, incoherent discourses are not considered language problems, but rather from another dimension . The first impression that these alterations provide is that of being a communication problem, that is, pragmatic; initially observing a difficulty for interaction with others and with the environment.
For a person to communicate orally or make any kind of speech it is necessary that all cognitive skills are well grounded, since this is produced and understood at a level of language processing that requires it.
Likewise, the preconditions of attention, memory, knowledge of the context and of the interlocutors are absolutely necessary for a successful oral correspondence. In the case of not all these conditions, the language becomes something poor and limited, or an uncontrolled and incoherent source of words. This last alteration is the one that takes place in the glosomanía.
In any case, glosomania in itself does not constitute a psychiatric disorder, but rather is a symptom of disorders such as neurosis and schizophrenia; being the result of an alteration in the organization of thought. That is, an adulteration of the selection, order and expression of what the person wants to communicate.
Glossamania in schizophrenia
The glosomaníaca schizofasia is a very surprising and very rare disorder, being rather typical of patients with a high cultural level.
1. Schizophrenic glossary
In this type of schizophrenia the expression can become abundant and fluid, which requires the attention and participation of the viewer to become understandable.
If attention is paid to the speech of the patient changes are noticed at the word level but, in addition, there are also alterations at the level of sentences . In these people you can observe the following.
Incomprehensible neologisms
They are neologisms that the person creates and that are not usually understood in an easy way. They are often recently pronounced words and vary in both phonetic and semantic content. In addition, they can include formations from opposing words, such as "es blancnegro" instead of "es gris."
This language created by the patient can even become whole sentences. Although few patients manage to achieve such a skill, which some experts call "hyperphasia".
Some experts theorize that these intellectually gifted people, facing the difficulties of compression and before the speeches of other people incomprehensible from their point of view, concentrate only on their own speech, creating the aforementioned glossolalia.
Deviations in lexical compositions
In these deviations the patient elaborates compositions of two words that normally do not form a composite. Like "I need a pen-ink".
Deviations in morphemic compositions
In this case, the semantic potential of the sentences is relatively understandable. For example: "I've been impaling all day" instead of "I've been reading all day".
