Volume 3 Issue 11 November, 2013
The Idiosyncratic Abbreviation
During the PG days at NIMHANS, once we, my friend and I, were discussing some academic stuff in the ward. There was a junior PG sitting along. The junior remarked that she was unable to understand our discussion as we were using many abbreviations. We started explaining the abbreviations to her. Meanwhile a patient, who was on a bed nearby, an engineering student not being able to continue his course due to schizophrenia, came to us and started saying something which we could not understand because of gross disorder of form. It was totally incoherent. The junior told him “I am unable to understand what you are saying.” To this he said, “That is because I am also using abbreviations.” This particular sentence of his was the not only coherent, it was relevant too. Having said this he went away. It was obvious that he was listening to our conversations. I remember this incident as it made me think whether the persons with schizophrenia do really use ‘abbreviations’ of their own. My search for the answer lead to read about thought disorder in schizophrenia and in fact I realized that the ‘metonyms’ and ‘neologisms’ they use have some resemblance to the abbreviations we use for our convenience. And the difference is that there usage of such vocabulary happens to be idiosyncratic rendering their speech incoherent.
Professor at KMC, Manipal.
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