ABSTRACT

Recent research on thinking and thought disorder in affective and bipolar patients should make one question any overly extreme way of drawing this distinction (see Holzman, Shenton, & Solovay, 1986; Goodwin & Jamison, 1990, chap. 11). Still, it is true that, whereas the thinking patterns of schizophrenics can be highly unusual and hard to follow, those of patients with affective disorders do tend to remain more within certain familiar channels, although the pace may become accelerated and the content exaggerated and unrealistic. However, I must disagree with two assumptions that are central to Russ's (2000-2001) article and argument: her tendency to make too sharp a distinction between cognition and affect and, second, her use of the notion of the primary process itself.