Cryptolalia: what is it and how is it associated with schizophrenia?

Certain mental disorders produce cryptolalia, the use of language that no one understands.

In chronic psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia, the affected person sometimes develops language based on cues that are incomprehensible to others, among other disturbances that reflect disorganized thinking. We use the term "cryptolalia" to refer to this "hidden speech", often associated with cryptophrenia.often associated with cryptolalia.

What is cryptolalia?

Cryptolalia is defined as the use of a private and incomprehensible language to other people in order to prevent them from understanding it. The term is used in a specific way in the field of psychology, although its meaning is broader and we can also apply it in contexts where no mental alteration is present.

From a psychopathological point of view, the phenomenon of cryptolalia is usually associated with psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia, which are characterized by a loss of mental function.characterized by a loss of contact with reality; this is manifested in symptoms and signs such as hallucinations, delusions, affective flattening or disorganization of thought and language.

However, cryptolalia does not necessarily have to be a consequence of psychological disorders. Technically, the definition of the concept can include any type of alteration of oral language from a given key, so that it cannot be understood.The definition of the concept can technically include any type of alteration of the spoken language from a given key, so that it cannot be understood by those who do not know it. Therefore, in some contexts it may have obvious practical uses.

Many children apply alterations to their speech based on very simple cues (such as adding an extra syllable on a regular basis) with the intention of secretly communicating with selected groups of peers. On the other hand, activities such as espionage can find strategic uses for cryptolalia; cryptography should be mentioned in this regard.

Relationship to cryptography

The term "cryptography" can be translated as "hidden writing"; therefore, it is easy to deduce its relation to cryptolalia, which means "hidden speech". Thus, we can define cryptography as the use of coding techniques in the use of coding techniques in the written language in order to be so that only people who know the interpretation keys can read the final material.

As with cryptolalia, cryptography may or may not occur in the context of a psychological disorder. When this is the case, it often appears together with cryptolalia as part of a private language. As previously mentioned, psychoses are usually the most determinant pathologies in its emergence.

The use of cryptography in different contexts is better known than that of cryptolalia, particularly in military conflicts. A particularly well-known example is the Enigma machine, which was used by the German military for both encryption and decryption. to both encode and decode messages during World War II.

Cryptolalia as a sign of schizophrenia

Scharfetter (1977) uses the concept of cryptolalia to refer to extreme manifestations of language disorders that characterize schizophrenia. language disorders that characterize psychoses, and in particular schizophrenia.and in particular schizophrenia, whose main diagnostic criterion is the chronicity of psychotic symptoms.

According to this author, some people with schizophrenia seek to achieve a private symbolism that only they can understand. This would lead them to create idiosyncratic words without a meaning agreed upon by the rest of society; if the level of complexity of the process is high, cryptolalia and cryptography are likely to occur.

However, the conceptualization on which Scharfetter works is difficult to distinguish from the phenomenon of neologism, another of the typical linguistic signs of schizophrenia. In the following section we will refer to this and other similar disturbances, which are clear reflections of the clear reflections of the disorganization of thought that occurs in this disorder. that occurs in this disorder.

Language disturbances in psychosis.

In addition to neologisms, which in psychopathology are defined as strange words whose meaning is known only to the person using them, many other language alterations appear in psychotic disorders. It is worth noting the similarity of some of these phenomena with those that characterize Wernicke's aphasia, caused by brain lesions.

These language disorders may consist of an impoverishment of speech or impoverishment of speech or in the appearance of productive disturbances.. In relation to the first group of phenomena we can say that schizophrenia and the rest of psychoses usually involve the poverty of the content and form of spoken language, a consequence of cognitive dysfunctions.

Also typical are general lack of coherence, forgetfulness of the topic or purpose of the speech (derailment), frequent interruptions, tangentiality of answers to specific questions, increased speech rate (logorrhea) or the selection of words based on their similarity to others and not on the basis of a particular topic.

Other linguistic phenomena that occur in these disorders are perseveration around the same topic, echolalia, which consists in involuntary repetition of other people's words, assonance and allonance.The use of an excessively elaborated language and consequently pedantic and unnatural.