Thinking of a healthy person occurs under the laws of logic. By reflecting the essence of the reallife, the former gives a possibility to the interaction of full value and cognition of the surrounding world and results received to seem to be clear. Psychology studies thinking as a cognitive activity differentiating it by types depending at the levels of generalisation, nature of the means being used, their newness for the subject, degree of its activity, and adequacy of the thinking to the reality. In this regard, the following types of thinking are distinguished: verbal reasoning, eye-minded, visual-active thinking. To a certain extent, logical thinking is opposite to an intuitive one and, surely, autistic one, associated with escape from the reality into the inner world of affective feelings.
Psychical pathology of the associations' sphere includes several such factors that at a considerable extent affect the flow of thoughts and the thinking process. As a result, people with a mental health condition have such ideas, concepts and conclusions, whose correctness look doubtful, and are often even completely unacceptable. In this connection, not only qualitative, but also quantitative changes characterising the associative process, thinking, especially its pace, speed, and consistency, is of great importance.
Acceleration of the associative process is an increase in the number of associations that are formed per a unit of time at each segment given, easing of their onset. This is characterised by the continuity of thoughts and judgments being developed. Conclusions in such cases become superficial; they can be caused by random associations. In cases pronounced, acceleration of thinking reaches the degree of flight of ideas (fuga idearum), a whirlwind of thoughts and concepts. The most striking feature of these patients is increasing distractibility as noted by E. Bleuler (1916), first inward one, and then outward one. Such distractibility can be interpreted as attention deficit disorder (increased liveliness). Thinking with the flow of associations and flight of ideas cannot be called aimless thinking; distractibility always exists, but it is constantly changing. In such cases, associative thought crowding is found, meaning