Clanging is a speech abnormality associated with thought disorders such as schizophrenia and mania. It involves making connections between words due to their sound, often using puns and rhymes. Clanging is associated with flight of ideas, a rapid form of derailment in speech. It is treatable with medication and psychotherapy.
Clanging, sometimes known as clang association, association chaining, or glossomania, is a term used in psychiatry. It describes an unusual way of speaking associated with what are called thought disorders. Thought disorders are found in people with conditions such as schizophrenia and mania and show up in a person’s speech. Clangling occurs when a person makes connections between words due to the way they sound, and can involve the use of puns and rhymes. It is usually associated with a type of thinking disorder known as flight of ideas, in which a person’s speech can be difficult to follow as it moves rapidly from one idea to another.
The flight of ideas is sometimes described as a continuous and rapid form of derailment, in which speech suddenly swerves in a new direction like a train leaving its track. The clatter can be part of this, with the connections made between words helping to move the speech off topic. In addition to puns and rhymes, clanging can involve alliteration, where words start with the same consonants, such as hunger and horse. It can also use what is called assonance, where words have the same vowel sounds, and an example of this would be the use of the words fake and plate. The presence of clanging can be associated with the condition known as mania.
Mania is a phase of an illness called bipolar I disorder, in which severe manic or depressive episodes can occur that disrupt normal life. During manic episodes, people can become elated and motivated, forgetting to eat or sleep, and psychosis can occur, in which people lose touch with reality. Bipolar disorder can be treated with medication and psychotherapy. Hospitalization may be required if a person has developed psychosis.
Clangling is also associated with schizophrenia. This is another disease where psychosis occurs, causing people to have abnormal beliefs and see and hear things that are not there. Like bipolar disorder, schizophrenia can be treated using medications and verbal psychological therapies.
There are numerous speech abnormalities found in mania and schizophrenia, but clanging may be the only one for which researchers have found an explanation. It is thought that people start talking but are distracted by both the meaning and sound of the words they are using. This means that they repeatedly lose the thread of what they are saying and shift the topic to follow the new connections they are making between words. It is as if patients are forced to consider each association for a word and are unable to eliminate what is irrelevant.
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