Mis-processing information; what disorder might it be? (psychologist, dating, college)

[ogre]

A relative I'll call "Bill" seems to have several psychological difficulties. After some reasonably thorough basic reading on the subject of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder I'm pretty well convinced that "Bill" has this condition. He also clearly has a problem with his attention span, though from close observation I think this may be related to the OCPD (unable to focus on the task at hand due to constant worry about situations that might not be in proper order--in his view--elsewhere in the house unless he stops what he's doing to go check).

"Bill" also has another obvious difficulty which seems like something else altogether, unrelated to other problems like OCPD. What happens in this situation is that somehow his brain seems to mis-process information, so that what he talks about doesn't quite make sense. You'll usually sort of get the general idea what he's talking about, but he'll have his facts mixed up or incorrect, and will speak in a tone of authority while misstating what in his mind seem to be clear facts.

Another relative has observed that "Bill"'s mind seems to work like the game Telephone (which I've also heard called Rumor), where in a roomful of people one person whispers a phrase to another person, who whispers it to the next person, and so on until the last person says aloud what he heard from the next-to-last person and invariably the words have changed significantly from the original phrase.

Some examples:

Talking with that tone of great authority mentioned above about issues surrounding Lyndon Johnson when he was governor of Texas--even though LBJ never was governor.

In outdoor activities, like hiking, being notorious among those who've hiked with him for getting the group lost when he's leading.

Displaying odd lines of reasoning. Once in a game of Pictionary--one person in a group draws pictures as clues while the others guess what the pictures add up to--he drew a horizontal line with a little low hump in the middle. No one guessed what he was getting at, which he explained after time ran out was that the little hump in the horizontal line was supposed to be a "bum" (buttocks, not a street person), and that "bum" rhymed with another word which in "Bill"'s mind somehow was then associated with yet another word that was one part of an entire several-word term that was the answer. Somehow "Bill" apparently thought it completely reasonable to assume that other players would figure all this out from seeing a horizontal line with a little low hump in the middle.

Misuse of words in the form of saying a word that's clearly not correct for the meaning he has in mind, but may sound similar to the word he apparently really meant to use. Many examples of this, but one that happens to come to mind was a conversation raising the question of whether beauty contestants are allowed to have enhancements such as boob jobs. "Bill"'s observation was that this probably was allowed since there wouldn't be any way to check the contestants. "After all, they don't have to succumb to an MRI." When he clearly meant "submit" to an MRI.

It's difficult to capture all of this with a few examples, but when you're around "Bill" it often just seems to be a constant jumble of misused words, obviously incorrect information that he "knows" is correct, wrong turns in the car when he's driving, odd reasoning, conclusions that can't be drawn logically from the information at hand, etc., etc.

Maybe the best way to get a picture of this is to think of that observation by that other relative that "Bill"'s mind seems to work like the game Telephone. Just to be clear, though, it's not as if he has some severe mental illness like some kind of schizophrenia or whatever that would involve completely bizarre, otherworldly pictures of his surroundings. It's just that very often his thoughts are just kind of "off." From my observations it seems clear that there is some kind of problem with "Bill"'s brain simply processing information inaccurately. Does anyone have any idea what disorder this might be?

[RockJock1729]

A few possibilities come to mind: Anomic aphasia, so that the words he can produce speech easily, but the meanings get jumbled. A mild form or early onset of some kind of senility such as Alzheimer's; it would explain the odd reasoning. The onset of schizophrenia--he may not be fully delusional, but the odd beliefs, odd reasoning and word-salad tendency may be symptoms.

How old is Bill? Has he suffered from any other mental illnesses before this? Any head injuries, or a history of heart disease, heart attack or stroke? Anyone else in the family show similar symptoms?

What happens when you point out to Bill that his beliefs are factually incorrect? Like the LBJ example--what if you showed him a Wikipedia entry or something that showed LBJ was never governor of Texas? How would he react?

[harhar]

Originally Posted by ogre

A relative I'll call "Bill" seems to have several psychological difficulties. After some reasonably thorough basic reading on the subject of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder I'm pretty well convinced that "Bill" has this condition. He also clearly has a problem with his attention span, though from close observation I think this may be related to the OCPD (unable to focus on the task at hand due to constant worry about situations that might not be in proper order--in his view--elsewhere in the house unless he stops what he's doing to go check).

"Bill" also has another obvious difficulty which seems like something else altogether, unrelated to other problems like OCPD. What happens in this situation is that somehow his brain seems to mis-process information, so that what he talks about doesn't quite make sense. You'll usually sort of get the general idea what he's talking about, but he'll have his facts mixed up or incorrect, and will speak in a tone of authority while misstating what in his mind seem to be clear facts.

Another relative has observed that "Bill"'s mind seems to work like the game Telephone (which I've also heard called Rumor), where in a roomful of people one person whispers a phrase to another person, who whispers it to the next person, and so on until the last person says aloud what he heard from the next-to-last person and invariably the words have changed significantly from the original phrase.

Some examples:

Talking with that tone of great authority mentioned above about issues surrounding Lyndon Johnson when he was governor of Texas--even though LBJ never was governor.

In outdoor activities, like hiking, being notorious among those who've hiked with him for getting the group lost when he's leading.

Displaying odd lines of reasoning. Once in a game of Pictionary--one person in a group draws pictures as clues while the others guess what the pictures add up to--he drew a horizontal line with a little low hump in the middle. No one guessed what he was getting at, which he explained after time ran out was that the little hump in the horizontal line was supposed to be a "bum" (buttocks, not a street person), and that "bum" rhymed with another word which in "Bill"'s mind somehow was then associated with yet another word that was one part of an entire several-word term that was the answer. Somehow "Bill" apparently thought it completely reasonable to assume that other players would figure all this out from seeing a horizontal line with a little low hump in the middle.

Misuse of words in the form of saying a word that's clearly not correct for the meaning he has in mind, but may sound similar to the word he apparently really meant to use. Many examples of this, but one that happens to come to mind was a conversation raising the question of whether beauty contestants are allowed to have enhancements such as boob jobs. "Bill"'s observation was that this probably was allowed since there wouldn't be any way to check the contestants. "After all, they don't have to succumb to an MRI." When he clearly meant "submit" to an MRI.

It's difficult to capture all of this with a few examples, but when you're around "Bill" it often just seems to be a constant jumble of misused words, obviously incorrect information that he "knows" is correct, wrong turns in the car when he's driving, odd reasoning, conclusions that can't be drawn logically from the information at hand, etc., etc.

Maybe the best way to get a picture of this is to think of that observation by that other relative that "Bill"'s mind seems to work like the game Telephone. Just to be clear, though, it's not as if he has some severe mental illness like some kind of schizophrenia or whatever that would involve completely bizarre, otherworldly pictures of his surroundings. It's just that very often his thoughts are just kind of "off." From my observations it seems clear that there is some kind of problem with "Bill"'s brain simply processing information inaccurately. Does anyone have any idea what disorder this might be?

I do the word/substitution jumble thing sometimes.

If I think too hard or I'm in a situation around others where I'm the center of attention and I'm telling a story I'll have a hard time coming up with the right words.

When I'm tired, silly or when I'm drunk I'll substitute "lazy" words or phrases. So for things like expiration dates on food, I'll say "due dates." Granted, I'm aware of this most of the time, I just thought it was interesting.

[ogre]

Thanks to you both for your input. Harhar, what you describe about yourself sounds like the fairly typical misplaced wording everyone, or almost everyone, exhibits occasionally, when flustered, tired, stressed, drunk, etc. It also sounds as if it doesn't go as far as it does sometimes with Bill. If you sometimes call an expiration date a due date, at least there is some similarity in the meanings, unlike the example I gave above where Bill said "succumb" when presumably he meant "submit," where the two words have entirely different meanings and are similar only in sound.

In any case, Bill's inaccurate speech is probably the least frequently seen of any signs of a problem with processing. It's not that his conversation is constantly peppered with malapropisms or simply words that are incorrect for the idea he seems to be trying to convey. This does happen often enough, though, to be noticeable, and to clearly go beyond the usual normal little slip-ups in speech that everyone displays from time to time.

RockJock, of your suggestions, Anomic Aphasia sounds as if it might be a possibility to explain the word thing. Tough to say, because I hadn't heard of this until I read your post, so all I know about it is what I skimmed in a Wiki article right after reading your post.

Bill does not hem and haw before coming up with the wrong word, the way I might expect from someone who was groping for a word that he just wasn't able to form in his conscious mind. Rather, his speech flows smoothly along and here and there includes these word inaccuracies, often enough for it to be noticeable. It does occur to me, though, that maybe over time he's taught himself not to pause and grope for words but simply to flow along and throw in whatever word comes to mind right away. With the chance that he may have learned to do this, I'd think that Anomic Aphasia might at least offer a possible explanation for the the linguistic stumbles.

As for the general tendency for Bill to misinterpret information, I feel sure it's not a sign of senility. Bill entered my family through marriage. He's now 55, but I've known him since he was in his mid twenties and he and his wife were dating, and he showed the same odd mis-perceptions back then.

As for schizophrenia, I'm thinking no, though I wouldn't completely dismiss the possibility. I just don't know enough about psychological disorders to know whether there are forms of schizophrenia that are relatively mild and stay so throughout a person's life, or the disease always involves some significant detachment from reality. Serious abandonment of reality does NOT appear to be happening with Bill. For example, relating to your question about what happens if someone points out factual errors in his statements, if proven wrong he does not stubbornly stick to his assertions. You might expect a schizophrenic to do this because the unreal situation he's created in his head is so real to him that no amount of fact to the contrary will change his mind. By contrast, Bill does not like to be wrong, so he's likely to make a sour face when proven incorrect, but it seems that he does understand that he had the facts wrong.

As I said in the heading of this post, the phenomenon seems like something you might give a name like "information dyslexia." I actually recently read the Wikipedia article on dyslexia, thinking that possibly it was a broad category of disabilities having to do with processing errors in the brain, not just the reading difficulty people often think of as dyslexia. I was thinking that perhaps if dyslexia were such a broad category of disorders, Bill might have a form of dyslexia.

According to that article, the term "dyslexia" is pretty much limited to difficulties with processing visual images related to reading, but if you apply the same idea to facts and information, that would go a long way toward forming a picture of Bill's difficulties in this area. In dyslexia, the letters are there, the light waves travel through space, the visual images stimulate the eye, and then once the images reach the brain, something gets jumbled. It's like the same thing with Bill when it comes to facts and information. He takes in facts, accurate info, etc., and then when the info reaches his brain, something gets jumbled in the way he pieces it together.

Since I can't be inside Bill's mind, I can't be sure he's not creating his own unreal situations inside, but the best I can tell, this appears to me more an issue with how he processes information. Something that may help in trying to picture what's going on is that, while the situation is complex and this doesn't necessarily explain everything, it appears to be true to a great degree that Bill's problem involves taking facts and accurate, real-life information, and then reaching conclusions that can't logically be drawn by piecing together that information.

[stargazzer]

Alright.

Of course the flow in conversation is not staggered. There are many issues here. The problem I feel is that the normal association in his unconscious mind and the working day to day operational mind......is not operating in a normal way.

There are suggestions in the unconscious which are over-powering how people think consciously.

the sucomb.......breast...it was a fitting word for what the subject was suggesting to him and very deep imbedded
"needs" overpowered a conscious piecing together for an objective translation of the event.....this is what we do when we converse about things....we are objective....he is diving toward subjective due to need....so focus ...yes another observable in "bill" ...makes perfect sense.

this idea of the camping and getting people lost....the manic-depressive...the governor story... these things help tell us the nature of whats going on emotionally in some way...( I'm trying to get him out here in front of me.

there are issues in authority which he has surrendered to in early life where ...the boss...was put up ina very high regard.....he is now trying to be that boss....but their is frustration because it is not working out that well ....he knows this because he isn't sensing the "subject of himself in others, mirroring and replacing the self he understands was in motion in this time...when ever it was. this out come helps along other specifics which may be contributing to the highs and lows....my opinion is that man-dep...is an outcome with many contributing properties....its a balance issue ...so..whats being balanced is off or there is too much to balance....with Bill there is too much....everything is coming to surface...too fast....hes trying to express too much of the issue....imagine a football player getting hurt and continuing to play the important game....then monday comes along and the leg hurts...with bill the leg is trying to repair and the "time" feature is not in step with the severity of the injury.....so time is an issue here ...and thats why the two minds uncon...conscious are having trouble

now...it almost sounds as well that there could be either mis-use of a sedative or a bad reaction,,,,or their could be heath issues which don't always seem apparent...nt saying there are huge signs of this ....but this body is what it is...

my opinion seriously ....is guidance...help is requiired because he is going to be "naturally" a type who cannot be told..he's the boss now...he knows everything as he believed this role model did....hes playing it out and requires pawns now,,,its his turn..
so thats why a person who is not connected with his social structure is best....no alpha challenge due to no social implication....

it can be worked out as friends ...but it takes a long time, the friend becomes the boss and you basically have a little kid on your hands ...thats ok to a point but the friend cannot be there all the time ....the idea in this is to replace the working model of authority he has.....the friend gains that same level of trust....and the bill replace's ..."if>>>he feels the new boss is deserving.....now this means he will test the friend...testing to see if the new possible roll model "really cares"
that usually means one of two things....friendship lost....or a little kid because the friend has trained.

independent help is best plus there could zillions of other things as mentioned above.....this is only opinion....good luck and my deepest respect for your caring way..( this does not neccesarily mean that the past authority figure was cruel ect...it means that there is a translation issue of how he perceived these events when young....the unconscious is timeless and goes about its job when the whole body feels the life is ready...just like the football player and the leg...and dreams that come about after a week off and things appear settled down or getting that new job , settling in..getting relaxed and boom...dreams coming out of nowhere with past events...so thats why a pro is best...its quicker, more efficient....and gotta say all the drugs are very over used....economy...they want to reduce the spending..in med....those pill Co and the Dr profit?????...too much temptation to write the prescription....kids in school...attitude issues...its all connected and wired for a mess. Obamnation has got to go on every issue imaginable...apologies for the added opinion off topic....

[stargazzer]

somebody just sent me a rep.... I don't know if it was sincere or a wise-crack because I cannot hear the tone. It is in-complete in normally expected texture, as stated.

[ogre]

Thanks for offering your thoughts, Stargazzer. I appreciate the apology for the political opinion, but would also appreciate it if those posting from now on would stay away from politics and offer opinions only about the subject at hand.

Stargazzer, one thing that seems very clear even to someone like myself, a layman where the field of psychology is concerned, is that, as you observed, there is a lot going on here. I doubt that any single disorder accounts for all of the personality and behavioral issues that cause Bill problems. It very much appears that there are two distinct disorders, at a minimum, affecting his life.

You could be onto something when you talk about authority and authority figures. Bill's personal history involves a mother who abandoned the family, and a distant but strict father who eventually also abandoned the family and left his children to be raised by his second wife. The father's second wife was not highly educated, and managed to support the family by working at low-paying unskilled jobs. This made for very tight financial circumstances, and left Bill and his brother having to contribute to the family's finances and manage all the home maintenance (because there was no money to pay contractors or repairmen) from the time they were still at the preteen age or very early teens. I can see how it's possible that the example of a father who was strict and overbearing but also distant and cold could combine with the experience of having to take on adult responsibilities at far too young an age, to cause serious issues down deep inside with the issue of authority, or being the boss. I can see how this could possibly lead to a deep inner conflict between feeling the need to be in charge and feeling an aversion to being required to fill an adult role as the person in charge.

I think that such a conflict may especially work as an explanation for another issue with Bill. I mentioned in my first post that I'm pretty well convinced that, along with other issues, Bill likely has obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. I have read that a common theory about OCPD is that people are born with the potential for the disorder, but that some experience in life is needed to trigger it and cause the person to actually exhibit this behavior. I've speculated that a possible trigger in Bill's case may have been the situation where at too young an age Bill found it necessary to take charge of key family affairs, in tight financial circumstances where it often may have been really true that things had to be done exactly right or the family could have been in trouble. The actual need at times to get things exactly right could have brought to the surface what had been only the potential for OCPD, a disorder characterized in part by a tendency to see one exact right way to do everything and to believe that anything that deviates even slightly from the person's notion of the "right" way to do something is completely wrong. I can very much see how this could have been brought to life by Bill's family situation during his youth.

From observing Bill for many years now, I still tend to think that Bill's problem with getting information wrong and developing inaccurate pictures of what facts add up to is more of an issue with processing, as in brain mechanics. Being a layman, I may be completely unaware of some psychological theory that could explain how an inner conflict related to assuming authority might explain Bill's mis-perceiving of information, but based on observation, it appears to be more of an issue with the brain's functioning. As I said in my last post, it looks very much like a phenomenon similar to dyslexia, except with facts, data, and information rather than visual images of letters and words.

[stargazzer]

Dyslexia is sometimes attributed to head injury or at times believed to be inherited...this is where the clinical setting would be desirable I think.....I read above and have something I need to do for a few hours, this gives me a chance to add the additional info and get back in the later evening. OCPD is a specific , if your comfortable, what is the specific compulsion?
A perfectionist..? how so.?

[ogre]

With this thread I'm more interested in discussing the apparent issues with processing information than OCPD. The reason is that I've read enough about OCPD to feel pretty confident that Bill has this disorder. My main purpose with this thread is to get some input on what specific disorder might be behind the processing issues, since I don't have any idea what specific disability might be at work here in the way I do believe I have OCPD identified. However, since I've brought it up, and since a full picture of Bill involves looking at obsessive-compulsive behavior, I'll do some discussion of that here.

When you say that OCPD gets specific, I think you may have obsessive-compulsive disorder in mind. That's the one where people feel compelled to engage repetitively in specific behaviors (washing hands, checking furniture to make sure each piece is in exactly the "right" spot down to the millimeter, checking doors and windows "just one more time" to make sure the house is secure before going out somewhere). It's my understanding that in order for someone to truly have OCD, the person has to engage in these behaviors to the point where it really disrupts his life and/or causes problems for people around him. For example, giving the doorknob a couple of extra shakes when you leave the house, to make sure the house is really locked up securely, would not be OCD. If a man started showing up late to work because he found it difficult to even get to the car to begin his commute because he felt compelled to go back over and over and over to check the door (or maybe all the doors and all the windows) just one more time, that would likely be a case of OCD.

Despite the similarity in names, obsessive-compulsive PERSONALITY disorder is a different animal. In fact, one key difference is that OCPD does not involve one behavior or a few specific behaviors, but shows up as a general mindset or view of the world. Basically, it involves an extremely narrow view of the world and an extremely rigid mindset, and this applies to many situations or even to everything going on around the person or of which the person is aware. There is a tendency for someone with OCPD to do what is called "thinking in absolutes." What this means is that this person may be able to comprehend on an intellectual level the idea behind sayings like "different strokes . . . " or ". . . more than one way to skin a cat" but has trouble really understanding this idea down inside as applied to his own life. To someone with OCPD, with many things, or everything, there is only one exact, down to the finest detail, correct way for a situation to be or for a task to be performed. Any, even slight, deviation from whatever the person sees as the exact right way for some situation to be is totally wrong, no good at all.

As I understand it, being aware of situations that aren't "right" causes the person to become anxious and to be obsessed with worry over the fact that this, that, and the other thing isn't "right." This leads to a compulsion to get control over as many situations as possible going on around the person so that he can make things be the way they're supposed to be. I'm sure that a psychologist would look at a number of specifics before diagnosing OCPD, so a layman has to be careful about assuming that every controlling kind of person has this disorder, but if you've ever known someone who was an extreme case of what people call a control freak, there may be a decent chance that this person had OCPD. The disorder involves a compulsive need to control everything, to make sure that everything is exactly "right."

A few examples of how this shows up in Bill are:

1) rigid ideas about which extracurricular activities were suitable for his sons when they were kids (any activity other than the same ones Bill was involved with as a kid was totally wrong) and a tendency for him to apply high pressure in pushing them toward the "right" activities, and much tension when they pursued other interests of their own;

2) once the kids were involved in activities, the compulsive need on Bill's part to take over and run every activity the kids were involved in--HAVING to pound and manipulate his way into being the scoutmaster of the Boy Scout troop, the coach of the Little League or rec league team, etc., because (according to Bill's actual statements) the scoutmaster, coach, etc., who held each position when the kids first joined these organizations was doing it all wrong and Bill knew the right way to do it;

3) high tension during his sons' college years because both sons chose majors Bill completely disapproved of, to the point where Bill at one time stated openly his determination to cut off funding for his older son's college studies if the son didn't change to a major Bill approved of (something I have no doubt Bill would have done except that his wife wouldn't go along with this);

4) as a result of various family dynamics having it fall to Bill to manage another relative's (not one of his sons) college fund, and basically cutting off funding and leaving the guy living in poverty and struggling to get back on his feet because Bill did not approve of his chosen major or career goals;

5) getting fired from the last job he had before taking his current job, where he can work semi-independently, because he tried to take over and tell the big honchos how to run the company because they were running the business all wrong and he knew the right way to do it.

As you can see, it's bad, and it affects people beyond Bill himself. I've discussed this some and gotten some advice at a discussion forum on a website specifically devoted to OCPD. Maybe it's useful for me to have given this overview here so people get a good picture of Bill, but on this thread I'm more interested in thoughts about what disorder might be behind the errors in processing information because in that case I have no clue what might be the cause.

[NinaN]

The contol issues and God complex (he knows better than anyone else) sound like an alcoholic (or child of one). That might also explain a lot of the other confusion. Any chance he's drinking and you don't know it?