Insight - Psychiatry

Psychiatry

See also: Egodystonic, Egosyntonic, Self-awareness, and Prodrome

In psychology and psychiatry, insight can mean the ability to recognize one's own mental illness. This form of insight has multiple dimensions, such as recognizing the need for treatment, and recognizing consequences of one's behavior as stemming from an illness. A person with very poor recognition or acknowledgment is referred to as having "poor insight" or "lack of insight". The most extreme form is anosognosia, the total absence of insight into one's own mental illness. Many mental illnesses are associated with varying levels of insight. For example, people with obsessive compulsive disorder and various phobias tend to have relatively good insight that they have a problem and that their thoughts and/or actions are unreasonable, yet are compelled to carry out the thoughts and actions regardless. Patients with Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, and various psychotic conditions tend to have very poor awareness that anything is wrong with them.

"Insight" can also refer to other matters in psychology; ] behavior requiring insight is the subject of insight phenomenology.

An insight is the derivation of a rule which links cause with effect. The mind is a model of the universe built up from insights.

Thoughts of the mind fall into two categories:

1. Analysis of past experience with the purpose of gaining insight for use within this model at a later date
2. Simulations of future scenarios using existing insights in the mind model in order to predict outcomes

A mature mind has assimilated many insights and understands cause and effect. When insight is not subordinate to a validation discipline like the 'scientific method', fallacious thinking can result in a confused mind.

Intuition, which is often described in the popular literature as an alternative thought process, is merely another manifestation of insight. In this process, multiple bits of seemingly unrelated data are linked together and a hypothesis or plan of action is generated. Usually this process is generated in a novel situation. Such a circumstance links data which had previously seemed unrelated. The categories and analytical process, however, are not distinct from any other form of insight. The only difference is the degree of novelty of the stimulus.