Perseveration

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The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Perseveration

the persistent recurrence in a human being of a given mental image, action, or state. Perseveration can arise in the motor sphere, as in clonic or tonic perseveration; in the sensory sphere, as in certain eidetic phenomena; in the emotional sphere, in which case it is called perseveration of affect; and in the intellectual sphere. It arises in everyday life, for example, in the form of certain erroneous acts, slips of the pen, or slips of the tongue; it is especially common under conditions of fatigue or severe emotional strain, as well as in certain pathological states, for example, some mental diseases and certain types of localized lesions in the brain. Strictly speaking, perseveration, which is an essentially isolated and accidental phenomenon within the total context of a person’s mental life, should not be confused with what is referred to in psychiatry as an idée fixe, or obsessive thought.

REFERENCES

Zeigarnik, B. V. Vvedenie v patopsikhologiiu. Moscow, 1969.
Zimmer, O. Perseveration, Einstellung und Bereitschaft. Bonn, 1933.

A. A. PUZYREI

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