The sentence John says to his mother, “I will rake the leaves this afternoon. Let’s leave soon for the store. We can store the leaves in the basement.”, is an example of loosening of associations.
The discourse comprising of a sequence of unrelated or only remotely related ideas is a type of thought disorder called derailment or also known as loosening of association.
There are three kinds of loosening of associations, namely:
Derailment – comprised of odd tangential associations between ideas
Talking past the point – the patient skirts around point of discussion even though he seems close to it
Verbigeration – the senseless repetition of phrases of sounds in the patient’s speech
