thinking in which words, signs, objects, or events are ascribed some special, abstract (having no direct relation), and sometimes just an accidental meaning, a certain symbolic meaning. The meaning of symbols is often purely personal, sometimes it can come into direct conflict with the meanings that other people use for the same signs/words/objects. Sometimes a person uses several different meanings for the same symbol at once or repeatedly changes its meanings (so the impression of randomness is created when choosing the meanings attributed to the symbol), which makes it even more difficult for others to understand the symbols. Symbolic thinking can be found in schizophrenia (especially in cases with the most non-standard, unexpected use of symbols), psychoorganic syndrome.