While describing his weekend in an otherwise clear, well-organised way, a patient's account is suddenly and repeatedly punctuated by short, unrelated, self-contained remarks about entirely different topics, each of which makes complete sense on its own before the original account resumes. Before revealing the answer: is this drivelling thinking?
No, this is more consistent with desultory thinking than with drivelling thinking. Drivelling thinking involves the internal components of one complex thought becoming muddled together; here, the original account remains internally coherent and organised, interrupted instead by separate, unrelated, self-contained ideas intruding from outside, which is the defining pattern of desultory thinking rather than an internal breakdown of one thought's structure.
References
- Casey, P. & Kelly, B. (2019). Fish's Clinical Psychopathology, 4th ed. Ch. 4, 'Disorders of Thought and Speech'.