A man describes, across several different experiences, a general loss of the ordinary sense that his thoughts belong exclusively to him — sometimes they are placed into his mind, sometimes taken out, sometimes made accessible to others. What is the general term for this family of experiences?
This is thought alienation: a felt loss of the ordinary, usually unnoticed sense that one's thoughts belong exclusively to oneself, with the person experiencing their thinking as interfered with, shared, or controlled by an outside influence, encompassing insertion, withdrawal, and broadcasting as its distinct sub-types. It is not an obsession, in which the thought is unwanted but still recognised as the person's own, rather than felt as literally foreign or externally controlled. It is not a passivity phenomenon specifically, which concerns actions and feelings rather than thoughts. And it is not formal thought disorder, which concerns the organisation and structure of thinking, not a felt loss of ownership over thought content.
References
- Casey, P. & Kelly, B. (2019). Fish's Clinical Psychopathology, 4th ed. Ch. 4, 'Disorders of Thought and Speech'.