Organizational disorders in the mind of the psychopathic child

Aim of this paper is to analyze general mechanisms of cognitive disfunctioning in different psychopathological situations, Six levels of cognitive disfunctioning are described that represent a sort of general cognitive psychopathology. 1) metacognitive disfunctioning (that is defective utilization of cognitive resources); 2) cognitive disharmony (excessive eterogeneity in the different parts of cognitive structure); 3) oscillating reasoning (reduced temporal coherence of cognitive functioning, with excessive changes from one phase to another), 4) delay of reasoning organization (general hypotrophic development of cognitive structure); 5) cognitive disorganization (general distortion and imbalance of cognitive structure); 6) evolution to an intellectual disability (global impairment of cognitive structure and function). These levels can represent different phases in the developmental course of these psychopathological diseases.