Talk:Intrusive thought

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 24 August 2020 and 11 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Erd0617. Peer reviewers: Justyss Chi.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 23:08, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 8 January 2020 and 25 April 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Clarheart.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 00:45, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

This topic is in many ways unclear.
It seems that this article argues that there are 3 different categories of intrusive thoughts. Blasphemous religious thoughts, sexual thoughts and violent thoughts. I'm not saying that these kinds of thoughts can not be intrusive i'm just saying that i can identify many other kinds of intrusive thoughts that can't be placed in either of these categories. I guess it all comes down to what the definition of an intrusive thought really is, but if the definition is that it can only be blasphemous religious thoughts, violent thoughts or inappropriate sexual thoughts, then it is a rather weird definition. If on the other hand, intrusive thoughts are any involuntary thoughts that enters the mind, then categorizing the thoughts the 3 categories seems weird! Now if i decide to do a math-problem i will sit down and think about the math-problem at hand. In my opinion this is the exact opposite of an intrusive thought, because i am in control of the kind of thoughts that i'm thinking. If on the other hand someone shouts pink elephant and i get the image of a pink elephant in my head, and my mind starts swirling around the idea of pink elephants, then that would be an involuntary thought. Is it also intrusive then?? Nevertheless these 3 categories seems weird and useless to me, for example it is not possible to have religious blasphemous thoughts if you are not a religious person. Questions: If someone asks me to think of a pink panther i will probably not be able to not think of a pink panther, is that not an intrusive thought?? Or does intrusive thoughts have to be distressing and upsetting in nature?? What about if i all of a sudden start to think about dying and death?? Kind of a distressing and upsetting thought and probably not something that i wish to think about, but maybe i'm unable to put the thought out of my head again. Maybe this thought even begins to be somewhat obsessive... Is that not an example of intrusive thoughts?? I can neither place that type of thought in the category of inappropriate sexual, religious blasphemous or violent thoughts! This article talks a lot about OCD too, so when a person starts thinking that something horrible will happen unless he knocks 7 times on the table, jumps on one foot up and down the stairs 3 times etc. etc. I can again neither place that kind of thought in neither sexual, violent or religious blasphemous... Now i'm not a psychologist so i don't really have any professional background to write about this, but it just seems very weird to me, the way this article is written at the current moment... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mortenrobinson (talk • contribs) 20:38, 3 April 2012 (UTC)


 * It seems like an editor bought a book written by one single guy and based the entire article on his narrow view. This article is indeed completely wrong and misleading. Although your examples in your comment are not defined as "intrusive thoughts". TMCk (talk) 22:16, 3 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Okay, so what is the correct definition. I'm guessing intrusive thoughts are involuntary thoughts, but involuntary thoughts are not necessarily intrusive thoughts. Is it that intrusive thoughts are involuntary thoughts where a specific succeeding compulsive action can be linked to the thought??? Mortenrobinson (talk 11:23, 4 April 2012 (UTC)


 * It is always good practice to read /check the citations given especially if in doubt about the accuracy of an article. Here is a good one: . TMCk (talk) 13:39, 4 April 2012 (UTC)


 * As the first person said "What about if I all of a sudden start to think about dying and death?? Kind of a distressing and upsetting thought and probably not something that I wish to think about, but maybe I'm unable to put the thought out of my head again. Maybe this thought even begins to be somewhat obsessive..."... These are precisely the kind of persistent thoughts I keep having, and the mentioned potential fixation was likely possible with the presence of ADHD. But... seeing that the main article with the exception of the opening paragraph divided intrusive thoughts into 3 subcategories, and neither could cover something like this... it's just... something that feels weird, wrong, and not very much well thought out.

However, there is room for improvement; with the addition of a 4th subcategory, otherwise known as fears, I feel that the problem would likely be sorted. Fear preys on the mind after all, manipulating thoughts and actions, inflicting anxiety and tormenting the individual. They can become obsessive, they can become fixations, and they can be highly intrusive. And while fears can be twisted to be applicable to all of the other subcategories, I feel that fear alone can cover other aspects that otherwise would go amiss by violent, sexual, and religious thoughts. 173.65.65.145 (talk) 22:23, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Added the perspective of Analytical Psychology
I've added it since I'm a student of it and thought it could be helpful to individuals who prefer this particular paradigm. I still need to get the sources that could be mainly Jung's Tavistock lectures or some other works. 201.17.48.114 (talk) 12:08, 29 July 2012‎ (UTC)

Secondary review sources for updating
Sandy Georgia (Talk) 23:31, 31 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Clarheart, I see that you are or were a WP:Student editor. Per WP:MEDRS and what SandyGeorgia stated above, please try to stick to WP:MEDRS-compliant sources. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 22:28, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

What about intrusive memories?
I seem to suffer intrusive memories rather than intrusive thoughts, where little things others did or said that I consider disrespectful or where I felt powerless play over and over, often with revenge fantasies. They are not the same is intrusive thoughts as defined here, since this is about things that have really happened. It is just that the things are amplified way out of proportion at seeming random times. I think this could warrant a new article. It has some facets of PTSD, but the events are not strong enough to cause that is most people. 68.67.244.159 (talk) 05:26, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Adding material
I have added some additional resources to a few sections including the "Age factors," "PTSD," and "Exposure Therapy." I plan to continue to add additional information as I find resources that are compatible with this topic in order to increase the amount of information this topic has on Wikipedia. It might be interesting to add some demographic sections in regard to if SES, race, certain physical disabilities playing a part of the intensity of intrusive thoughts. Of course, if no acceptable research has been found on these topics, they will not be added. Let me know if there is anything I could change/make better. Erd0617 (talk) 19:40, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Erd0617, hi. I see that you are a WP:Student editor.


 * Regarding this? I kept the referencing you added. But I restored the previous lead sentence, because, like I stated in the edit history, the previous lead sentence explains the matter better. Stating that they are thoughts that almost everyone experiences is vague and can be stated about various things, including thoughts about sexual activity.


 * No need to WP:Ping me if you reply. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 22:28, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Epidemiology section: a bit of a disaster
I would recommend scrapping this section entirely (although some sort of section on epidemiology would be worth including) as in its current form it lacks cohesion and is almost entirely devoid of encyclopaedic content. However I do not feel I have the authority to just obliterate an entire section, so hopefully someone else with more guts and my axe will actually delete it! Anditres (talk) 01:22, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Misleading/missing citation
>>"This arousal within the body parts is due to conditioned physiological responses in the brain, which do not respond to the subject of the sexual intrusive thought but rather to the fact that a sexual thought is occurring at all and thus engage an automatic response (research indicates that the correlation between what the genitalia regard as "sexually relevant" and what the brain regards as "sexually appealing" only correlates 50% of the time in men and 10% of the time in women).[25]"

The cited article very loosely corresponds to the initial statement (somatic response section of the article), but the "research" part in brackets appears to me to be a leftover of a previous, now removed source (Nagoski, E (2015), Come as You Are), though I have no way to check if that book included this statistic. The last version with the old citation is from 12 October 2022.

Could somebody check and appropriately edit this? Thanks from a wiki-noob. 2001:4BC9:1F90:6233:40A:8498:364F:759C (talk) 17:58, 9 November 2023 (UTC)


 * The statistic does appear to be on pages 195 and 196 of the referenced book. There was a "Better source needed" tag on that book's use as a source, and so I assume the bad source was removed but the content from that source was left in. Without a source I think the parenthetical stuff there should be removed. Kimen8 (talk) 18:33, 9 November 2023 (UTC)