Description and type: perception of connections between officially unrelated facts, states, or events. Digressive/rebellious disorder.
Symptoms and signs: student pathologically applies fundamentally sound and acceptable but currently extrinsic knowledge to materials or issues under consideration, especially by asking disruptive questions of instructor during or after lecture. Generates anxiety by transgressing approved disciplinary boundaries. Cites inappropriate sources in research papers and class discussions (mass-market books on psychology, philosophy, religion, etc., books and articles from outside the field currently under consideration). Disrupts classroom consensus by inciting conflict and confrontation; may respond to appropriate disciplinary measures with frustration, leading to anger and/or crying. May, for example, raise the "problem" of the impact of economic or ideological factors on intellectual activities, or of the "relation" between classroom work and therapeutic social control.
Etiology: improper channeling of confusion into critical thinking. Familial and educational background typically displays inadequate ridicule from authority figures and well-socialized peers and excessive tolerance for exploration of holistic phenomena, with subsequent improper sublimation of sense-making drives.
Treatment: denialozide (Antisoma 300), supplemented in some cases with pedagorine (Apple-a-Day) or authoritotropin (Deferentine D).
Prognosis: mixed. Disruptive connectivity can be confused by pharmaceutical means, but sufferers from connectivitis typically respond to confusion as a goad to further connectivity. In mild, intermittent cases, a complete cure is usually possible; aversion therapy (contemptuous disbelief, in some cases isolation) may be indicated for more extreme cases.
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