思维反复性

17:11 Feb 21, 2014 

...but the 1st definition in my own go-to dictionary for 反复 is:

反复
基本解释：
①一遍又一遍；多次重复：～思考 ㄧ～实践。
②颠过来倒过去；翻悔：～无常ㄧ说一是一，说二是二，决不～。

I guess I'm getting caught up on that, and what I see as a correlation to terms other than "volatile temperament" in academic literature in psychology. In any case, I greatly appreciate everyone's feedback.

06:34 Feb 21, 2014 

Definition 1 of fanfu in my go-to dictionary: (1) [reversal]∶翻悔;变化无常
Looking at the rest of the explanation: 缺乏独立...判断...能力，情绪...起伏波动...，易冲动，...缺乏...稳定性. This is not about doing one thing over and over. It's about changing all the time, being inconsistent. There's nothing in the explanation to support the "repetition" reading of 反复, but if you read it as "reversal," it makes reasonable sense.

06:17 Feb 21, 2014 

That's interesting, because for me, I'm more caught up on the repetitive nature of the thoughts (经常会发现她们在思想上经常出现反复) and their negative effect on the psyche of the individual. I do not understand there to be any self-contradiction at all, but there certainly is a bevy of other detrimental emotions.

05:33 Feb 21, 2014 

From the explanation here it's not so much repetition as "going back on/contradicting oneself". Of all the options, I still like volatility the best. Fragility would be another related concept, or you could try something like vacillation.

22:25 Feb 20, 2014 

I found an interesting article that describes the distinction between these two: http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2011/03/repetitive-thou...

Some people equate repetitive thought (i.e., thought characterized by repetition) with repetitious thought (i.e., thought characterized by unnecessary and tedious repetition), but there are many forms of repetitive thought that are not tedious and are perhaps even necessary. Mental simulation or planning, for example, can help people be more effective and more successfully meet their goals.

Any thoughts?

18:13 Feb 20, 2014 

My understanding is that this is not a psychological ailment at all, but a behavior that characterizes many juvenile offenders (particularly after they are incarcerated). There are no lists of disorders with names, no personality type names, nothing like that, but the text describes behaviors and feelings like vanity, unrealistic comparisons, lack of awareness concerning their sentences, face, jealousy, etc. Here is one such list:

假改造、假认罪、爱慕虚荣、互相攀比、服刑意识差、思想波动大，爱面子，善妒忌、小心眼、急躁、冲动等不利于改造的行为

09:53 Feb 20, 2014 

...to disorders recognised in western psychology? This one reads very much like a personality description rather than a disorder. Can you tell us from the context what type of word it is? E.g. name of a disorder, name of a personality type, diagnosis, personality characteristic...

17:06 Feb 19, 2014 

if you are looking for a clinical diagnosis then there would be a wide range fitting the Chinese text description, from the OCD that's already mentioned to Juvenile Bipolar Disorder (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0890856709...
I wouldn't rush to diagnose all the juvenile offenders with a single psychological ailment though.

15:56 Feb 19, 2014 

As posted by suliedu, "This is more a descriptive expression than a special term used in psychology." The only psychology reference that has been posted is the one for repetitive thought. I am looking for the term that would be used by a psychologist in a study on juvenile offenders in the prison system.