Sentence:  Like someone who'd learned how best to cope with chronic illness, he never allowed himself to think of his paranoia as an aspect of self. It was there, constantly and intimately, and he relied on it professionally, but he wouldn't allow it to spread, become jungle. He cultivated it on its own special plot, and checked it daily for news it might bring: hunches, <WSD>lateralisms</WSD>, frank anomalies. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  Lateral thinking; the process of approaching a subject from multiple sides, or an instance of this process.