Conceptualizing Psychopathology Flashcards
Who was the first Professor of Psychology in Australia?
Henry Tasman.
Abnormal psychology is commonly defined as the field of psychology that:
Aims to understand, explain, and modify abnormal behaviors.
What is statistical rarity used to define?
Abnormality.
Explain statistical rarity.
Individuals who possess characteristics that differ from the majority of the population can be seen as abnormal.
What is a disadvantage of statistical rarity?
Not limited to mental disorders, and can class the gifted as abnormal.
Explain deviance or norm violation.
A behavior is abnormal if it is deemed socially unacceptable.
What is an issue with using norm violation to define abnormality?
Oppressing any non-conformist behaviors.
What is deviance or norm violation used to define?
Abnormality.
What is distress used to define?
Abnormality.
What is used to differentiate abnormal psychology from criminology or forensic psychology?
Abnormal behavior causes stress to the person.
What does distress allow the individual to do regarding their behaviors?
Self-define them as abnormal or not.
Give some limitations of using distress as a way to define abnormality. (2)
Some individuals cause themselves great personal suffering for socially acceptable reasons, and many people that experience abnormal behaviors do not feel distress.
Define maladaptive.
Behavior that interferes with a person’s ability to meet the requirements of everyday life.
Give the four elements for identifying abnormality.
Statistical rarity, deviance or norm violation, distress, and dysfunction.
Define clinically significant.
The disorder causes substantial impairment in social, occupational or other areas of functioning.
What is a mental disorder according to the DSM?
A syndrome characterized by clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning.
What are mental disorders usually associated with?
Significant distress of disability in social, occupational, or other important activities.
Explain Wakefield’s harmful dysfunction analysis.
The concept of a mental disorder involves both a factual component and a value component.
What is Wakefield’s factual component?
Dysfunction.
What is Wakefield’s value component?
Harmful.
What does Wakefield’s factual component specify?
There is an internal dysfunction present, where an internal psychological mechanism has failed to carry out its natural function.
What does Wakefield’s internal dsyfunction specification allow?
Differentiation between mental disorder and social deviation or non-conformance.
How does Wakefield conceptualize mental disorders?
Between the concept of physical disorder and social deviance.
Give some criticisms of Wakefield’s analysis.
Difficulty ascertaining the normal evolutionary function of psychological processes and difficulty identifying failure of these processes.
Define mental illness.
Severe abnormal thoughts, behaviors and feelings caused by a physical illness.
Define dementia.
A neurological disorder in which a gradual decline of intellectual functioning occurs.
What is affect?
Experience of feeling or emotion.
What was Heinrich Neumann’s view of insanity?
It was a single disease that progresses from one major symptom to another over time, with increasingly severe symptoms.
Give Heinrich Neumann’s symptoms of insanity.
Depression, agitation, confusion, paranoia, and dementia.
Define syndrome.
A set of symptoms that tend to occur together.
Give another name for symptom clusters.
Disorders.
What is the ultimate goal of psychiatric classification?
To describe symptom clusters that have common causes and respond to common treatments.
Give Paracelsus’ three classes of mental illness.
Vesania, lunacy, and insanity.
Explain vesania.
Caused by poisons.
Explain lunacy.
Influenced by the phases of the moon.
Explain insanity.
A disease caused by heredity.
What did Broca identify?
An area of the brain damaged in patients with expressive aphasia.
What is expressive aphasia?
An inability to produce meaningful speech.
What did Wernicke identify?
Damage in an area of the brain associated with receptive aphasia.
What is receptive aphasia?
An inability to understand speech.
What two mental illnesses did Emil Kraepelin initially uncover?
Dementia praecox and manic-depressive disorder.
What is electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)?
Treatment for mood disorders that involves the induction of a brain seizure by passing electrical current through the patient’s brain while anesthetized.
What is psychosurgery?
Biological treatment for a psychological disorder in which a neurosurgeon attempts to destroy small areas of the brain though to be involved in producing the symptoms.
What is the prefrontal cortex? (4)
A region at the front of the brain important for language, emotional expression, planning and production of new ideas, and the mediation of social interactions.
What is the biological approach?
Theories that explain abnormal behaviors in terms of a biological dysfunction.
Give the two main areas that contemporary biological theories focus on.
Structural brain abnormalities and neurochemical imbalances.
Give two main causes for brain abnormalities and neurochemical imbalances.
Genetics and trauma.
Explain the psychological approach.
Theories that explain abnormality in terms of psychological factors such as disturbed personality, behavior and ways of thinking.
What is psychoanalysis?
A form of treatment pioneered by Freud that focuses on hidden conflicts and the unconscious.
What techniques does psychoanalysis use?
Dream analysis and free association.
What is psychotherapy?
Treatment for abnormality that consists of a therapist and client discussing the client’s symptoms.
What is the unconscious.
The part of the personality of which the conscious ego is unaware.
What is the id?
The most primitive part of the unconscious which consists of drives and impulses seeking immediate gratification.
Explain libido.
Psychical energy within the id.
Explain the pleasure principle.
The drive to maximize pleasure and minimize pain as quickly as possible.
What is the ego?
Part of the psyche that channels libido acceptable to the superego and within the constraints of reality.
What is the superego?
Part of the unconscious that consists of the absolute moral standards internalised from parents and the wider views of society.
What is the morality principle?
The motivational force of the superego, which drives the individual to act strictly in accordance with internalised moral standards.
What are defense mechanisms?
Strategies the ego uses to disguise or transform unacceptable, unconscious wishes or impulses.
Give some examples of defense mechanisms.
Repression, denial, projection, reaction formation, rationalisation, displacement, intellectualisation, regression, and sublimation.
Explain repression.
Avoiding anxiety by not allowing thoughts to become conscious.
Explain denial.
Avoiding anxiety by refusing to recognise aspects of reality.
Explain projection.
Avoiding anxiety by attributing their unacceptable thoughts, emotions or desires onto another.
Explain rationalisation.
Avoiding anxiety by creating a socially acceptable reason for an action, thought or emotion that has acceptable underlying reasons.
Explain reaction formation.
Avoiding anxiety by acting in the opposite of their impulses.
Explain displacement.
Avoiding anxiety by shifting unacceptable impulses onto a substitute.
Explain intellectualisation.
Avoiding anxiety by creating a logical response.
Explain regression.
Avoiding anxiety by retreating to an earlier developmental stage.
Explain sublimation.
Avoiding anxiety by expressing urges in ways that are acceptable to society.
Define neurosis.
A set of maladaptive symptoms caused by unconscious conflict and its associated anxiety.
Define psychosis.
A state involving a loss of contact with reality in whihc the individual experiences symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations.
What are psychodynamic theories?
Theories that focus on the interplay between unconscious psychological processes in determining thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.
Explain separation-individuation.
Newborns have no sense of self separate from their mothers. and so undergo a process of developing a sense of self.
What is the behavioral approach?
Theories that rely on the principles of learning to explain both normal and abnormal behavior.
What is classical conditioning?
A form of learning in which a neutral stimulus, through its repeated association with a stimulus that naturally elicits a certain response, acquires the ability to produce the same response.
What is an unconditioned response?
The response that naturally follows when a certain stimulus appears.
What is a conditioned response?
A learned response that is elicited by a conditioned stimulus following classical conditioning.
What is an unconditioned stimulus?
A stimulus that naturally elicits a reaction.
What is a conditioned stimulus?
Previously neutral stimulus, that, when paired with an unconditioned stimulus, becomes sufficient to elicit a response.
Who discovered operant conditioning?
Thorndike.
What is the basis of operant conditioning?
Behaviors that are rewarded are likely to repeat, while behaviors that are punished are likely to be avoided.
What is aversion therapy?
Treatment than involves the pairing of an unpleasant stimulus with a deviant or maladaptive source of pleasure in order to induce an aversive reaction to the formerly pleasurable stimulus.
Explain systematic desensitization.
A behavioural technique that aims to reduce the client’s anxiety through progressive exposure to feared stimuli paired with the induction of a relaxation response.
Bandura was the first to describe and explain the mechanisms of:
Modelling.
What does modelling infer about the learning process?
Learning cannot be explained without referring to internal, mental processes like values, beliefs, thoughts, or expectations.
What is the cognitive approach?
Theories that focus on dysfunctional ways of thinking as the causes of abnormal behavior.
Name two of the first cognitive psychologists.
Beck and Ellis.
What did Ellis develop?
Rational-emotive therapy.
What does rational-emotive therapy argue?
People do not respond to events themselves, but to their own interpretations of events.
In Ellis’ ABC model, what do A B and C represent?
A represents the event, B the person’s interpretation of the event, and C is the person’s reactions to the event.
How did Ellis explain abnormal behavior?
Some individuals hold irrational beliefs that influence their reactions to events in unhelpful ways.
Give some examples of cognitive distortions.
Black and white thinking, setting unrealistic expectations, selective thinking, converting positives into negatives, over-generalising, exaggerating, catastrophising, personalising, mistaking feelings for facts, and jumping to negative conclusions.
What is cognitive restructuring?
The client learns to identify, challenge, and replace their dysfunctional beliefs with more realistic of helpful beliefs.
What is the humanistic approach?
Theories based on the view that the natural tendency of humans is towards growth and self-actualisation.
According to the humanistic approach, when does abnormality arise?
As a result of societal pressures to conform to that clash with a person’s self-actualisation process.
What is unconditional positive regard?
Part of person-centered therapy, where the therapist expresses full acceptance of the client’s feelings and behaviors without judgement.
Give two influential humanistic psychologists.
Maslow and Rogers.
What are conditions of worth?
Standards of behavior imposed on an individual by others that must be met in order to obtain their approval.
What does psychopathology refer to?
The study of psychological abnormality or manifestations of psychological abnormality.
Who developed person-centered therapy?
Carl Rogers.
Explain person-centered therapy.
Consists of an equal relationship between the therapist and client, and in which the client receives unconditional positive regard and empathy from the therapist in order to attain self-actualisation.
What did Rogers believe was the core of all psychopathology?
Lack of unconditional positive regard.
According to Rogers, what causes anxiety or distress?
Incongruity between one’s actual and perceived selves.
What are some limitations of the humanistic perspective?
Concepts are difficult to measure or falsify.
What is the biopsychosocial approach?
The view that biological, psychological and social factors contribute to the development of abnormality.
Explain the Diathesis-Stress model.
The view that abnormality is caused by the combination of a vulnerability or predisposition (the diathesis) and life events (the stressor).
