<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">The field of abnormal psychology seeks to understand the causes of mental disorders, how to best define and categorize such disorders, and the phenomena associated with these conditions.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Clinical psychology applies the knowledge developed through the study of abnormal, developmental, and other fields of psychology, to diagnose, treat, and prevent mental disorders.</li></ul>

Abnormal vs Clinical Psychology

Defining what constitutes abnormality is a challenge because there is no single definition that fits all instances, and agreement between observers and across cultures is low. With so many disorders, categorization and classification are needed to organize our knowledge of the field. One system of categorization is provided by DSM, published by APA.

Defining Abnormality

The main concern of abnormal psychology is the way in which abnormality is defined and categorized. Illuminating the cause (etiology) of various disorders is another major goal, as is the prediction of when disordered states might arise.

The Main Concern of Abnormal Psychology

The field of clinical psychology applies the knowledge gained through the study of abnormal psychology to the assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental disorders.

The Main Concern of Clinical Psychology

Sigmund Freud pioneered the idea in 1955 that the symptoms of mental distress arise as a result of traumatic experience. From this discovery came the concept of talking cure (otherwise known as psychotherapy) in which the therapist, through a special form of conversation, assists patients to address, and hopefully resolve, the psychological causes underlying their mental distress.

Freud's View

There is no single means of defining what constitutes abnormality. The following five criteria are often used by professionals and many laypeople: distress, disorder, dysfunction, deviance, and danger. It is important to note that there can be, and often is, disagreement in the field as to whether a condition constitutes a disorder.

The Criteria of Abnormality

There are many theories as to what causes mental illness. Although most of these theories have support in the research literature, no single their can explain all disorders. Psychological disorders can be explained on many different levels and have many different causes, and for any particular individual with a disorder, it is likely that there are multiple factors operating simultaneously to produce their condition.

What Causes Mental Illness?

Gale Researcher Guide for: Clinical and Abnormal Psychology is selected from Gale's academic platform Gale Researcher. These study guides provide peer-reviewed articles that allow students early success in finding scholarly materials and to gain the confidence and vocabulary needed to pursue deeper research.

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Psychology

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Reading & Writing

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Jane Alexandra Kessler

Gale Researcher Guide for: Clinical and Abnormal Psychology

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Philosophy is associated with wisdom: etymologically, the term ‘philosophy’ is derived from the Greek, meaning ‘lover of wisdom’.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Philosophy is the child of wonder and curiosity about the world.</li></ul>

What is Philosophy?

Socrates, Plato, Aristotle (this Athenian triumvirate) are of astonishing and continuing influence over Western philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy and, one-time, the sciences when subsumed as ‘natural philosophy’.

The Athenian Triumvirate

The Pre-Socratics are philosophers prior to Socrates. Much of their work is lost but they were highly influential – two notables being Heraclitus and Parmenides.<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Heraclitus announced that you cannot step into the same river twice for waters are always changing. A quick response is: you cannot even step into the same river once.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Parmenides, in a poem, The Way Truth, argued that all is one and unchanging. It met support via Zeno of Elea’s motion paradoxes: how can you reach that wall? First you need to go half-way, then half of the remainder, then half the new remainder, and so on. </li></ul>

The Pre-Socratics

Socrates was an intellectual gadfly, stinging the complacency of the rich and powerful – of those who thought they knew. Found guilty of corrupting the young and of impiety, he was sentenced to death by hemlock, and declined to escape. Most of what we know about him derives from his greatest pupil, Plato.

Socrates (469–399 BC)

All subsequent philosophy has been described as a footnote to Plato. Plato looked be- yond this world of ever-changing appearances, to un- changing ‘forms’ or ideas. He suggested recipes for the good life, radical ideas for society – women on a par with men – and offered thoughts on love, desire and mind.

Plato (429–347 BC)

Aristotle, Plato’s greatest pupil, was the first formal logician, engaged in considerable scientific researches, and even taught Alexander who became Alex- ander the Great. In Raphael’s painting The School of Athens, Plato points upwards and Aristotle downwards – for Plato sought reality beyond appearances, arguably with a touch of mysticism, whereas Aristotle was down to earth.

Aristotle (384–322 BC)

The philosophical perplexity here is how we find room for free will in nature. It takes some credulity to insist that human beings have evolved such that they stand outside the laws of nature, outside the natural world. That insistence would have humans forming, in Spinoza’s mocking terms, ‘a kingdom within a kingdom’.

Free Will

Spinoza saw God and Nature as one and the same substance; such heresy, as noted earlier, made him unpopular with Christians and his fellow Jews. According to Spinoza, human beings, as with other creatures – and trees, mountains and, no doubt, marmalade – are solely modifications of ‘God or Nature’, as waves are modifications of the ocean, falling under natural laws, no more able to do otherwise than pebbles in flight.

Spinoza's View on God and Nature

Existentialism covers a range of philosophers and artists, many of whom were unaware of the term. Philosophers tend to fall under the existentialist label if they focus on the singularity and uniqueness of each human being, rather than searching for common human qualities or ‘the’ way of life. They may stress the anguish, the anxiety, of human existence, through the need to make choices, to treat ourselves as free in the values we espouse.

Existentialism

Morality requires that we perceive ourselves as autonomous agents who can choose to do what we ought to do: ‘ought’ implies ‘can’.

Morality

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">In fact – and in truth – many of our descriptions carry valuations within.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Many things that we say about the world have intertwined within both descriptive and evaluative elements – and it is perhaps a mistake to think that those elements can be separated.</li></ul>

Our Sayings

Rawls extracts from under the veil a first rabbit: consent to liberty. We should seek equal freedom, autonomy, to run our lives as we want without harming others. That leads to valuing political liberty of thought and expression, free association and, indeed, ownership of personal property.

Consent to Liberty (1/2)

But behind the veil, our consent to the utilitarian goal, for example, would be irrational for it risks my enduring significant loss, if society’s overall happiness would result. We should, though, see the need for general educational and welfare provisions, and hence for lives being, to some extent, intruded upon to help others – the ill, the poor, the untalented – for we may be amongst those others.

Consent to Liberty (2/2)

Curiously, people are typically more comfortable with accepting some knowledge of the past than of the future. Perhaps we can see into the past through memory. Because of light’s travelling time, we perceive distant stars as they were millennia ago. Future events, though, do not yet exist – are not now.

Past and Future

We must accept some beliefs as true, in order to assess others. That does not rule out revisiting those accepted beliefs for assessment.

How to Assess Other Beliefs?

Inductive reasoning relies on nature having certain uniformities across the observed and the unobserved; but what can justify belief in such uniformities? There is sometimes the thought that if the inductive premiss covers numerous observed items, then it is at least likely that all items that are F are G. That thought merits challenge: knowledge of that likelihood would require knowing the total number of F items, observed and unobserved – even throughout the whole universe.

Inductive Reasoning

Scientific theories rely in some way on observations. The theories involve universal generalizations, expressions of so-called laws of nature assumed to apply across the universe, be they concerning forces, acceleration and mass, or relationships between pressures and volumes of gases, or boiling points of liquids and efficacy of antibiotics.

Scientific Theory (1/2)

The term ‘theory’ need convey no doubt or speculation. Reflect on the huge successes of numerous scientific theories and applications, from electrical equipment to medical treatments to transportation. How do we account for such seeming scientific knowledge, if induction lacks good justification?

Scientific Theory (2/2)

As implied with the swan tale, a hypothesis does not confront the world alone. When some disturbing evidence is encountered, we may cling to the tested hypothesis and revise either auxiliary generalizations assumed true or our beliefs about the initial conditions.

Hypothesis (1/2)

If a theory predicts that the new cosmetic developed will cause cell changes, then if the changes fail to materialize, maybe the theory was mistaken – but maybe the tested skin types were other than thought or the testing apparatus unreliable. Readers may recall physics lessons: if experiments failed to deliver expected results, the experiments (or experimenters) were assumed faulty, not that the relevant scientific theory had been falsified.

Hypothesis (2/2)

Once we gaze at the gap between evidence and what the evidence is for, we may reason that it must be illusory: there can exist nothing on the other side of the evidence. The gap is pure emptiness. All that I have to go on are my own experiences, so how can I judge what, if anything, is beyond them? The sceptical conclusion may be stronger than that question hints.

The Gap between Evidence and What the Evidence is for

Pascal argued that it is rational to believe in God. On the one hand, if you do so believe and there is a God, you have the likelihood of eternal bliss; if there is no God, you have wasted a few Sundays through confessions and foregone some small delights. On the other hand, if you are a non-believer and there is a God, then eternal damnation threatens, the possibility of which easily swamps the non-believing pleasures and your religion-free Sundays.

Pascal's View on God (1/2)

That reasoning is glib, for which God, which rituals, should you support? Even if the reasoning is sound, it does not itself enable you to believe in God – for you cannot just switch on belief. You may, though, seek genuine believers, hoping that their belief is contagious. Despite unworthy initial motives, you may become a genuine believer, passing any divine test for sincere belief.

Pascal's View on God (2/2)

Philosophy is the love of wisdom and wisdom is meant to be beyond mere cleverness and knowledge; it is meant to open eyes to what is important, to meaning, to values. Now, most academic philosophers these days, in their academic labours, rarely reach or even try to reach such eye-opening understanding; they may even question what constitutes that understanding.

So... What is Philosophy?

Philosophy, the “love of wisdom”, is the product of our endless fascination and curiosity about the world – the child of wonder. Through it, we seek to answer the most fundamental of questions: How do we know what we know? Does God exist? What is beauty? How should we live our lives? What am I? In this exhilarating tour, Peter Cave navigates all the main topics of philosophy with verve and clarity. Using witty and whimsical examples, including stoical sofas and Reg, the “regular” human, who just happens to carry his brain in a rucksack, Cave provides a welcome antidote to the dry textbook while covering everything from political philosophy to points of logic. Interspersed with helpful textboxes and underlining the enduring relevance of philosophy to us all, there is no better introduction for the aspiring sage.

philosophy

Philosophy

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Religion & Spirituality

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History

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Society, Arts & Culture

Peter Cave

Short absence quickens love, long absence kills it.

Temperate anger well becomes the wise.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

Proverbs are potted wisdom.

Choose an author as you choose a friend.

For converse among men, beautiful persons have less need of the mind's commending qualities. Beauty in itself is such a silent orator, that it is ever pleading for respect and liking, and, by the eyes of others is ever sending to their hearts for love. Yet even this hath this inconvenience in it—that it makes its possessor neglect the furnishing of the mind with nobleness. Nay, it oftentimes is a cause that the mind is ill.

Luminous escapes of thought.

Submission is the only reasoning between a creature and its Maker; and contentment in his will is the best remedy we can apply to misfortunes.

Heaven gives its favorites early death.

Too early fitted for a better state.

Poverty is hard, but debt is horrible; a man might as well have a smoky house and a scolding wife, which are said to be the two worst evils of our life.

The thirst of desire is never filled, nor fully satisfied.

The man's desire is for the woman; but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.

How strangely easy difficult things are!

If you believe in evil, you have done evil.

Too much noise deafens us; too much light blinds us; too great a distance or too much of proximity equally prevents us from being able to see; too long and too short a discourse obscures our knowledge of a subject; too much of truth stuns us.

To a father who loves his children victory has no charms. When the heart speaks, glory itself is an illusion.

We hate some persons because we do not know them; and we will not know them because we hate them.

The heart has reasons that reason does not understand.

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up. That which was a weed in one intelligence becomes a flower in the other, and a flower again dwindles down to a mere weed by the same change. Healthy growths may become poisonous by falling upon the wrong mental soil, and what seemed a night-shade in one mind unfolds as a morning-glory in the other.

Old ideas are prejudices, and new ones caprices.

He who knows much has much to care for.

He who cherishes his old knowledge, so as continually to acquire new, he may be a teacher of others.

Conversation never sits easier than when we now and then discharge ourselves in a symphony of laughter; which may not improperly be called the chorus of conversation.

The laughers are a majority.

Life is a quaint puzzle. Bits the most incongruous join into each other, and the scheme thus gradually becomes symmetrical and clear; when, lo! as the infant clasps his hands, and cries, "See, see! the puzzle is made out," all the pieces are swept back into the box—black box with the gilded nails!

Logic is the art of convincing us of some truth.

Childhood is only a wearisome prologue: the first act of the human comedy opens only at the moment when love makes a breach in our hearts.

Love reasons without reason.

Love and a cough cannot be hid.

Sow good services; sweet remembrances will grow from them.

He kissed her and promised. Such beautiful lips! Man's usual fate—he was lost upon the coral reefs.

That farewell kiss which resembles greeting, that last glance of love which becomes the sharpest pang of sorrow.

Sorrow is knowledge; they who know the most must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth; the tree of knowledge is not that of life.

Laughter means sympathy.

Love makes all things possible.

A boy was once asked what meekness was. He thought for a moment and said, "Meekness gives smooth answers to rough questions."

The best way to prove the clearness of our mind is by showing its faults; as when a stream discovers the dirt at the bottom, it convinces us of the transparency of the water.

Our bravest lessons are not learned through success, but misadventure.

Novelty is the great-parent of pleasure.

Prejudice is the reason of fools.

Since Time is not a person we can overtake when he is gone, let us honor him with mirth and cheerfulness of heart while he is passing.

I have been more and more convinced, the more I think of it, that in general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes. All the other passions do occasional good; but whenever pride puts in its word, everything goes wrong; and what it might really be desirable to do, quietly and innocently, it is mortally dangerous to do proudly.

Pride is seldom delicate; it will please itself with very mean advantages.

Prosperity makes some friends and many enemies.

The best religion is the most tolerant.

Revenge is a debt, in the paying of which the greatest knave is honest and sincere, and, so far as he is able, punctual.

You cannot win without sacrifice.

Skepticism is slow suicide.

Whatever may be said about luck, it is skill that leads to fortune.

A successful career has been full of blunders.

Talkers are no good doers.

They talk most who have the least to say.

Time makes more converts than reason.

Time is the wisest councillor.

To see the world is to judge the judges.

No man can be wise on an empty stomach.

Woman is a miracle of divine contradictions.

Reproduction of the original: Pearls of Thought by Maturin M. Ballou

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Personal Development

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Motivation & Inspiration

Maturin M. Ballou

Pearls of Thought

<ul><li>A popular definition of psychology → the science of mind and behaviour.</li><li>There are 6 broad theoretical approaches to psychology, each of which focuses on different aspects of psychological phenomena, such as behaviour, emotion, and thinking.</li></ul>

Introduction (1/3)

Some ideas from all of the main theoretical approaches are widely accepted in psychology. Thus it is not only behaviourists that believe in reinforcement; not only biologists that accept the importance of genetics; and so on.

Introduction (2/3)

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Some paradigms are most popular in the field of counselling, and psychodynamic approaches tend to be favoured by psychiatrists and social workers rather than by psychologists.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Some psychologists are eclectic and borrow freely from different approaches whilst others work purely with one approach.</li></ul>

Introduction (3/3)

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Psychology should be seen as a science, to be studied in a scientific manner.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Behaviourism is primarily concerned with observable behaviour, as opposed to internal events like thinking and emotion.</li></ul>

Behavioural Psychology (1/3)

<ul><li>The major influence on human behaviour is learning from our environment.</li><li>There is a little difference between the learning that takes place in humans and that in other animals, therefore research can be carried out on animals as well as on humans.</li></ul>

Behavioural Psychology (2/4)

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Albert Bandura → In order to learn by vicarious experience, we must process the information about the consequences of people’s actions and come to logical conclusions about whether we should copy the behaviour.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Psychologists can use classical conditioning techniques to reduce or remove the symptoms of phobias; or to helps to remove unwanted behaviours, such as pedophilia.</li></ul>

Behavioural Psychology (2/3)

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Operant conditioning techniques can be used to help rehabilitate people such as long-term psychiatric patients who have been out of contact with “normal” society for a while.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Behavioural approach places great emphasis on testable concepts and rigorous experimental research.</li></ul>

Behavioural Psychology (3/3)

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Our behaviour and feelings as adults (including psychological problems) are rooted in our childhood experiences.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Relationships (especially parenting) are of primary importance in determining how we feel and behave.</li></ul>

Psychodinamic Psychology (1/3)

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Our behaviour and feelings are powerfully affected by the meaning of events to the unconscious mind, and by unconscious motives.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Looks for information in dreams, symptoms, irrational behaviour, and what patients say in therapy.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Freud believed that the most important of the defence mechanisms was repression.</li></ul>

Psychodinamic Psychology (2/3)

The process whereby the underlying wish is translated into the manifest content is called dream-work. The purpose of dream-work is to transform the forbidden wish into a non-threatening form, thus reducing anxiety and allowing us to continue sleeping.

Psychodinamic Psychology (3/3)

<ul><li>People are motivated by the wish to grow and fulfill their potential.</li><li>People can choose what they want to be, and know what is best for them.</li><li>We are influences by how we feel about ourselves, which in turn results from how we are treated by others.</li></ul>

Humanistic Psychology (1/3)

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">The aim of humanistic psychology is to help people choose what they want and help them fulfil their potential.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">One major difference between humanistic counsellors and other therapists is that they refer to those in therapy as “clients”, not “patients”.</li></ul>

Humanistic Psychology (2/3)

Maslow distinguished between D-needs (deficiency needs) which result from requirements for food, rest, safety, etc. and B-needs (being needs) which derive from our wish to fulfil our potential. We cannot strive towards our B-needs until our D-needs have been met.

Humanistic Psychology (3/3)

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Like behaviourists, cognitive psychologists see psychology as a pure science.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Whereas behaviourists are interested primarily in behaviour, and psychodynamic and humanistic psychologists are interested primarily in emotion, cognitive psychologists are primarily interested in thinking and related mental processes such as memory.</li></ul>

Cognitive Psychology (1/4)

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">The major influence on human behaviour is how the mind operates.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Like a computer we are influenced by the ways in which our brains are “hard-wired” and by ways in which we have been “programmed” by experience.</li></ul>

Cognitive Psychology (2/4)

Here we shall consider two reasons why we might forget from long-term memory. <ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Cue-dependency is a generally accepted phenomenon and probably the most common season for forgetting things.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Repression, by contrast, is much more controversial and probably occurs rather less frequently.</li></ul>

Cognitive Psychology (3/4)

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">The technical term to describe how well a study can be applied to real-life is ecological validity.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Some psychologists who adopt a purely cognitive approach can ignore other important psychological factors other than the ways we process information. This is called cognitive reductionism.</li></ul>

Cognitive Psychology (4/4)

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">The cognitive-developmental approach is primarily concerned with thinking and reasoning, as opposed to behaviour or feelings.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Thinking and reasoning do not merely become more sophisticated with increasing experience, but the type of logic the child is capable of differs entirely according to its age.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">A major influence on human behaviour, feelings and thinking is the type of reasoning the person is capable of.</li></ul>

Cognitive-Developmental Psychology

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Social psychology is interested in all the ways in which people impact on one another.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">The major influence on people’s behaviour is the social situation they are in.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Social approaches are not tied to a particular research method.</li></ul>

Social Psychology (1/2)

The three-stage process in social identity theory:<ol><li class="ql-align-justify">In the first stage, social categorisation, we identify ourselves and other people as members of social categories.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">In the second stage, social identification, we adopt the identity of the group we have categorised ourselves as belonging to.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">The final stage is social comparison. Once we have categorised ourselves as part of or group and identified with that group we then tend to compare that group with other groups.</li></ol>

Social Psychology (2/2)

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Like behavioral and cognitive psychology, behavioural genetics and evolutionary psychology are seen as pure-science approaches.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Genes affect physical characteristics, and the interaction of these characteristics with the environment can influence psychological characteristics.</li></ul>

Genetic Influences on Behaviour (1/2)

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Whereas all the approaches we have looked at so far emphasise the role of the environment on determining the differences between people, behavioural genetics emphasises the role of genetic as well as environmental influences.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Evolutionary psychology also emphasises the importance of genetic influences, but on human similarity rather than difference.</li></ul>

Genetic Influences on Behaviour (2/2)

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Like other biological approaches to psychology, neurophysiology is a science.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Neurophysiology emphasises the importance of physiological processes in affecting behaviour, thinking, and feelings.</li></ul>

Neurophysiology (1/2)

Whereas behavioural psychology is most concerned with observable behaviour, psychodynamic psychology with emotion and cognitive psychology with thinking, neurophysiology is concerned primarily with physiological activity.

Neurophysiology (2/2)

Psychologists use a range of principles and theories, all of which view the person and the study of the person in very different ways. Theoretical Approaches in Psychology introduces and outlines the six main approaches and considers how each has helped psychologists understand human behaviour, thought and feeling. The Routledge Modular Psychology series is a completely new approach to introductory level psychology, tailor-made for the new modular style of teaching. Each book covers a topic in more detail than any large textbook can, allowing teacher and student to select material exactly to suit any particular course or project. Especially written for those students new to higher-level study, whether at school, college or university, the books include the following designed features to help with technique: <ul> <li>Practice essays with specialist commentary to show how to achieve a higher grade</li> <li>Chapter summaries and summaries of key research</li> <li>Glossary and further reading</li> <li>Progress and review exercises.</li></ul>

Gale Researcher Guide for: Clinical and Abnormal Psychology

Philosophy

Pearls of Thought

Theoretical Approaches in Psychology

The Lessons of History

Irza Fidah