Abnormal Psychology

Abnormal Psychology- a "harmful dysfunction" in which behavior is judged to be atypical, disturbing, or unjustifiable

DSM IV- classifies disorders and describes symptoms

• Neurotic Disorders- distressing but one can still function in society and act rationally
• Psychotic Disorders- person loses contact with reality

Anxiety Disorders- conditions where the primary symptoms are anxiety or defenses against anxiety; patient fears something awful will happen to them

• Phobia- person experiences sudden episodes of intense dread, must be an irrational fear
• Generalized Anxiety Disorder - person is continuously tense, apprehensive,  and in a state of automatic nervous system arousal
• Panic Disorder- marked by a minute-long episode of intense dread in which a person experiences terror and accompanying chest pain, choking, and other symptoms
• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder- persistent unwanted thoughts(obsessions) cause someone to feel the need to engage in a particular action
• Post Traumatic Stress Disorder- flashback or nightmares following a person's involvement in an observation of an extremely stressful event

Somatoform Disorders- psychological problem stemming from physiological problem

• Hypochondriasis- has frequent physical complaints for which medical doctors are unable to locate the cause
• Coversion- report the existence of severe physical problems with no biological reason

Dissociative Disorders- involve a disruption in the conscious process; 3 types

• Psychogenic Amnesia- person cannot remember things with no physiological basis for the disruption of memory
• Dissociative Fugue- people find themselves in an unfamiliar environment
• Dissociative Identity Disorder- person has several rather than one integrated personality

Mood Disorders

• Major Depression- unhappy for at least 2 weeks with no apparent cause
• Dysthymic Disorder- suffering from mild depression everyday for at least 2 years
• Seasonal Affective Disorder- experience depression during winter months 

Personality Disorders- well established, maldaptive ways of behaving that negatively affect people's ability to function

• Antisocial Personality- lack of empathy;little regard for others' feelings; view the world as hostile and look out for themselves
• Dependent Personality- rely too much on the attention and help of others
• Histrionic Personality- needs to be the center of attention; acting silly
• Narcissistic Personality- having an unwarranted sense of self-importance 

Schizophrenic Disorders- Disorganized thinking, disturbed perceptions, inappropriate emotions and actions

• Disorganized- thinking is fragmented and bizarre; distorted with false beliefs; comes from a breakdown of selective attention; flat or inappropriate actions
• Paranoid- preoccupations with delusions or hallucinations
• Catatonic- parrot like repeating of another's speech or movements
• Undifferentiated- many and varied symptoms

Personality

Personality- Characteristic pattern of thinking, acting, and feeling of an individual

Id, Ego, and Superego

• Id- unconsciously tries to meet basic sexual and aggressive drives; operates on the pleasure principle
• Ego- tries to fulfill pleasure principle realistically; controls both ego and id
• Superego- holds all morals and values of an individual; helps make decisions

The 7 Perspectives

• Neuroscience-focus on how the physical body and brain creates our emotions, memories, and sensory experiences

• Evolutionary- Focus on darwinism; we behave the way we do because we inherited those behaviors

• Psychodynamic- behavior comes from unconscious drives

• Behavioral- focus on our observable behaviors; only cares about the behaviors that impair living and attempts to change them

• Cognitive- focuses on how we think (encode information)

• Socialcultural- focuses on how culture affects behavior

• Humanistic- focuses on positive growth; attempts to seek self-actualization

Freud's Psychosexual Stages-

• Oral- pleasure centers around the mouth
• Anal-pleasure centers around bowel and bladder elimination; coping with control demands
• Phallic- pleasure centers around the genitals
• Latency- focuses on dormant sexual feelings
• Genital- centers around maturation of sexual feeling

Defense Mechanisms- ego's methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously manipulating reality

Types of Defense Mechanisms

• Repression- banishes thoughts, feelings, and memories that are causing anxiety from consciousness

• Regression- individual retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage

• Reaction Formation- ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into the opposites

• Projection- people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing the unwanted impulses to others

• Rationalization- offers self-justifying explanations 

• Displacement- shifts inappropriate impulses towards a more acceptable object or person

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Doing my own psychology research

The roots of psychology are close to subjects such as biology, philosophy, physiology, and epistemology. I think psychology is most closely related to epistemology because it is the study of knowledge and psychology is the study of the mind.

I got a lot of useful information here.