Psychology Chapter: Understanding Psychopathology

Understanding Psychopathology

• Psychological disorder or abnormal behavior: a psychological dysfunction within an individual associated with distress or impairment in functioning and a response that is not typical or culturally expected.
• Criteria for psychological disorder:
  • Psychological dysfunction: harmful dysfunction, breakdown in cognitive, emotional, or behavioral functioning, and value judgment component.
  • Distress: the individual is extremely upset, but not all mental disorders cause distress.
  • Disability or impairment: in some important area of life (e.g., work or personal relationships), but not all mental disorders involve disability.
  • Violation of social norms: social norms are widely held standards that people use to make judgments about behavior.

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)

• Definition: behavioral, psychological, or biological dysfunctions that are unexpected in their cultural context and associated with present distress and impairment in functioning, or increased risk of suffering, death, pain, or impairment.
• Prototype: when most or all symptoms of a disorder are present in an individual, their profile is called a prototype.
• Characteristics: the disorder occurs within the individual, involves clinically significant difficulties in thinking, feeling, or behaving, and involves dysfunction in processes that support mental functioning.

Stigma

• Destructive beliefs and attitudes held by a society that are ascribed to groups considered different in some manner.
• Four characteristics: a label is applied to a group of people, the label is linked to deviant or undesirable attributes, people with the label are seen as essentially different, and people with the label are discriminated against unfairly.

Psychopathology

• Scientific study of psychological disorders, concerned with the nature, development, and treatment of mental disorders.
• Trained professionals: clinical and counseling psychologists.

Structure of the Mind

• Id: source of strong sexual and aggressive feelings or energies, operates according to the pleasure principle.
• Ego: reality principle, mediates conflict between the id and superego, and juggling their demands with realities of the world.
• Superego: conscience, represents the moral principle, and the voice within us that nags at us when we know we're doing something wrong.

Defense Mechanisms

• Unconscious protective processes that keep primitive emotions associated with conflicts in check.
• Examples: denial, displacement, projection, rationalization, reaction formation, repression, and sublimation.

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

• Free association: patients say whatever comes to mind without censoring, intended to reveal emotionally charged material.
• Dream analysis: therapist interprets the content of dreams, reflecting the primary-process thinking of the id.
• Transference: patients relate to the therapist as they did to important figures in their childhood, particularly their parents.
• Countertransference: therapists project their own personal issues and feelings onto a patient.
• Psychoanalytic psychotherapy: focuses on reducing symptoms, but symptom substitution may occur.

Humanistic Theory

• Self-actualizing: the underlying assumption that all individuals could reach their highest potential if they had the freedom to grow.
• Abraham Maslow: hierarchy of needs.
• Carl Rogers: person-centered therapy, emphasizing unconditional positive regard, empathy, and a non-judgmental attitude.

Behavioral Model

• A.k.a. cognitive-behavioral model or social learning model.
• Ivan Pavlov: classical conditioning, stimulus generalization, and extinction.
• John B. Watson: behaviorism, Little Albert.
• Mary Cover Jones: Little Peter, extinguishing fear through classical conditioning.
• Joseph Wolpe: systematic desensitization, gradual exposure to phobic objects or situations to extinguish fear.### Operant Conditioning
• Shaping is a process of reinforcing successive approximations to a final behavior or set of behaviors, developed by B.F. Skinner.

Law of Effect

• Behavior is either strengthened or weakened depending on the consequences of that behavior, as proposed by Edward Thorndike.

Cognition

• Early behavior theories did not leave room for cognition and emotion.
• The ways in which people think about, or appraise, situations can influence behavior in dramatic ways.

Cognitive Therapy

• Emphasizes that how people construe themselves and the world is a major determinant of psychological disorders.
• Therapists help clients become aware of their maladaptive thoughts.
• Changing cognition can lead to changes in feelings, behaviors, and symptoms.

Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)

• Developed by Albert Ellis.
• Sustained emotional reactions are caused by internal sentences that people repeat to themselves, reflecting irrational beliefs.
• Aim is to eliminate self-defeating beliefs.
• People's interpretations of events can cause emotional turmoil, and therapy should focus on these beliefs rather than historical causes or overt behavior.

This quiz covers the concept of psychopathology, including psychological disorders and abnormal behavior. Understand the psychological dysfunction associated with distress or impairment.