A

Abnormal psychology:
The area of
psychological investigation concerned with
understanding the nature of individual
pathologies of mind, mood, and behavior.

Accommodation: According to Piaget, the

process of restructuring or modifying
cognitive structures so that new information
can fit into them more easily; this process
works in tandem with assimilation.
Algorithm: A step-by-step procedure that
always provides the right answer for a particular
type of problem.

Anorexia nervosa: An eating disorder in

which an individual weighs less than 85
percent of her or his expected weight but
still controls eating because of a selfperception of obesity.

Katherine L. Patino, Psychology V, 2012.

Anthropology: Is the academic study

of humanity. It deals with all that is
characteristic of the human experience,
from physiology and the evolutionary
origins to the social and cultural
organization of human societies as well as individual and
collective forms of human experience.
Artificial intelligence (AI): Is the intelligence of machines
and the branch of computer science that
aims to create it. AI textbooks define the
field as "the study and design of intelligent
agents where an intelligent agent is a
system that perceives its environment and
takes actions that maximize its chances of
success.
Assimilation: According to Piaget, the
process whereby new cognitive elements
are fitted in with old elements or modified
to fit more easily; this process works in
tandem with accommodation.

B
Behavior: The actions by which an
organism adjusts to its environment.

Behavior Modification: A type of behavioral

therapy in which the principles of Operant
Conditioning (reinforcement, punishments,
etc.) are used to eliminate some type of
unwanted, maladaptive, behavior. For
example, a person may feel that they no longer
want to smoke (the maladaptive behavior) and
so the person is given a favorite piece of candy every time a
cigarette is desired but refused. So, when the person wants a
cigarette but does not have one, they get a piece of their
favorite candy as a reward.

Clinical psychologist: An individual who has

earned a doctorate in psychology and whose
training is in the assessment and treatment of
psychological problems.

Cognition:
Processes of knowing,
including attending, remembering, and
reasoning; also the content of the processes,
such as concepts and memories.

Binge: A period of excessive or uncontrolled

indulgence in food or drink.

Bulimia Nervosa: An eating disorder

characterized by binge eating followed by
measures to purge the body of the excess
calories.

Cognitive Therapy:
A type of
psychotherapeutic treatment that attempts to
change feelings and behaviors by changing
the way a client thinks about or perceives
significant life experiences.

C
Catharsis: A term used in psychodynamic
psychology to mean the release of emotion.
An example is crying to release sadness.

Katherine L. Patino, Psychology V, 2012.

Consciousness: A state of awareness of

internal events and of the external
environment.

D
Defenses Mechanism: Psychological strategies
as part of Freudianb psychoanalytic theory, that
are used to distort or deny reality, in order to
cope with anxiety and/or a situation which an
individual feels is difficult to cope with.

Determinism:
The doctrine that all events-physical,
behavioral, and mental-are determined by specific causal
factors that are potentially knowable.

Developmental Psychology: Also known as

human development. It is the scientific study of
the processes which underlie and control growth
and change in behaviour over time.

E
Ego: The aspect of personality involved in selfpreservation activities and in directing instinctual
drives and urges into appropriate channels.

Katherine L. Patino, Psychology V, 2012.

Emotion: A pattern of intense changes in

physiological arousal, behavior, cognitive
processes and environmental influences that are
described in subjective terms such as happiness,
fear or anger.

Emotional intelligence: Type of intelligence defined

as the abilities to perceive, appraise, and express
emotions accurately and appropriately, to use
emotions to facilitate thinking, to understand and
analyze emotions, to use emotional knowledge
effectively, and to regulate one's emotions to promote
both emotional and intellectual growth.

F
Free association: The therapeutic method in
which a patient gives a running account of
thoughts, wishes, physical sensations, and
mental images as they occur.
Functionalism: The perspective on mind and behavior that
focuses on the examination of their functions in an organism's
interactions with the environment.

G
Group Therapy: Psychotherapy conducted
with at least three or four non-related
individuals who are similar in some are, such
as gender, age, mental illness, or presenting
problem.

H
Health psychology: The field of psychology
devoted to understanding the ways people stay
healthy, the reasons they become ill, and the
ways they respond when they become ill.
Hypnosis: An altered state of awareness
characterized
by
deep
relaxation,
susceptibility to suggestions, and changes in
perception, memory, motivation, and selfcontrol.

I
Iconic memory: Sensory memory in the
visual domain; allows large amounts of
information to be stored for very brief
durations.

Katherine L. Patino, Psychology V, 2012.

Id: The primitive, unconscious part of the

personality that operates irrationally and acts on
impulse to pursue pleasure.

Insight: The understanding of a relationship

between current thoughts, feelings, and/or
behaviors and where these originated or how
they are maintained.

Insight Therapy: A technique by which the

therapist guides a patient toward discovering
insights between present symptoms and past
origins.

Instincts: Inborn pattern of behavior often

responsive to specific stimuli; "the spawning
instinct in salmon"; "altruistic instincts in
social animals".

Intellectual: The faculty of reasoning,

knowing and thinking, as distinct from
feeling; the understanding or mental powers
of a particular person etc.

Intelligence: The global capacity to profit

from experience and to go beyond given
information about the environment.

Language development: The study of the

acquisition of language, with emphasis on the
development of four sub-systems of language
phonology, semantics, pragmatics and tense and
gender.

Learning: A change in behavior, knowledge

and skills, from interaction with the
environment and experience.

Libido: In psychoanalysis, a term used to

represent energy that comes from the id,
typically energy driven towards achieving
sexual pleasure.

Knowledge: The psychological result of

perception and learning and reasoning.

M
L
Motivation:
The process that energizes
and/or maintains a behavior.
Language: The processes by which children
acquire or develop human language.

Katherine L. Patino, Psychology V, 2012.

Neuron: ('nerve cell') A cell of the nervous

system that functions to receive and
communicate information to other cells.

Organizational Psychologists:
Psychologists who study various aspects of
the human work environment, such as
communication
among
employees,
socialization or enculturation of workers,
leadership, job satisfaction, stress and
burnout, and overall quality of life.

Neuroscience: A branch of psychology, also

called
physiological
psychology.
Neuroscience is the study of the functioning
of the nervous system which includes the
structures and functioning of the brain and
its relationship to behaviour.

Neurosis: A mental or personality

disturbance not attributable to any known
neurological or organic dysfunction.

Neurotransmitters: A chemical found in

animals that plays a role in our behavior,
cognitions, and emotions.

Katherine L. Patino, Psychology V, 2012.

P
Personality:
The unique psychological
qualities of an individual that influence a
variety of characteristic behavior patterns
(both overt and covert) across different
situations and over time.
Personality disorder: A chronic, inflexible,
maladaptive pattern of perceiving, thinking,
and behaving that seriously impairs an
individual's ability to function in social or
other settings.

Philosophy: Is the study of general and

fundamental problems concerning matters
such as existence, knowledge, truth, justice,
beauty, validity, mind, and language.
Problem solving: Thinking that is directed
toward solving specific problems and that
moves from an initial state to a goal state by
means of a set of mental operations.
Projective Techniques: A generic term
for the psychological procedures used to
measure personalities which rely on
ambiguous stimuli.

Psychiatrist:
A medical doctor with
training in mental illness.
Psychoanalysis: Developed by Sigmund
Freud, this type of therapy is known for long
term treatment, typically several times per
week, where the unresolved issues from the
individual's childhood are analyzed and
resolved. These issues are considered to be
primarily unconscious in nature and are kept
from consciousness through a complex
defense system.

Katherine L. Patino, Psychology V, 2012.

Psychoanalytic Theory: Theory developed

by Freud consisting of the structural model
of personality, topographical model of
personality, defense mechanisms, drives,
and
the
psychosexual
stages
of
development. The primary driving force
behind the theory is the id, ego and superego
and the division of consciousness into the conscious mind, the
pre/subconscious, and the unconscious.
Psychodynamic Therapy: A modern
adaptation of psychoanalytic therapy
which has made sometimes minor and
sometimes major changes to Freud's
original theories.

Psychological diagnosis: The label given to

psychological abnormality by classifying and
categorizing the observed behavior pattern into
an approved diagnostic system.

Psychology: The study of higher mental

processes such as attention, language use,
memory, perception, problem solving, and
thinking.

Psychophysiology: Is a subdivision of
biological psychology that studies the neural
mechanisms of perception and behavior
through direct manipulation of the brains of
nonhuman animal subjects in controlled
experiments.

Psychotropic Medication:
Prescription
medication used primarily to treat mental
illness.

S
Psychosexual Development:
In psychoanalytic theory, a description of
how a child progresses through set stages
that vary according to the focus of
gratification (oral, anal, genital) and by the
person towards which this feeling is
directed at.

Psychosis: Break from reality, usually

identified by hallucinations, delusions,
and/or disorientation.

Psychotherapy: Any variety of treatment

for abnormal behaviour which is primarily
verbal in nature, rather than based on the use
of drugs.

Katherine L. Patino, Psychology V, 2012.

Self-esteem: Evaluative attitude towards the

self of how much an individual likes
themselves, influencing personal and social
behaviours.

Sociology: Is the scientific or systematic

study of society, including patterns of social
relations,
social
stratification,
social
interaction, and culture.

Superego: The aspect of personality that

represents the internalization of society's
values, standards, and morals.

T
Thought: An idea; an instance of
thinking; the state or condition of thinking.

Thought disorder: In abnormal psychology,

a general term to describe disturbance of
thought or speech that might be symptomatic
of a mental disorder, for instance incoherent
thought and speech patterns.

Thought
disturbances:
In
abnormal
psychology, distortions of thought processes
such as incoherent speech.

Transference: The process by which a

person in psychoanalysis attaches to
therapist feelings formerly held toward some
significant person who figured in a past
emotional conflict.

Katherine L. Patino, Psychology V, 2012.

U
Unconscious: In Freuds theory, portion of
the psyche that cannot be directly accessed
by the unconscious, repressing urges,
impulses and thoughts, which may filter into
conscious awareness directly or in symbolic
form.

Unconscious motive: A term used to

describe that much of (motivated) behaviour
is a result of influences outside our
conscious awareness, and manifests in
defence mechanisms or other symbolic
ways.