ABPSYCH INTRO

Demonology

this is a doctrine that an evil being or spirit can dwell within a person and control his or her mind and body thereby can be treated by Exorcism

Exorcism

this refers to ritualistic casting out of evil spirits,

Trephination

this refers to cutting hole to the skull in the belief that evil spirit may come out.

Hydrotherapy

this involves shocking the patients back to their senses by being submerged in ice-cold water.

Lobotomy

a procedure that involves drilling holes in the skull and cutting connections in the frontal lobes.

Transorbital Lobotomy

often called the "ice-pick lobotomy." A surgical instrument was inserted through the eye socket and moved to sever brain connections.

Lunacy

this refers to attributing insanity to misalignment of moon and stars

Johann Weyer

he is the first physician to specialize in illness of mind

General Paresis

it is a mental and neurological deterioration caused by untreated syphilis.

it is a degenerative disorder with psychological symptoms where in the patient also has syphilis,

Eugenics

it refers to the idea of controlling who will reproduce to improve society and others go through enforced sterilization to eliminate undesirable characteristics from the population.

Insulin-coma Therapy

an early biological treatment that involves inducing coma using large dosages of insulin

Electro conclusive Therapy

it is an early biological treatment that is still practice today where brief electrical current shocks are induced to produce epileptic seizures to the sides of human head.

Dementia Praecox

it means “premature dementia”, but is now called schizophrenia.

Manic-depressive Psychosis

it is a major syndrome proposed by Emil Kraepelin that is now called Bipolar Disorder.

Mesmerism

it is the idea that body has energy that flows and disruption of this was what causes mental disorder. Treating patients through this involves using magnets, iron wands and sweeping hand movements.

Catharsis

this refers to bringing repressed memories and emotions to conscious awareness.

it involves insight and integration where the conscious mind looks at the released emotion, makes sense of it, and integrates it into a new, peaceful understanding of oneself.

Repression

a defense mechanism that involves Pushing painful or unacceptable thoughts completely out of conscious awareness.

• Example: Forgetting a highly traumatic childhood event.

Denial

a defense mechanism that involves Refusing to accept the reality of a traumatic or painful situation.

• Example: A heavy smoker insisting that cigarettes do not harm their health.

Projection

a defense mechanism that involve attributing your own unacceptable thoughts, feelings, or motives onto another person. It is like blaming others for your feelings

• Example: You dislike a coworker, but you convince yourself that they hate you.

Displacement

a defense mechanism that involve redirecting an impulse or emotion from its real target to a safer, less threatening substitute.

Regression

a defense mechanism that involve reverting to childish or immature behaviors when facing high stress or anxiety

Sublimation

a defense mechanism that involve channeling unacceptable social impulses into healthy, productive, and socially acceptable activities.

Rationalization

a defense mechanism that involve creating logical, socially acceptable justifications to excuse a mistake or failure.

• Example: Not getting a job promotion and saying, "I didn't really want that stressful position anyway."

Reaction Formation

a defense mechanism that involve behaving in the exact opposite way of how you truly feel to hide your real emotions.

• Example: Being overly nice and complimentary to a person you intensely dislike.

Identification with the Aggressor

a defense mechanism that involve When a person is faced with a powerful, threatening external danger, they unconsciously adopt the traits, behaviors, or mindset of the person threatening them. By becoming the "aggressor," the ego transforms itself from the helpless victim into the one in control.

This is a psychological precursor to what we now call Stockholm Syndrome

Counterconditioning

a behavioral therapy principle where a person learns a new, positive response to a stimulus that previously triggered an unwanted, negative response.

it is "re-wiring" the brain by pairing a feared object or situation with a new stimulus that triggers an opposite, incompatible emotion (like pleasure or deep relaxation). Since your nervous system cannot feel terrified and completely relaxed at the exact same time, the new, positive association overrides and breaks the old fear habit.

Exposure Therapy

an umbrella term for a variety of behavioral treatments designed to help people confront their fears.

When a person has an anxiety disorder or phobia, they tend to avoid what terrifies them. breaks this cycle of avoidance by safely introducing the patient to the feared object, thought, or situation in a controlled environment. By facing the fear repeatedly without any harm occurring, the brain naturally learns that the situation is safe, and the anxiety eventually fades away (a process called habituation).

Systematic Desensitization

a specific, step-by-step type of exposure therapy that directly uses the principle of counterconditioning to eliminate phobias.

Developed as a gentle, highly structured protocol, it requires a patient to build a "fear hierarchy" (a ladder of scenarios ranging from least scary to most scary). The patient then starts at the bottom of the ladder and actively uses relaxation techniques (like deep breathing) to stay calm while facing each fear level. They are not allowed to move up to the next step of the ladder until they can experience the current step with zero anxiety.

In Vivo Exposure

a form of exposure therapy where the person is confronting the feared object or situation in real life (e.g., holding a real spider).

Imaginal Exposure

a form of exposure therapy where a person vividly imagine the feared situation (used often in PTSD therapy when the actual trauma cannot be recreated).

Flooding

A fast-paced, intense style of exposure where the patient skips the baby steps and goes straight to their biggest fear until their anxiety naturally peaks and burns itself out.

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)

This operated through Albert Ellis core truth: People are not disturbed by things, but by the views they take of things. The emotional and behavioral outcome is caused by your beliefs, not by the event itself.

• If your belief was rational, the consequence is healthy sadness or determination.

• If your belief was irrational, the consequence is debilitating depression, anxiety, or giving up on your career.

It focuses heavily on Absolutistic Demands—what Albert Ellis called "Musturbatory thinking." It argues that almost all psychological distress comes from turning preferences into absolute demands: "I must do well," "You must treat me fairly," or "Life must be easy.

therapist is highly active, directive, and sometimes confrontational. They will directly challenge your logic and call out your irrational beliefs (e.g., "Where is it written that you MUST be perfect? Who made that law?").

Selective Abstraction

this refers to a cognitive distortion wherein a person draw a conclusion solely based on a piece of information without any supporting evidence or even when the actual evidence contradicts the conclusion.

Overgeneralization

this refers to a cognitive distortion wherein a person make a single, isolated negative it into a universal, never-ending rule for your entire life.

Example: You apply for a job and get rejected. Instead of seeing it as a routine part of the job hunt, you tell yourself, "I am completely incompetent. I never get what I want, and I will always be stuck in my current position."

Magnification

this refers to cognitive distortion where in a person dramatically exaggerating the importance of your mistakes, flaws, or external threats in their life, while shrinking your achievements, strengths, and successes down to nothing (minimization).

Absolutist Thinking

this refers to a cognitive distortion where a person sees the world solely in black-and-white, rather than in shades of gray.

Thomas Sazs

he is a psychosocial theorist that denies the existence of mental disorders instead he states that “abnormal” is merely a label society attaches to people whose behavior deviates from accepted social norms.

Social Causation Model

it states that people from lower socioeconomic groups are at greater risk of severe behavior problems because living in poverty subjects them ti greater level of social stress than that faced by more well-to-do people.

Downward Drift Hypothesis

t argues that a person might start out in a wealthy or middle-class environment, but the onset of a severe mental illness impairs their ability to function, causing them to lose their job, drop out of school, and slide into poverty.

Classical Psychoanalysis

The focus is heavily fixed on the deep past, gaining insight, and resolving unconscious psychological conflicts. It includes techniques like free association, dream analysis, and interpretation.

The goal is a radical, top-to-bottom restructuring of the entire personality. It aims for complete self-understanding by systematically dismantling defenses and making the unconscious conscious.

In this type of therapy, the therapist is passive and interpretive acting as a "blank slate" (detached and objective). They share zero personal details, rarely speak, and offer no reassurance. Their goal is to remain anonymous so the client can project their unconscious conflicts onto them.

Modern Psychodynamic Therapy

This therapy focuses on developing insight but with greater emphasis on ego functioning, current interpersonal relationship, and adaptive behavior.

The goal is more targeted and practical: symptom relief and emotional resilience. It helps the client identify their current maladaptive defense mechanisms, understand their relationship patterns, and find healthier ways to cope with life right now.

The therapist is a collaborative, active participant in the room. They interact warmly, support the client, and treat the therapeutic relationship as a real-world partnership rather than just a blank screen for projection.

Behavior Therapy

This therapy looks at human distress and says, "We don’t need to dig into your childhood psyche; we just need to fix your current actions." Built on the principles of conditioning (like Thorndike's Law of Effect), it treats psychological disorders as faulty habits that can be unlearned through targeted action.

Its goals is to replace maladaptive, destructive behaviors with healthy, productive habits through techniques like exposure therapy, systematic desensitization, modeling, and behavior modification.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Pioneered by Aaron T. Beck, it is the most widely practiced and scientifically validated therapy style today. It operates on a simple cycle: Your thoughts create your emotions, which then dictate your behaviors. If your thoughts are warped by irrational cognitive distortions, your feelings and behaviors will be equally distorted.

Its goal is to identify, challenge, and restructure irrational, automatic negative thoughts (e.g., "I am unlovable," "I always fail," or overgeneralizing a bad situation) and replace them with objective, balanced realities through behavioral homework assignments.

It uses Socratic Questioning they guide you with open-ended questions so you can discover your own thought flaws.

Humanistic (Client-Centered) Therapy

Developed by Carl Rogers in response to the clinical rigidity of Freud and behaviorism, This therapy rejects the idea that clients are "sick" or need an expert to fix them. It assumes that every human possesses an innate, natural drive toward health, self-actualization, and growth, but life circumstances have temporarily blocked them.

It’s goal is to increase self-esteem, promote self-acceptance, and help the client discover their own internal answers by aligning their "Real Self" with their "Ideal Self."

The therapist does not give advice, judge, diagnose, or steer the conversation. They act as an equal, highly empathetic companion who provides a warm, safe mirror for the client.

Axis I: Clinical Disorders

It contained almost all major mental health diagnoses, particularly those that were considered "acute"—meaning they had a noticeable onset, could fluctuate in severity, and were often the primary reason a person sought help.

Axis II: Personality Disorders & Mental Retardation

This axis is reserved for long-standing, deeply ingrained conditions that usually started in childhood or adolescence and persisted throughout adulthood.

Axis III: General Medical Conditions

This axis was used to record any physical, medical illnesses or conditions that might be relevant to understanding or treating the person's mental health. Because the body and mind are deeply connected, physical illnesses can cause, worsen, or heavily interact with psychological disorders.

Axis IV: Psychosocial & Environmental Problems

This axis documented the external, real-world stressors that were acting on the patient. It gave context to why a disorder might have triggered or why a patient was struggling to recover.

Axis V: Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF)

it was a numerical score ranging from 0 to 100. Known as the GAF Scale, it was the therapist's objective rating of how well the patient was coping with their life at that exact moment.

Abreaction

It refers to the act of vividly reliving a repressed traumatic experience where they emotionally and physically re-experiencing it as if it is happening in the room and then releasing the pent-up emotional energy attached to it.

This often looks like intense crying, shaking, shouting which Freud called the trapped emotion a "strangulated affect."

Redintegration

it refers to the psychological process of reconstructing a complete memory, emotion, or behavioral response from a partial cue or degraded stimulus

• Example: if you smell a specific brand of perfume, that single sensory cue might instantly trigger a vivid, complete memory of your grandmother's house from twenty years ago—including what the kitchen looked like and how you felt.

Verbigeration

A severe psychiatric symptom involving the continuous, meaningless repetition of specific words, phrases, or sentences.

Also known as catalogia, this is an automatic, involuntary speech pattern most commonly seen in individuals suffering from severe schizophrenia or catatonic states. The patient will repeat a word over and over again (e.g., shouting "Blue door, blue door, blue door...") for hours, completely divorced from any conversational context.

Equifinality

This means that completely different early life experiences can lead to the exact same psychological disorder.

Example: Imagine a man named Alex who has just been diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder. If we look backward at his life, his depression is a result of three completely unrelated streams of his life (biological, psychological, and environmental) all flowed into this one diagnosis:

Multifinality

the psychological and systems theory principle stating that a single starting point or cause can lead to multiple, widely different outcomes. One single path branching out into many possible outcomes.

Example: Imagine a teenager named Maya who survives a devastating, traumatic car accident. The accident is a single starting point that could branch out into three entirely different potential futures for Maya.

Circumstantiality

a disturbance in the form of thought (how a person organizes and expresses ideas). When you ask someone a question, they eventually answer it, but only after taking you on an exhausting, overly detailed detour.

Confabulation

a memory error where the brain unconsciously fills gaps in memory with fabricated, misinterpreted, or distorted information. Unlike lying, the person is not attempting to deceive and sincerely believes their made-up stories are 100% true.

It occurs when a person’s brain has a physical "hole" in its memory, so it automatically manufactures false information, stories, or fabricated events to fill that gap.

Predisposing Factor

this refers to factors that increase someone’s vulnerability to develop problems.

Inborn vulnerabilities, genetics, or early life experiences that make a person susceptible to a mental health condition long before it actually shows up. They do not cause the illness directly, but they lower a person's defenses.

Precipitation Factors

this refers to triggers of the current presenting issue such immediate, recent events or stressors that actually pull the trigger and cause the mental health condition to surface.

Perpetuating Factor

this refers to factors that maintain the presenting issues and could reinforce symptoms .

these are Internal behaviors, lifestyle habits, or external conditions that keep the illness going once it has started. These factors prevent the person from healing and trap them in the disorder.

Cultural Relativism

this refers to an understanding that what is considered abnormal in one culture may be normative in another,

Arbitrary Inference

this refers to a cognitive distortion where in a person emphasize the the negative rather than the positive aspects of the situation.