LECTURE 5

Patogenic approach: one-dimension models of mental disorders, multipath models of metal disorders.

One-dimension models: explain disorders, predominantly linear explanation, considered to be overly simplistic.

Multipath models of mental disorders: explain disorders in more holistic and interactive terms, systems of different reciprocal influences (biological, psychological, social and sociocultural) interact in complex ways to yield the major etiological and maintaining processes responsible for mental disorders.

The interaction of genes and environment: genetic factors contribute to all disorders -> there must be an environmental trigger for a disorder to occur. Diathesis-stress model - one inherits a predisposition for a certain behavior or trait, which can be activated in a particular conditions of stress.

Diathesis or vulnerability: is genetically determined and makes a person prone to develop a disorder. Stress is environmental. The bigger the vulnerability, the smaller the life stress required to produce the disorder.

Psychodynamic model: Freud was the first to challenge the view that mental disorders were caused by physical illness, he proposed that psychological factors were responsible. The essence of this approach is to explain behavior in term of its dynamics I.e. the forces that drives it (personality structure, level of awareness, psychosexual stages, defense mechanism).

Personality structure: adult personality is structured into three parts - id, ego and superego. According to Freud the key to healthy personality is a balance between id, ego and superego.

Id: impulsive and unconscious part of our personality, present at birth. Pleasure, immediate satisfaction, no regard for social norms. Gratification of instinct in action or fantasy.

Ego: conscious and rational part of the mind, acting in the external world. Develops around age of two. Its aim is to work out realistic ways of balancing demands of id in a socially acceptable way.

Superego: learned aspect of self, forms around the age of 4. Seeks to perfect and civilize our behavior, learned through identification with one’s pare and others. Black and white judgment.

Levels of awareness: conscious (logical mind), unconscious (ruled by pleasure-principle). Psychic energy is used to find acceptable ways to express unconscious ideas and wishes or to keep them repressed.

Psychosexual stages: Freud used sexual to mean sensual or physical. At each stage a person’s life force is attached to an organ of the body, focuses on the development of the instincts. Theorized that the ways in which children deal with immature sexual urges during different stages of psychosexual development shape personality. Oral phase, anal phase, phallic phase, latency phase, genital.

Defense mechanisms: the ego attempts to keep conflicts and their discomfort from reaching consciousness by employing a variety of defense mechanisms that distort reality, usually at an unconscious level. Help the individual cope with anxiety and prevent the ego from being overwhelmed. Displacement, projection, denial, sublimation, suppression.

Displacement: transfer of impulses from one person or object to another.

Projection: undesirable thoughts are attributed to someone else.

Denial: refusing to accept reality.

Sublimation: negative emotions are transformed to positive, socially acceptable behaviors or emotions.

Suppression: pushing uncomfortable thoughts into the preconscious so they can be accessed later).

Humanistic model: emphasis on people as friendly, cooperative and constructive. Humanity is basically good, forward-moving, and trustworthy. Focus on drive to self-actualization (the drive to better self, people are motivated by the actualizing tendency to enhance the self). Reality is the product of our unique experiences and perceptions of the world; subjective universe is more important than the events themselves.

Rogers’s humanistic theory: development of abnormal behavior occurs when society imposes conditions of worth in people so that their self-concept and actualizing tendency become incongruent. Such incongruence produces behavior disorders. Abnormal behavior results from disharmony between a person’s potential and self-concept. Unconditional positive regard.

Abraham Maslow: actualizing tendency (people are motivated to satisfy not only biological needs, but also the self), self-actualization (inherent tendency to strive toward realization of one’s full potential)