Welcome to Abnormal Psychology!
变态心理学
Abnormal psychology is the scientific study of abnormal behavior in order to describe, predict, explain, and change abnormal patterns of functioning. Abnormal functioning is almost always a result of a mental disorder. According to the DSM-IV, a mental disorder can be defined as a pattern of behavioral and psychological symptoms that causes significant personal distress, impairs the ability to function in one or more important areas of daily life, or both. Abnormal psychology in clinical psychology studies the nature of psychopathology, its causes, and its treatments. Of course, the definition of what constitutes 'abnormal' has varied across time and across cultures. Individuals also vary in what they regard as normal or abnormal behavior. In general, abnormal psychology can be described as an area of psychology that studies people who are consistently unable to adapt and function effectively in a variety of conditions. The four main contributing factors to how well an individual is able to adapt include their genetic makeup, physical condition, learning and reasoning, and socialization.
Multiple Causality
The amount of different theoretical perspectives in the field of psychological abnormality has made it difficult to properly explain psychopathology. The attempt to explain all mental disorders with the same theory leads to reductionism (explaining a disorder or other complex phenomena using only a single idea or perspective). Most mental disorders are composed of several factors, which is why one must take into account several theoretical perspectives when attempting to diagnose or explain a particular behavioral abnormality or mental disorder. Explaining mental disorders with a combination of theoretical perspectives is known as multiple causality.
The diathesis-stress model emphasizes the importance of applying multiple causality to psychopathology by stressing that disorders are caused by both precipitating causes and predisposing causes. A precipitating cause is an immediate trigger that instigates a person's action or behavior. A predisposing cause is an underlying factor that interacts with the immediate factors to result in a disorder. Both causes play a key role in the development of a psychological disorder.
Mind and Body
A paradigm is a general viewpoint on the world and is much broader than a theory. Today's field of psychology revolves around two major paradigms for explaining mental disorders, the psychological paradigm and the biological paradigm. The psychological paradigm focuses more on the humanistic, cognitive and behavioral perspectives. The biological paradigm includes the theories that rely more on physical causes such as genetics and neurochemistry.
Modern concepts of abnormality
Statistical abnormality - when a certain behaviour/characteristic is relevant to a low percentage of the population. However, this does not necessarily mean that such individuals are suffering from mental illness (for example, statistical abnormalities such as extreme wealth/attractiveness).
Psychometric abnormality - when a certain behaviour/characteristic differs from the population's normal dispersion e.g. having an IQ of 35 could be classified as abnormal, as the population average is 100. However, this does not specify a particular mental illness.
Deviant behaviour - this is not always a sign of mental illness, as it can occur without deviant behaviour, and such behaviour may occur in the absence of mental illness.
Combinations - including distress, dysfunction, distorted psychological processes, inappropriate responses in given situations and causing/risking harm to oneself.