Abnormal Psychology Quotes

Oh! This'll impress you - I'm actually in the Abnormal Psychology textbook. Obviously my family is so proud. Keep in mind though, I'm a PEZ dispenser and I'm in the abnormal Psychology textbook. Who says you can't have it all?

people had the mistaken idea that Poe wrote fantastic stories about the supernatural, when in fact he wrote realistic stories about abnormal psychology.

I think it was Lessing who once said, 'There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose'. An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behaviour".

Here I want to stress that perception of losing one’s mind is based on culturally derived and socially ingrained stereotypes as to the significance of symptoms such as hearing voices, losing temporal and spatial orientation, and sensing that one is being followed, and that many of the most spectacular and convincing of these symptoms in some instances psychiatrically signify merely a temporary emotional upset in a stressful situation, however terrifying to the person at the time. Similarly, the anxiety consequent upon this perception of oneself, and the strategies devised to reduce this anxiety, are not a product of abnormal psychology, but would be exhibited by any person socialized into our culture who came to conceive of himself as someone losing his mind.

As a consequence there are many people who become neurotic because they are only normal, as there are people who are neurotic because they cannot become normal. For the former the very thought that you want to educate them to normality is a nightmare; their deepest need is really to be able to lead "abnormal" lives.

From the perspective of abnormal psychology, President Trump is a very interesting case study.

Whether we are speaking of a flower or an oak tree, of an earthworm or a beautiful bird, of an ape or a person, we will do well, I believe, to recognize that life is an active process, not a passive one. Whether the stimulus arises from within or without, whether the environment is favorable or unfavorable, the behaviors of an organism can be counted on to be in the direction of maintaining, enhancing, and reproducing itself. This is the very nature of the process we call life. This tendency is operative at all times. Indeed, only the presence or absence of this total directional process enables us to tell whether a given organism is alive or dead. The actualizing tendency can, of course, be thwarted or warped, but it cannot be destroyed without destroying the organism. I remember that in my boyhood, the bin in which we stored our winter's supply of potatoes was in the basement, several feet below a small window. The conditions were unfavorable, but the potatoes would begin to sprout—pale white sprouts, so unlike the healthy green shoots they sent up when planted in the soil in the spring. But these sad, spindly sprouts would grow 2 or 3 feet in length as they reached toward the distant light of the window. The sprouts were, in their bizarre, futile growth, a sort of desperate expression of the directional tendency I have been describing. They would never become plants, never mature, never fulfill their real potential. But under the most adverse circumstances, they were striving to become. Life would not give up, even if it could not flourish. In dealing with clients whose lives have been terribly warped, in working with men and women on the back wards of state hospitals, I often think of those potato sprouts. So unfavorable have been the conditions in which these people have developed that their lives often seem abnormal, twisted, scarcely human. Yet, the directional tendency in them can be trusted. The clue to understanding their behavior is that they are striving, in the only ways that they perceive as available to them, to move toward growth, toward becoming. To healthy persons, the results may seem bizarre and futile, but they are life's desperate attempt to become itself. This potent constructive tendency is an underlying basis of the person-centered approach.

Those who take their own lives, especially when the quality of those lives is much less bad than those of the cancer patient or the concentration camp prisoner, fly in the face of the normal will to live. They are seen as abnormal, not merely in the statistical sense of being unusual, but of being defective, either morally or psychologically.

Freud was the man who seeded a progeny of doctors interested in abnormal psychology. With the intellectual force of a battering ram, Freud penetrated deeply into the untouched and delicate flower that was psychosis. His strong, trunk-like stature as an analyst led to the cherry popping of many previously unthought theories on the mind. He also proved that people constantly think about sex even while not penis reading about it.

My mom said it’s different when it’s the woman who’s violent. It strikes people as abnormal. Like, it’s natural for a guy to just ‘lose his temper,’ but if a woman does the same thing, then it’s a sign of something deeper wrong, like psychologically or almost metaphysically.

Since mentally healthy human beings must grow, and since giving up or loss of the old self is an integral part of the process of mental and spiritual growth, depression is a normal and basically healthy phenomenon. It becomes abnormal or unhealthy only when something interferes with the giving-up process, with the result that the depression is prolonged and cannot be resolved by completion of the

Human nature is so complicated that it will never know the exact border between normality and abnormality them they..

The professor said people had the mistaken idea that Poe wrote fantastic stories about the supernatural, when in fact he wrote realistic stories about abnormal psychology.

Anger and violence in Gaza and among Gazans is completely predictable. In a situation like ours, the absence of violence and anger would be abnormal. All of of us feel angry at least occasionally.

Religious people are forced to perform mental gymnastics to reconcile real life with their delusions. When Christianity, Islam and the rest of the world religions finally have gone the way of Zeus, they will leave behind a legacy of case studies for students of abnormal psychology.

This is also why the new novels die so quickly, and why the old fairy tales endure for ever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal. But in the modern psychological novel the hero is abnormal; the center is not central.

Abnormal psychology is a painfully complicated psychological area. It implicates biology, chemistry and genetics heavily. It implicates social perception. And it implicates the experience of any of us who has been depressed, anxious, or worse. The need to bring simplicity and understanding to an apparently complicated area challenges me.

I do not use psychiatric terms in my writing because the entrenched and developing behaviours were perfectly normal reactions to abnormal situations.

It is not sufficient to produce the next generation. You must also teach the new generation how to survive in an abnormal toxic world.

Experienced radiologists who evaluate chest X-rays as “normal” or “abnormal” contradict themselves 20% of the time when they see the same picture on separate occasions

human traders who are not psychologically prepared will often override their automated trading systems' decisions, especially when there is a position or day with abnormal profit or loss.

Behind a barbed-wire fence, a dirt road disappears into the distance in the pine trees and corners. Lost, dead roads, no ends or remaining purposes, power lines now dead and sagging and forgotten, grown high in weeds and young trees. The trees have entirely encased a speed limit sign, strange sight, nothing so pointless as a speed limit sign in the midst of dense woods, pointless and beautifully so.

This was the first of the St. Augustines. Previous memos had borne messages from Zwingli, Lévi-Strauss, Rilke, Chekhov, Tillich, William Blake, Charles Olson and a Kiowa chief named Satanta. Naturally the person responsible for these messages became known throughout the company as the Mad Memo-Writer. I never referred to him that way because it was much too obvious a name. I called him Trotsky. There was no special reason for choosing Trotsky; it just seemed to fit. I wondered if he was someone I knew. Everybody seemed to think he was probably a small grotesque man who had suffered many disappointments in life, who despised the vast impersonal structure of the network and who was employed in our forwarding department, the traditional repository for all sex offenders, mutants and vegetarians. They said he was most likely a foreigner who lived in a rooming house in Red Hook; he spent his nights reading an eight-volume treatise on abnormal psychology, in small type, and he told his grocer he had been a Talmudic scholar in the old country. This was the consensus and maybe it had a certain logic. But I found more satisfaction in believing that Trotsky was one of our top executives. He made eighty thousand dollars a year and stole paper clips from the office.

A little later, when breakfast was over and I had not yet gone up-stairs to my room, I had my first interview with Doctor Brandon, the famous alienist who was in charge of the case. I had never seen him before, but from the first moment that I looked at him I took his measure, almost by intuition. He was, I suppose, honest enough -- I have always granted him that, bitterly as I have felt toward him. It wasn't his fault that he lacked red blood in his brain, or that he had formed the habit, from long association with abnormal phenomena, of regarding all life as a disease. He was the sort of physician -- every nurse will understand what I mean -- who deals instinctively with groups instead of with individuals. He was long and solemn and very round in the face; and I hadn't talked to him ten minutes before I knew he had been educated in Germany, and that he had learned over there to treat every emotion as a pathological manifestation. I used to wonder what he got out of life -- what any one got out of life who had analyzed away everything except the bare structure.

Rikki looked over at me. “Why now?" she asked, looking back at Arly. “Why is this happening now?" "Hard to say." Arly [therapist] replied. "DID usually gets diagnosed in adulthood. Something happens that triggers the alters to come out. When Cam's father died and he came in to help his brother run the family business he was in close contact with his mother again. Maybe it was seeing Kyle around the same age when some of the abuse happened. Cam was sick for a long time and finally got better. Maybe he wasn't strong enough until now to handle this. It's probably a combination of things. But it sure looks like some of the abuse Cam experienced involved his mother. And sexual abuse by the mother is considered to he one of the most traumatic forms of abuse. In some ways it's the ultimate betrayal.

oddities only strike ordinary people. Oddities do not strike odd people. This is why ordinary people have a much more exciting time; while odd people are always complaining of the dulness of life. This is also why the new novels die so quickly, and why the old fairy tales endure for ever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal. But in the modern psychological novel the hero is abnormal; the centre is not central. Hence the fiercest adventures fail to affect him adequately, and the book is monotonous. You can make a story out of a hero among dragons; but not out of a dragon among dragons. The fairy tale discusses what a sane man will do in a mad world. The sober realistic novel of to-day discusses what an essential lunatic will do in a dull world.

On a deeper level, though, the article exemplifies the journalistic conviction that anything “controversial” is worth covering and that both sides of an issue must always be given equal space—even if one side belongs in an abnormal psychology textbook. If enough money is involved, and enough people believe that two plus two equals five, the media will report the story with a straight face, always adding a qualifying paragraph noting that “mathematicians, however, say that two plus two still equals four.” With a perverted objectivity that gives credence to nonsense, mainstream news outlets have done more to undermine logic and reason than raptureready.com could ever do.

• The pain is due to TMS, not to a structural abnormality. • The direct reason for the pain is mild oxygen deprivation. • TMS is a harmless condition, caused by my repressed emotions. • The principal emotion is my repressed anger. • TMS exists only to distract my attention from the emotions. • Since my back is basically normal, there is nothing to fear. • Therefore, physical activity is not dangerous. • And I must resume all normal physical activity. • I will not be concerned or intimidated by the pain. • I will shift my attention from the pain to emotional issues. • I intend to be in control—not my subconscious mind. • I must think psychological at all times, not physical.

Psychopaths are generally viewed as aggressive, insensitive, charismatic, irresponsible, intelligent, dangerous, hedonistic, narcissistic and antisocial. These are persons who can masterfully explain another person's problems and what must be done to overcome them, but who appear to have little or no insight into their own lives or how to correct their own problems. Those psychopaths who can articulate solutions for their own personal problems usually fail to follow them through. Psychopaths are perceived as exceptional manipulators capable of feigning emotions in order to carry out their personal agendas. Without remorse for the plight of their victims, they are adept at rationalization, projection, and other psychological defense mechanisms. The veneer of stability, friendliness, and normality belies a deeply disturbed personality. Outwardly there appears to be nothing abnormal about their personalities, even their behavior. They are careful to maintain social distance and share intimacy only with those whom they can psychologically control. They are noted for their inability to maintain long-term commitments to people or programs.

The process by which bourgeois society developed out of the ruins of its revolutionary traditions and memories added the black ghost of boredom to economic saturation and general indifference to political questions. Jews became people with whom one hoped to while away some time. The less one thought of them as equals, the more attractive and entertaining they became. Bourgeois society, in its search for entertainment and its passionate interest in the individual, insofar as he differed from the norm that is man, discovered the attraction of everything that could be supposed to be mysteriously wicked or secretly vicious. And precisely this feverish preference opened the doors of society to Jews; for within the framework of this society, Jewishness, after having been distorted into a psychological quality, could easily be perverted into a vice. The Enlightenment’s genuine tolerance and curiosity for everything human was being replaced by a morbid lust for the exotic, abnormal, and different as such. Several types in society, one after the other, represented the exotic, the anomalous, the different, but none of them was in the least connected with political questions. Thus

Getting drunk every Friday night and thinking that it's normal, only to get mad every Monday, looks normal only because most people are insane. It becomes abnormal when it affects your relationships and you push people you want away with a smile and cry when they're gone. That's when a person should question her own sanity. If that still doesn't make one question it, then that's a very deep stage of insanity. That's not life. That's the scenario for an apocalyptic movie.

The feeling of inner detachment and isolation is not in itself an abnormal phenomenon but is normal in the sense that consciousness has withdrawn from the phenomenal world and got outside time and space. You will find the clearest parallels in Indian philosophy, especially in Yoga. In your case the feeling is reinforced by your psychological studies. The assimilated unconscious apparently disappears in consciousness without trace, but it has the effect of detaching consciousness from its ties to the object. I have described this development in my commentary on the Golden Flower. It is a sort of integration process and an anticipation of consciousness. The cross is an indication of this, since it represents an integration of the 4 (functions). It is perfectly understandable that, when consciousness detaches itself from the object, the feeling arises that one does not know where one stands. Actually one is standing nowhere, because standing has a below and an above. But there one has no below and above at all, because spatiality pertains to the world of the senses, and consciousness possesses spatiality only when it is in participation with that world. It is a not-knowing, which has the same positive character as nirvana in the Buddhist definition, or the wu-wei, not-doing, of the Chinese, which does not mean doing nothing. The profound doubt you seem to be suffering from is quite in order as it simply expresses the detachment of consciousness and the resultant explanation of the objective world as an illusion.

It is the homogeneity of his mind which makes him dull, and which makes him mad. It is only because we see the irony of his idea that we think him even amusing; it is only because he does not see the irony of his idea that he is put in Hanwell at all. In short, oddities only strike ordinary people. Oddities do not strike odd people. This is why ordinary people have a much more exciting time; while odd people are always complaining of the dulness of life. This is also why the new novels die so quickly, and why the old fairy tales endure for ever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal. But in the modern psychological novel the hero is abnormal; the centre is not central. Hence the fiercest adventures fail to affect him adequately, and the book is monotonous. You can make a story out of a hero among dragons; but not out of a dragon among dragons. The fairy tale discusses what a sane man will do in a mad world. The sober realistic novel of to-day discusses what an essential lunatic will do in a dull world.

In general, I know that when speaking of private and opposing worlds, one tends to refer to divided, sometimes even irreconcilable facets of personality or of the spirit, each with its corresponding secret value and its psychological, metaphysical, political, or simply practical- or even pathological- content. But in my case there was neither a moral nor existential disjunctive, what was more, I saw that my two worlds weren't separated in an equal or reciprocal way; neither did one world linger in the shadows or in private as the flip side of the other, the visible one, who knows which; nor would they seek to impose themselves over the other or to merge as one, but force or not, as tends to occur in these cases. Nothing of the sort; they seemed a nearly abnormal example of coexistence, of adaptive tendency and of absolute absence of contrasts. I took all this into consideration, and it seemed worrisome and insoluble. . . But an instant later I resigned myself, thinking that when all was said and done I ought to bow to these conditions, because just as we cannot choose our moment to be born, we also know nothing of the variable worlds we'll inhabit.

MIND IS A DISEASE. This is a basic truth the East has discovered. The West says mind can become ill, can be healthy. Western psychology depends on this: the mind can be healthy or ill. But the East says mind as such is the disease, it cannot be healthy. No psychiatry will help; at the most you can make it normally ill. So there are two types of illness with mind: normally ill – that means you have the same illness as others around you; or abnormally ill – that means you are something unique. Your disease is not ordinary – exceptional. Your disease is individual, not of the crowd; that’s the only difference. Normally ill or abnormally ill, but mind cannot be healthy. Why? The East says the very nature of mind is such that it will remain unhealthy. The word ’health’ is beautiful. It comes from the same root as the word ’whole’. Health, healing, whole, holy – they all come from the same root. The mind cannot be healthy because it can never be whole. Mind is always divided; division is its base. If it cannot be whole, how can it be healthy? And if it cannot be healthy, how can it be holy? All minds are profane. There is nothing like a holy mind. A holy man lives without the mind because he lives without division.

The concept of “original sin” has been distorted by clergy and laity alike to mean that people are “born bad,” a condition that children accept when they incorporate their parents’ negative feelings toward them. This “bad” image of the self leads the individual to seek atonement through self-denial. “Original sin” has been interpreted to mean that the naked body is somehow sinful and dirty. This mistaken notion supports feelings of shame that originate in the child’s earliest experiences of the family. In traditional families, most children grow up with considerable guilt about their bodies and their bodily functions. Abnormal guilt reactions introjected by the child from defended parents lead to serious limitations in adult relationships.

Thus, besides the will, which is entirely dependent on its content, man has a further auxiliary in the unconscious, that maternal womb of creative fantasy, which is able at any time to fashion symbols in the natural process of elementary psychic activity, symbols that can serve to determine the mediating will. I say “can” advisedly, because the symbol does not of its own accord step into the breach, but remains in the unconscious just so long as the energic value of the conscious contents exceeds that of the unconscious symbol. Under normal conditions this is always the case; but under abnormal conditions a reversal of value sets in, whereby the unconscious acquires a higher value than the conscious. The symbol then rises to the surface without, however, being taken up by the will and the executive conscious functions, since these, on account of the reversal of value, have now become subliminal. The unconscious, on the other hand, has become supraliminal, and an abnormal state, a psychic disturbance, has supervened.

PHYSIOLOGY 1. Sex 2. Age 3. Height and weight 4. Color of hair, eyes, skin 5. Posture 6. Appearance: good-looking, over- or underweight, clean, neat, pleasant, untidy. Shape of head, face, limbs. 7. Defects: deformities, abnormalities, birthmarks. Diseases. 8. Heredity SOCIOLOGY 1. Class: lower, middle, upper. 2. Occupation: type of work, hours of work, income, condition of work, union or nonunion, attitude toward organization, suitability for work. 3. Education: amount, kind of schools, marks, favorite subjects, poorest subjects, aptitudes. 4. Home life: parents living, earning power, orphan, parents separated or divorced, parents’ habits, parents’ mental development, parents’ vices, neglect. Character’s marital status. 5. Religion 6. Race, nationality 7. Place in community: leader among friends, clubs, sports. 8. Political affiliations 9. Amusements, hobbies: books, newspapers, magazines he reads. PSYCHOLOGY 1. Sex life, moral standards 2. Personal premise, ambition 3. Frustrations, chief disappointments 4. Temperament: choleric, easygoing, pessimistic, optimistic. 5. Attitude toward life: resigned, militant, defeatist. 6. Complexes: obsessions, inhibitions, superstitions, phobias. 7. Extrovert, introvert, ambivert 8. Abilities: languages, talents. 9. Qualities: imagination, judgment, taste, poise. 10. I.Q.

Interactions with the world program our physiological and psychological development. Emotional contact is as important as physical contact. The two are quite analogous, as we recognize when we speak of the emotional experience of feeling touched. Our sensory organs and brains provide the interface through which relationships shape our evolution from infancy to adulthood. Social-emotional interactions decisively influence the development of the human brain. From the moment of birth, they regulate the tone, activity and development of the psychoneuroimmunoendocrine (PNI) super-system. Our characteristic modes of handling psychic and physical stress are set in our earliest years. Neuroscientists at Harvard University studied the cortisol levels of orphans who were raised in the dreadfully neglected child-care institutions established in Romania during the Ceausescu regime. In these facilities the caregiver/child ratio was one to twenty. Except for the rudiments of care, the children were seldom physically picked up or touched. They displayed the self-hugging motions and depressed demeanour typical of abandoned young, human or primate. On saliva tests, their cortisol levels were abnormal, indicating that their hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axes were already impaired. As we have seen, disruptions of the HPA axis have been noted in autoimmune disease, cancer and other conditions. It is intuitively easy to understand why abuse, trauma or extreme neglect in childhood would have negative consequences. But why do many people develop stress-related illness without having been abused or traumatized? These persons suffer not because something negative was inflicted on them but because something positive was withheld.

You were taught that even when the charism of celibacy and chastity is present and embraced, the attractions, the impulses, the desires will still be present. So the first thing you need to do is be aware that you are a human being, and no matter how saintly or holy you are, you will never remove yourself from those passions. But the idea was making prudent choices. You just walk away. Celibacy is a radical call, and you’ve made a decision not to act on your desire.” Today, seminaries say they screen applicants rigorously. In Boston, for example, a young man must begin conversations with the vocations director a year before applying for admissions, and then the application process takes at least four months. Most seminaries require that applicants be celibate for as long as five years before starting the program, just to test out the practice, and students are expected to remain celibate throughout seminary as they continue to discern whether they are cut out to lead the sexless life of an ordained priest. Some seminaries screen out applicants who say they are sexually attracted to other men, but most do not, arguing that there is no evidence linking sexual orientation to one’s ability to lead a celibate life. The seminaries attempt to weed out potential child abusers, running federal and local criminal background checks, but there is currently no psychological test that can accurately predict whether a man who has never sexually abused a child is likely to do so in the future. So seminary officials say that in the screening process, and throughout seminary training, they are alert to any sign that a man is not forming normal relationships with adults, or seems abnormally interested in children. Many potential applicants are turned away from seminaries, and every year some students are forced out. “Just because there’s a shortage doesn’t mean we should lessen our standards,” said Rev. Edward J. Burns,

The Extraordinary Persons Project In fact, Ekman had been so moved personally—and intrigued scientifically—by his experiments with Öser that he announced at the meeting he was planning on pursuing a systematic program of research studies with others as unusual as Öser. The single criterion for selecting apt subjects was that they be “extraordinary.” This announcement was, for modern psychology, an extraordinary moment in itself. Psychology has almost entirely dwelt on the problematic, the abnormal, and the ordinary in its focus. Very rarely have psychologists—particularly ones as eminent as Paul Ekman—shifted their scientific lens to focus on people who were in some sense (other than intellectually) far above normal. And yet Ekman now was proposing to study people who excel in a range of admirable human qualities. His announcement makes one wonder why psychology hasn't done this before. In fact, only in very recent years has psychology explicitly begun a program to study the positive in human nature. Sparked by Martin Seligman, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania long famous for his research on optimism, a budding movement has finally begun in what is being called “positive psychology”—the scientific study of well-being and positive human qualities. But even within positive psychology, Ekman's proposed research would stretch science's vision of human goodness by assaying the limits of human positivity Ever the scientist, Ekman became quite specific about what was meant by “extraordinary.” For one, he expects that such people exist in every culture and religious tradition, perhaps most often as contemplatives. But no matter what religion they practice, they share four qualities. The first is that they emanate a sense of goodness, a palpable quality of being that others notice and agree on. This goodness goes beyond some fuzzy, warm aura and reflects with integrity the true person. On this count Ekman proposed a test to weed out charlatans: In extraordinary people “there is a transparency between their personal and public life, unlike many charismatics, who have wonderful public lives and rather deplorable personal ones.” A second quality: selflessness. Such extraordinary people are inspiring in their lack of concern about status, fame, or ego. They are totally unconcerned with whether their position or importance is recognized. Such a lack of egoism, Ekman added, “from the psychological viewpoint, is remarkable.” Third is a compelling personal presence that others find nourishing. “People want to be around them because it feels good—though they can't explain why,” said Ekman. Indeed, the Dalai Lama himself offers an obvious example (though Ekman did not say so to him); the standard Tibetan title is not “Dalai Lama” but rather “Kundun,” which in Tibetan means “presence.” Finally, such extraordinary individuals have “amazing powers of attentiveness and concentration.

What is the wisest choice for a personal life goal? Should a person seek self-actualization or self-realization? Perhaps neither goal is a realistic objective, especially if human beings lack free will. What I do know is that there is dark pit so deep inside myself that I must fill it. I can pad this black hole with dread or pleasure, booze or drugs, religion or vice, action or indolence, love or hatred. Alternatively, I can fill bleakness and emptiness by increasing self-awareness and ascertain my role in the world. With limited energy resources and lack of mental acuity, I might never attain a plane of higher consciousness. I fear remaining forever blocked in a state of psychological deadlock, forevermore exhibiting prolonged mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders and plagued by psychogenic abnormalities brought about from social rejection, grief, vocational lapses, and economic and marital setbacks. In a state of mental incapacity, I might lack the ability to blunt immediate personal destruction. I need to begin a journey that leads to a higher state of awareness, and personal survival depends upon how much progress I achieve purging my mind of falsities and other toxic impurities. While personal survival necessities moving forward in order to discover a mental state of silent stasis and reach the desired endpoint of emotional equanimity, perhaps I will never achieve a mirror-like purity of the mind that is capable of reflecting the world as it really is, without distortion by a corrupted mind.

What if the theories in psychology that dominate our mainstream culture are flawed, rather than the people they diagnose? That we close our eyes to modern brain science and global context and pigeonhole human beings as “normal” or “abnormal” is one of the biggest shams of the century.

After earning a degree in Marketing at Auburn University, I spent the next five years in the business world, which is a polite way of saying that I had eleven jobs in a five-year period, including door to door sales, skip tracing people who didn’t want to be found, repossessing cars and collecting on defaulted student loans. During this five-year period, I did an in-depth study of abnormal psychology and sociopathic behavior – and then I divorced him.

may have resulted from abnormal wiring in the serotonergic system of his brain. Other

The pain is due to TMS, not to a structural abnormality. • The direct reason for the pain is mild oxygen deprivation. • TMS is a harmless condition, caused by my repressed emotions. • The principal emotion is my repressed anger. • TMS exists only to distract my attention from the emotions. • Since my back is basically normal, there is nothing to fear. • Therefore, physical activity is not dangerous. • And I must resume all normal physical activity. • I will not be concerned or intimidated by the pain. • I will shift my attention from the pain to emotional issues. • I intend to be in control—not my subconscious mind. • I must think psychological at all times, not physical.

the earlier the occurrence of traumata and the more unfavorable the earliest phases of extrauterine existence—the symbiotic phase, the differentiation subphase and the practicing subphase, that is, the first 14 to 15 months of life—the greater the proclivity to later, severe personality difficulties, borderline pathology, or even psychosis. This appears to be true only if (1) the infant’s innate endowment is greatly abnormal, and/or if (2) the experiential circumstances are stressful and consistently counteract subphase-specific progress far beyond the “average expectable.

Emotional deprivation is at the core of neurotic addiction and abnormal dependency.

THE “AWARENESS” SHIELD FEAT. According to the Bible, Joseph obtained enormous prestige in Egypt, when he was able to divine the dreams of the pharaoh, As Joseph earned that feat with a great social prestige, in different traditions the "awareness" of the future, or an inaccessible present, always proved a merit that produces social honor. Weber (1922) considers the prophets, along with the priests and magicians, as examples of charismatic leaders, and this is because "predict " or " perceive" the future has been, in different traditions, a strong feat that has given pride and social prestige those who perform. It postulates a "shield feat of awareness" that is intended to offset the impact on the pride of some future anti-feat. When the firepower that a possible future anti-feat has about pride and social prestige is too high and becomes unbearable, the person can go into that future equipped with a shield feat that will compensate. From that strategy, thinking badly of the future is a way of ensuring the "consolation prize" of having the merit of "prediction”. According to Steele (1988 ), when a person experiences a negative assessment of himself in a particular field, they can initiate a process of self-affirmation activating positive beliefs in another area, thus achieving a positive overall assessment of itself. The pessimistic shield feat "awareness of future failure”, would be a merit that safeguards to offset the impact of that failure on self- concept , an achievement an overall assessment that is not so negative.

In 1974, San Francisco newspaper heiress Patty Hearst was kidnapped by a radical group called the Symbionese Liberation Army, whose goals included “death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people.” After being kept in a closet for a while, she came to identify with her new peer group. Before long, she was enthusiastically helping them generate income, at one point brandishing a machine gun during a bank robbery. When left alone, with an opportunity to escape, she didn’t take it. She later described the experience: “I had virtually no free will until I was separated from them for about two weeks. And then it suddenly, you know, slowly began to dawn that they just weren’t there anymore. I could actually think my own thoughts.” Hearst didn’t just accept her captors’ “subjective” beliefs, such as ideology; she bought into their views about how the physical world works. One of her captors “didn’t want me thinking about rescue because he thought that brain waves could be read or that, you know, they’d get a psychic in to find me. And I was even afraid of that.” Hearst’s condition of coerced credulity is called the Stockholm syndrome, after a kidnapping in Sweden. But the term “syndrome” may be misleading in its suggestion of abnormality. Hearst’s response to her circumstances was probably an example of human nature functioning properly; we seem to be “designed” by natural selection to be brainwashed. Some people find this prospect a shocking affront to human autonomy, but they tend not to be evolutionary psychologists. In Darwinian terms, it makes sense that our species could contain genes encouraging blind credulity in at least some situations. If you are surrounded by a small group of people on whom your survival depends, rejecting the beliefs that are most important to them will not help you live long enough to get your genes into the next generation. Confinement with a small group of people may sound so rare that natural selection would have little chance to take account of it, but it is in a sense the natural human condition. Humans evolved in small groups—twenty, forty, sixty people—from which emigration was often not a viable option. Survival depended on social support: sharing food, sticking together during fights, and so on. To alienate your peers by stubbornly contesting their heartfelt beliefs would have lowered your chances of genetic proliferation. Maybe that explains why you don’t have to lock somebody in a closet to get a bit of the Stockholm syndrome. Religious cults just offer aimless teenagers a free bus ride to a free meal, and after the recruits have been surrounded by believers for a few days, they tend to warm up to the beliefs. And there doesn’t have to be some powerful authority figure pushing the beliefs. In one famous social psychology experiment, subjects opined that two lines of manifestly different lengths were the same length, once a few of their “peers” (who were in fact confederates) voiced that opinion.

[Stereotypies are demonstrated in many animals, including elephants, horses, polar bears, macaques & humans. Because stereotypic behavior is not seen in the wild, it is considered a strong indicator of poor psychological health in the caged organism. Thus, stereotypies are termed abnormal (or, rather, the captive environment is the true abnormality). Smaller cages can exacerbate stereotypies. To be captive, then, is to be rendered a trope of oneself.]

For many years I was an involuntary crazy person!

I am one of the few involuntary crazy people around that managed to reverse the disabling condition.

Zazen is by no means a "quick fix" panacea for all psychological ailments. While it does aim to uproot the core causes of our "normal" human spiritual dis-ease, any "abnormal" mental health issues should be addressed before one is ready to engage in the austere rigors of this spiritual discipline.

In my experience, structural abnormalities of the spine rarely cause back pain. That ought not surprise us, for this epidemic of back pain is very new. Somehow the human race managed to get through the first million years or so of its evolution without a problem, but if the structural diagnoses are correct, something happened to the spine during the last evolutionary eyeblink, and it has begun to fall apart. This idea is untenable. One suspects that these spine abnormalities have always been there but were never blamed for pain, because there was no pain to blame them for. Fifty years ago, back pain was not very common, but, more importantly, nobody took it seriously. The epidemic of back pain is due to the enormous increase in the incidence of TMS during the past thirty years, and, ironically, the failure of medicine recognize and diagnose it has been a major factor in that increase. Instead of TMS, the pain has been attributed primarily to a variety of structural defects of the spine. It's essential to know that almost all of the structural abnormalities of the spine are harmless. (page 117)

psychopaths are generally well satisfied with themselves and with their inner landscape, bleak as it may seem to outside observers.

Maybe, abnormal is not defined by a list of ettiquette rules you don't follow or even the symptoms listed in the DSM manual. Maybe, it isn't defined by a person's anger or how they react to prolonged emotional, physical, psychological or sexual abuse. Maybe, it isn't in the rituals people do to cope when they are hurt, lost or confused. Maybe, abnormal is found not in how we live or even in how we survive. Maybe, abnormal is something as simple as going against choosing the right. Maybe, madness is in the things we do that goes against the very nature of all that is good and true. Maybe, just maybe, normal is something as simple as not hurting someone for your own gain.

So I had to face the fact that I was blessed with abilities that were considered symptoms of emotional abnormality or mental derangement by psychology, often thought of as demonic by religion, and whose very existence was denied altogether by science. So in my darker moments I used to think that my psychic initiation and subsequent experiences were a mixed bag, to say the least. But the fact is that I was very sensitive to criticism for the very good reason that often I shared many of the beliefs that stimulated it.

daily reminders. • The pain is due to TMS, not to a structural abnormality. • The direct reason for the pain is mild oxygen deprivation. • TMS is a harmless condition, caused by my repressed emotions. • The principal emotion is my repressed anger. • TMS exists only to distract my attention from the emotions. • Since my back is basically normal, there is nothing to fear. • Therefore, physical activity is not dangerous. • And I must resume all normal physical activity. • I will not be concerned or intimidated by the pain. • I will shift my attention from the pain to emotional issues. • I intend to be in control—not my subconscious mind. • I must think psychological at all times, not physical.

Etiology l Genetic studies provide evidence that bipolar disorder is strongly heritable and that depression is somewhat heritable. l Neurobiological research has focused on the sensitivity of receptors rather than on the amount of various transmitters, with the strongest evidence for diminished sensitivity of the serotonin receptors in depression and mania. There is some evidence that mania is related to heightened sensitivity of the dopamine receptors and that depression is related to diminished sensitivity of dopamine receptors. l Bipolar and unipolar disorders seem tied to elevated activity of the amygdala and the subgenual anterior cingulate and to diminished activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and hippocampus during tasks that involve emotion and emotion regulation. During mania, greater levels of activation of the striatum have been observed. Mania also may involve elevations in protein kinase C. l Overactivity of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis (HPA), as indexed by poor suppression of cortisol by dexamethasone, is related to severe forms of depression and to bipolar disorder. l Socioenvironmental models focus on the role of negative life events, lack of social support, and family criticism as triggers for episodes but also consider ways in which a person with depression may elicit negative responses from others. People with less social skill and those who tend to seek excessive reassurance are at elevated risk for the development of depression. l The personality trait that appears most related to depression is neuroticism. Neuroticism predicts the onset of depression. l Influential cognitive theories include Beck’s cognitive theory, hopelessness theory, and rumination theory. All argue that depression can be caused by cognitive factors, but the nature of the cognitive factors differs across

Clinical descriptions and Epidemiology

l There are two broad types of mood disorders: depressive disorders and bipolar disorders. l Depressive disorders include major depression and persistent depressive disorder, along with the newer diagnoses of premenstrual dysphoric disorder and disruptive mood dysregulation disorder. Bipolar disorders include bipolar I disorder, bipolar II disorder, and cyclothymia. l Bipolar I disorder is defined by mania. Bipolar II disorder is defined by hypomania and episodes of depression. Major depressive disorder, bipolar I disorder, and bipolar II disorder are episodic. Recurrence is very common in these disorders. l Persistent depressive disorder and cyclothymia are characterized by low levels of symptoms that last for at least 2 years. l Major depression is one of the most common psychiatric disorders, affecting 16.2 percent of people during their lifetime. Rates of depression are twice as high in women as in men. Bipolar I disorder is much rarer, affecting 1 percent or less of the population.

Clinical descriptions and Epidemiology l There are two broad types of mood disorders: depressive disorders and bipolar disorders. l Depressive disorders include major depression and persistent depressive disorder, along with the newer diagnoses of premenstrual dysphoric disorder and disruptive mood dysregulation disorder. Bipolar disorders include bipolar I disorder, bipolar II disorder, and cyclothymia. l Bipolar I disorder is defined by mania. Bipolar II disorder is defined by hypomania and episodes of depression. Major depressive disorder, bipolar I disorder, and bipolar II disorder are episodic. Recurrence is very common in these disorders. l Persistent depressive disorder and cyclothymia are characterized by low levels of symptoms that last for at least 2 years. l Major depression is one of the most common psychiatric disorders, affecting 16.2 percent of people during their lifetime. Rates of depression are twice as high in women as in men. Bipolar I disorder is much rarer, affecting 1 percent or less of the population.

Celibacy is nothing if not abnormal. The human body and brain are not made for such programming. Whatever normal is, it does not include celibacy.

The general exhaustion of the cerebral functions has been pointed out by many authors. " Hystericals," said M. Fere, " are in a permanent state of psychical fatigue, which is shown by a weakening of sensibility, of motion, of the will." ' " The fundamental factor of hysteria," says M. Oppenheim, *' is irritable feebleness, an abnormal excitability accompanied with exhaustion. These characteristics are especially established in the sphere of the affective phenomena." ' M. Jolly, taking up again M. Oppenheim's conception, speaks also of an extreme nervous feebleness, which allows the exaggeration of the affective phenomena, but he adds that this formula lacks precision and does not sum up particular facts.' We think, as does this author, that it is necessary to define this cerebral weakness with more precision and explain what is meant by it. As the essential functions of the brain are psychological functions, we must show, by the analysis of the moral phenomena, wherein this psychological insufficiency consists.

Even when behaviors are clearly stress-related, they can be difficult to interpret. Mel Richardson was once asked to examine a tree kangaroo at the San Antonio Zoo that the keepers said was acting bizarrely. With the ears of a teddy bear, the rounded chub of a koala, and the tail of a fuzzy monkey, tree kangaroos are very cute. But this female was acting vicious. She was attacking her babies, and the keepers had no idea why. Mel went to check on her. Sure enough, as soon as he approached, the kangaroo ran to her babies and started hitting and clawing at them with her paws. He stepped back, and she stopped. He walked forward, and she ran at the babies again. “I realized,” said Mel, “that she wasn’t viciously attacking her babies at all. She was trying to pick them up off the floor, but her little paws weren’t meant for that. In her native Australia and Papua New Guinea her babies never would have been on the ground. Her whole family would have been up in the trees.” The mother kangaroo wanted to move the babies away from the humans. What looked like abnormal attacks on her young were actually her way of trying to protect them. Her behavior wasn’t mental illness at all but a response to the stress of being a mother in an unnatural environment. After the keepers redesigned the kangaroos’ cage so that more of it was elevated and farther from the door, she relaxed and stopped hitting her babies. Mel explained, “As flippant as it might sound, the truth is that in order to know what’s abnormal, you must first know what’s normal. In this case in order to determine pathology, I had to understand the animal’s psychology. It’s pretty easy for people to get this wrong.

ProLiteracy Worldwide’s “President’s Report on the State of Adult Literacy 2006” found that 70 percent of prison inmates in America lacked basic literacy.2 The Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology reported “robust links between severe, persistent reading problems and increased risk for depressed mood” in boys age seven to ten.3 We now have evidence that the inability to read is a risk factor for depression. Reading is powerful; not reading is dangerous.

It would probably be best if they were separated, anyway," Margo continued. "They're feeling very close now, but it's an abnormal situation. They might be developing a dependency which would interfere with their resocialization later." She sounded like a textbook on child psychology that Maddy had once read. Reasonable, and yet somehow wrong. Maddy's own intuition was that if you found someone you liked and trusted, you held on for dear life.

The scary thing about the protective properties of dietary intake regarding abnormal human radiation exposures is that NASA has understood this for decades!

We are biological beings, shaped by genetic inheritance and the organization and health of our neurological structures. We have rich inner lives of diverse dispositions, motivations, cognitive abilities and processes, intrapsychic dynamics, and reinforcement histories. We are also social creatures, affected by our social and cultural environments. Together these elements help us understand normal phenomena (like memory construction, neurological function, and social attraction) and abnormal psychological occurrences (such as pseudo-memories, Alzheimer’s disease, and dysfunctional relationships). Unfortunately, much of the work on the

A decade ago, Australian philosopher and professor of sustainability Glenn Albrecht set out to coin a term to capture the particular form of psychological distress that sets in when the homelands that we love and from which we take comfort are radically altered by extraction and industrialization, rendering them alienating and unfamiliar. He settled on “solastalgia,” with its evocations of solace, destruction, and pain, and defined the new word to mean, “the homesickness you have when you are still at home.” He explained that although this particular form of unease was once principally familiar to people who lived in sacrifice zones—lands decimated by open-pit mining, for instance, or clear-cut logging—it was fast becoming a universal human experience, with climate change creating a “new abnormal” wherever we happen to live. “As bad as local and regional negative transformation is, it is the big picture, the Whole Earth, which is now a home under assault. A feeling of global dread asserts itself as the planet heats and our climate gets more hostile and unpredictable,” he writes.

Somnophilia is an abnormal sexual desire in which an individual becomes aroused by someone who is unconscious. The Dictionary of Psychology has categorised somnophilia within the classification of predatory paraphilias.

This is an important strategy, but one must be careful that it does not become a ritual. Patients are given a list of twelve key thoughts, and it is suggested that at least once a day they set aside fifteen minutes or so when they can relax and quietly review them. They are called daily reminders. * The pain is due to TMS, not to a structural abnormality. * The direct reason for the pain is mild oxygen deprivation. * TMS is a harmless condition, caused by my repressed emotions. *The principal emotion is my repressed anger. * TMS exists only to distract my attention from the emotions. * Since my back is basically normal, there is nothing to fear. * Therefore, physical activity is not dangerous. And I must resume all normal physical activity. * I will not be concerned or intimidated by the pain. * I will shift my attention from the pain to emotional issues. * I intend to be in control-not my subconscious mind. * I must think psychological at all times, not physical. (page 97)

Future shock will not be found in Index Medicus or in any listing of psychological abnormalities. Yet, unless intelligent steps are taken to combat it, millions of human beings will find themselves increasingly disoriented, progressively incompetent to deal rationally with their environments. The malaise, mass neurosis, irrationality, and free-floating violence already apparent in contemporary life are merely a foretaste of what may lie ahead unless we come to understand and treat this disease. Future shock is a time phenomenon, a product of the greatly accelerated rate of change in society. It arises from the superimposition of a new culture on an old one. It is culture shock in one’s own society. But its impact is far worse. For most Peace Corps men, in fact most travelers, have the comforting knowledge that the culture they left behind will be there to return to. The victim of future shock does not. Take an individual out of his own culture and set him down suddenly in an environment sharply different from his own, with a different set of cues to react to—different conceptions of time, space, work, love, religion, sex, and everything else—then cut him off from any hope of retreat to a more familiar social landscape, and the dislocation he suffers is doubly severe. Moreover, if this new culture is itself in constant turmoil, and if—worse yet—its values are incessantly changing, the sense of disorientation will be still further intensified. Given few clues as to what kind of behavior is rational under the radically new circumstances, the victim may well become a hazard to himself and others. Now imagine not merely an individual but an entire society, an entire generation—including its weakest, least intelligent, and most irrational members—suddenly transported into this new world. The result is mass disorientation, future shock on a grand scale. This is the prospect that man now faces. Change is avalanching upon our heads and most people are grotesquely unprepared to cope with it.

Dr. Susan Krauss Whitbourne, a professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and coauthor (with Richard P. Halgin) of Abnormal Psychology: Clinical Perspectives on Psychological Disorders

Durante los primeros años de la Edad Media no puede sobreestimarse la importancia del espíritu cristiano de la caridad, en especial hacia los grupos estigmatizados como los de las personas severamente afectadas en sus facultades mentales.

The problem with “madness” as a general concept was that there wasn’t a base model for a “normal” psychological makeup. Each person was so uniquely different, each society with its own rules and cues, each culture with its norms and penalties meant there was no way to define normal. Yet so many people made a study of abnormal psychology. It was so much easier to focus on the “other” than what similarities we might conceive between them and us.

Brain of a mutant!

Review the Daily Reminders This is an important strategy, but one must be careful that it does not become a ritual. Patients are given a list of twelve key thoughts, and it is suggested that at least once a day they set aside fifteen minutes or so when they can relax and quietly review them. They are called daily reminders. • The pain is due to TMS, not to a structural abnormality. • The direct reason for the pain is mild oxygen deprivation. • TMS is a harmless condition, caused by my repressed emotions. • The principal emotion is my repressed anger. • TMS exists only to distract my attention from the emotions. • Since my back is basically normal, there is nothing to fear. • Therefore, physical activity is not dangerous. • And I must resume all normal physical activity. • I will not be concerned or intimidated by the pain. • I will shift my attention from the pain to emotional issues. • I intend to be in control—not my subconscious mind. • I must think psychological at all times, not physical.

Depression cannot be described in terms of 'normal psychology'; only the somewhat general term of "depressedness" can be understood in the sense of this anergic (i.e. incomprehensible by normal mentality) mood. In mild cases, the patients appear almost more apathetic than actually depressive; in severe cases, however, deep suffering develops.

Traumatic Experiences 160 Causal Factors in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder 162 Individual Risk Factors 162 Biological Factors 163 Sociocultural Factors 164 Long-Term Effects of Posttraumatic Stress 165 Prevention and Treatment of Stress Disorders 165 Prevention 165 The World Around Us Does Playing Tetris After a Traumatic Event Reduce Flashbacks? 166 Treatment for Stress Disorders 167 Trauma and Physical Health 168

Until quite recently, psychiatrists believed that schizophrenia was a psychological illness caused by stress and upbringing, particularly by the influence of a "schizophrenogenic mother" who did not provide her child with enough maternal warmth and care. Today, this theory has been soundly discredited. Schizophrenia, as we now know, is a disease caused by abnormal brain structure and function, just as heart disease is a product of faulty arteries.

Discussing Armageddon as if it were as real as the earth itself, the Time story was, on one level, an effort to capitalize on public fear and sell magazines. On a deeper level, though, the article exemplifies the journalistic conviction that anything “controversial” is worth covering and that both sides of an issue must always be given equal space—even if one side belongs in an abnormal psychology textbook. If enough money is involved, and enough people believe that two plus two equals five, the media will report the story with a straight face, always adding a qualifying paragraph noting that “mathematicians, however, say that two plus two still equals four.” With a perverted objectivity that gives credence to nonsense, mainstream news outlets have done more to undermine logic and reason than raptureready.com could ever do.

Experienced radiologists who evaluate chest X-rays as “normal” or “abnormal” contradict themselves 20% of the time when they see the same picture on separate occasions.

A decade ago, Australian philosopher and professor of sustainability Glenn Albrecht set out to coin a term to capture the particular form of psychological distress that sets in when the homelands that we love and from which we take comfort are radically altered by extraction and industrialization, rendering them alienating and unfamiliar. He settled on “solastalgia,” with its evocations of solace, destruction, and pain, and defined the new word to mean, “the homesickness you have when you are still at home.” He explained that although this particular form of unease was once principally familiar to people who lived in sacrifice zones—lands decimated by open-pit mining, for instance, or clear-cut logging—it was fast becoming a universal human experience, with climate change creating a “new abnormal” wherever we happen to live. “As bad as local and regional negative transformation is, it is the big picture, the Whole Earth, which is now a home under assault. A feeling of global dread asserts itself as the planet heats and our climate gets more hostile and unpredictable,

Brighton Rock certainly raised his profile in the United States, as Viking put a good deal of effort into advance publicity for its new author. The New York Times declared the novel ‘as elegant a nightmare as you will find in a book this season . . . a revival of the Poe manner – modernized with streamlined abnormal psychology and lit by neon’.3 In England, the book was enough of a hit

If your emotions can be hooked, then they can gain a soul tie with you. If they can form a soul tie with you then they can control you. All abnormal soul ties need to be broken by the power of the Name of Jesus.

Witchcraft controllers spend abnormal amounts of time with their victims: The girl that consumes all her friend’s spare time. The boy that smothers his girlfriend with inordinate attention. Witchcraft will go out of the way to control and waste your time. It’s not a natural thing it’s a spiritual thing. Scripture says “Withdraw thy foot from thy neighbor’s house lest he be weary of thee and so hate thee” (Proverbs 25:17).

Wilson had dreamed of having a torrid romance with a writer. “I wanted to be Sylvia and Ted,” she said. What she fell for instead was a relentless, ambitious geek. The pair attended the same abnormal-psychology class and compared their grades following an exam. Justine notched a 97, Musk a 98. “He went back to the professor, and talked his way into the two points he lost and got a hundred,