antisocial personality a personality characterized by impulsiveness, absence of conscience, and a complete disregard for others. Formerly known as a sociopath or psychopath.
anwesenheit the perception or feeling of someone's presence nearby, even though nobody is there, a normal symptom of the grief process.
anxiety uneasiness and apprehension, sometimes disabling.
anxiety hierarchy a list of situations given by an individual that are ranked for how much anxiety they produce, from slight to extreme.
aphagia inability to eat.
aphasia loss of speech or the ability to comprehend speech, often a symptom of brain disease.
asocial lacking interest in other people.
astasia hysterical state in which the person believes he or she has lost the ability to stand or walk. Also called abasia.
atavism the reverting to a primitive behavior or state of mind.
attachment a child's bond with a parent or care- giver.
attention deficit disorder (ADD) in some children, a disorder characterized by an inability to pay attention accompanied by impulsiveness.
aura a sense of strangeness, altered consciousness, or deja vu that precedes or accompanies an epileptic seizure.
autism poorly understood brain disorder characterized by withdrawal from reality and absorption in inner fantasies.
aversion therapy a method of teaching someone to avoid a negative behavior, such as cigarette smoking, through unpleasant associations or punishment.
aversive conditioning changing someone's behavior by punishing them.
avoidant personality disorder a disorder in which one suffers from distorted thinking and irrationally avoids feared people, places, or things. Agoraphobia and social phobia fall into this category.
behaviorism a school of psychology that holds that valid data can come only from objective observation and experimentation.
belief-bias effect a behavior in which one's reasoning ability is skewed or corrupted by one's biases, values, attitudes, etc.
biofeedback with the help of a feedback machine, the self-regulating of heart rate, blood pressure, and brain waves to achieve desired results such as deep relaxation.
biometeorology the study or science of the effects of various weather patterns on human health or behavior.
bipolar disorder mental illness characterized by alternating periods of elation and depression. Also known as manic depression. See manic-depressive psychosis.
blanking out losing one's train of thought, speech, or action, possibly indicating anxiety or exhaustion.
blocking a sudden dropout or interruption in the free or spontaneous flow of speech, possibly indicating a troubling or uncomfortable thought.
blunted affect a toned-down or bland presentation of one's emotional state.
body dysmorphic disorder a disorder in which the sufferer falsely believes that a particular body part is deformed or defective when it is not.
body image one's concept of one's own body, especially its attractiveness, which is highly prone to both negative and positive distortion.
borderline personality disorder a disorder characterized by persistent instability, impulsivity, and unpredictability accompanied by a chronic sense of emptiness and suicidal impulses.
bulimia an eating disorder characterized by binge- ing followed by intentional vomiting.
burnout extreme disillusionment, stress, and exhaustion, most often referring to one's work experience.
Capgras syndrome the delusion that someone has been replaced by an impostor. The sufferer may also think that he himself has been replaced, a syndrome seen in paranoid schizophrenia and other brain disease.
cardioneurosis a neurotic manifestation of anxiety characterized by pain in the heart, palpitations, and a sensation of suffocation.
cataphasia frequent repetition of the same word or phrase.
catatonic stupor in which the person becomes motionless and mute.
catharsis the reduction of a negative emotion or impulse by the verbal expression or acting out of that emotion or impulse.
classical conditioning the teaching of an individual to relate one stimulus, such as a bell, to another stimulus, such as food, as in Pavlov's dogs.
classical paranoia an isolated paranoia revolving around a single subject in one's life, in which the person may otherwise be normal.
closure the final acts and thoughts involved in putting behind oneself any psychological trial or turmoil.
codependency an unhealthy relationship in which one is manipulated by the other two suffers from a serious problem such as a neurosis or substance abuse.
cognitive dissonance a clashing of thought processes that causes mental distress, as when someone who strongly believes murder is wrong kills someone. The person must maintain a positive image of himself and therefore rationalizes or justifies his actions in order to rid himself of psychological distress. See consonance.
cognitive reprogramming replacing negative thoughts with positive thinking to change a person's perception of himself or the world around him.
comorbidity the suffering of two or more disorders simultaneously.
compensation an ego defense in which a person compensates for deficiencies by striving for superiority in other areas.
compulsion any ritualistic behavior, often senseless, that a person feels must be carried out.
compulsive personality a personality characterized by tenseness, rigidity, overconscientiousness, and an obsession for trivial details.
conduct disorder often evolving from oppositional defiance disorder and appearing in early adolescence, a range of behavior problems, including verbal and physical abuse, cruelty to animals, truancy, stealing, fire setting, vandalism, and more.
confabulation a fantasy, sometimes mixed with fact, that unconsciously becomes a subject's memory of an event and may be strongly influenced by the power of suggestion, as in false child abuse claims. A false memory.
conformity the altering of one's behavior to fit in and mimic that of one's peers, a result of peer pressure.
consensual validation determining if one person's perception of reality matches with another's.
consonance a harmony between one's thoughts and actions.
conversion the unconscious process through which stress is converted into a physical, physiological, or psychological symptom.
conversion reaction a neurotic reaction in which overwhelming anxiety manifests itself in a physical way through bodily paralysis or through uncontrollable emotional outburst.
coprolalia inappropriate but involuntary utterances of socially unacceptable words and sentences, as seen in some people with Tourette's syndrome.
coprophagia the eating of feces.
coprophilia abnormal interest in feces.
Cotard's syndrome a delusion in which one believes he does not exist or that parts of his body do not exist, seen in schizophrenia.
culture shock a combination of symptoms, including stress, anxiety, depression, alienation, and homesickness, suffered for the first several months after moving to a foreign land.