Unit 12
 Comes from the Latin norma.
 Means a carpenter’s square.
 Refers to a rule, pattern, or standard by which to measure the
things a carpenter creates.
 Ab = away from
 Therefore, abnormal means away from normal or
anything that is not normal.
Conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or
expected.
2. Serving to establish a standard.
3. Psychology
1.
Approximately average in any psychological trait, as
intelligence, personality, or emotional adjustment.
b. Free from any mental disorder; sane.
a.
The average or mean.
5. The standard or type.
4.
What does it mean to be a
normal person?
Who should decide what a
person has to be like in order
to be described as normal?
 Statistically
 Contextually
 Culturally
 Statistically speaking, any behavior is atypical if it is not
exhibited by 68% of the people in a particular group or
culture. What common behaviors would be considered
abnormal if we followed this definition of abnormality?
 Who would suffer discrimination if this standard were enforced?
 What religious practices would be considered abnormal for your
community?
 What ways of life would be abnormal? Single-parent households?
Two-parent households?
 What ethnic groups would be considered abnormal?
 What styles of dress? What music preferences? What post-high
school choices?
 Context
 The set of circumstances or facts that surround a
particular situation, event, etc.
 Brainstorm behaviors that, when taken out of
context, could be considered abnormal.
 Examples:
 Having a heated argument with someone.
 Praying aloud or chanting outside of a religious service.
 Dancing in excitement over getting a good grade or hearing
good news.
 Brainstorm historical practices that might be
considered abnormal according to today’s
standards of behavior.
 Some cultures have different social practices that
may be considered abnormal to people in U.S.
culture:
 Hissing in Japan
 Public displays of affection and gender, and the use of
straws in Thailand.
 Some cultures have different social practices that
may be considered abnormal to people in U.S.
culture:
 Hissing is a polite way to show respect for superiors in
Japan.
 Public displays of affection between men and women in
Thailand are unacceptable. Interestingly, however, men
holding hands is considered a sign of friendship.
 Additionally, the use of straws in Thailand is considered
vulgar.
 What are the limits of tolerance? What types of cultural
practices should we accept from other cultures and to what
should we object?
Where should we draw the line…
 Between sadness and depression?
 Between zany creativity and bizarre
irrationality?
 Between normality and abnormality?
 How should we define psychological disorders?
 How should we understand disorders – as
sicknesses that need to be diagnosed and cured, or
as natural responses to a troubling environment?
 How should we classify psychological disorders?
And can we do so in a way that allows us to help
people without stigmatizing them with labels?
psychological disorders - patterns of thoughts,
feelings, or behaviors that are deviant, distressful, and
dysfunctional.
 Being different (deviant) from most other people in
one’s culture is part of what it takes to define a
psychological disorder.
 Deviant behavior will vary by context and culture
 To be considered disordered, deviant behavior usually
causes the person distress.
 Deviant and distressful behaviors are more likely to be
considered disordered when also judged to be a
harmful dysfunction.
 That is, to interfere with ones work and leisure.
 Example:
 An intense fear of spiders may be deviant and cause
distress, but if it doesn’t impair your life it is NOT a
disorder.
 In earlier times, people explained puzzling behavior as
resulting from the movement of the stars, godlike
powers, or evil spirits.
 Methods of “treatment”
included caging, beating,
burning, castration,
trephination,
pulling teeth,
removing intestines, etc.
 Philippe Pinel (1745-1826) insisted that madness is not
demon possession but a sickness of the mind caused
by severe stress and inhumane conditions.
 Treatment began to shift from asylums to hospitals,
brutality to gentleness, and isolation to activity.
 medical model – the concept that diseases, in this case
psychological disorders, have physical causes that can
be diagnosed, treated, and, in most cases, cured, often
through treatment in a hospital.
 Today’s psychologists contend that ALL behavior
(normal or abnormal) arises from the interaction of
nature and nurture.
Nature
Nurture
Depression and
schizophrenia
occur worldwide.
Some disorders are
specific to a
particular culture.
 Psychologists use the biopsychosocial approach to assess the
whole set of influences:
 genetic predispositions
and physiological states
 inner psychological
dynamics
 social and cultural
circumstances
 Mind and body are inseparable:
 Negative emotions contribute to physical illness, and physical
abnormalities contribute to negative emotions.
 Purpose of classifying and diagnosing psychological
disorders:
 Name it
 Describe it
 Predict its future course
 Imply appropriate treatment
 Stimulate research into its causes
 DSM-IV-TR
 A system or manual
with criteria for
classifying psychological
disorders.
 Officially known as the
American Psychiatric
Association’s Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders, Fourth Edition,
updated as a 2000 “text
revision”.