Lecture 2 notes: Abnormal psychology
YouTube videos in case you miss class: Shamekia Thomas
- give a summary of the class and the key points of the chapter (Chris Tong)
3 key explanations that have existed:
1. supernatural: deviant behavior as a battle of good and evil.
caused by demonic possession, witchcraft, sorcery, superhuman forces, violation of taboos,
neglect of rituals, and loss of soul.
- treatment: centered on dealing with the spirits and the forces inflicting the pain and
suffering. (based on the explanation of the disorder at that time)
treatments include exorcism, torture, and religious services.
the supernatural tradition:
A) mass hysteria: Saint Vitus’s dance/tarantism
B) Modern mass hysteria: emotion contagion, mob psychology
C) The Moon and the Stars: Paracelsus and the stars
How do we treat them?
- lobotomy: treatment of biological explanation. A surgical procedure in which the
nerve pathways in a lobe of the brain are severed from those in other areas.)
- drill a hole through the skull (circular), if it is believed that demons are possessing
your sole, they drill a hole in your skull for the demon to go out. (Practice known as
trephination, treatment of demonic explanation)
2. biological: Hippocrates (person): mental disorders have the same causes, just as
physical illness (it is wrong with the person’s body)
A) mood swings are believed to be caused by the uterus of a woman moving around the
body. (hysteria)
B) Humoral theory disorders: functioning is related to having too much or too little of
four key bodily fluids (humors).
- blood (from the heart), phlegm (from the brain), black bile from the spleen, yellow
bile (from the liver)
example: too much depression caused by too much black bile.
- if you’re hot, they get you something cold, if you’re dry, they get you something wet.
BILE TYPES:
1. Yellow bile: excess was thought to produce aggression, and excess anger reciprocally
gave rise to liver derangement and imbalances in the humors.
2. black bile: from the belief that an excess of black bile causes depression.
3. phlegm: was thought to be associated with apathetic behavior.
how do we treat them?
- treated by changing the environmental conditions or bloodletting (cut you and let
your blood come out)/vomiting or purging.
the era of alienation and confinement explanations:
- mental illness perceived as incurable. only reasonable intervention was removing
mentally ill persons from the community.
- the insane were driven out and excluded from society.
- theological and magical explanations still prevailed.
- “treatment” included ritualized social exclusion, imprisonment, being placed in
asylum or driven out to search for reason, and spiritual reintegration.
Phillip Pinel:
PINEL created “moral treatment” which suggested that environmental changes could affect
an individual’s psychology and thereby change his behavior.
- Pinel rejected the prevailing belief that madness was incurable, and he suggested
that confinement in a well-ordered asylum was indispensable.
3)
-
psychological: the rise of moral therapy
became popular in the first half of the 19th century.
“moral” = refers to psychological, and emotional factors
main idea: treat patients as normally as possible in a normal environment.
encouraged and reinforaced social interactions
1st psychological explanation: Sigmund Freud: mental illness is not the same as physical
illness, but it is rather something wrong with the mind.
1. it has to do with their childhood experiences (what happens the first 5 years of your
life)
2. has to do with the working of the ID, the unconscious aspect of our mind
Sigmund believed that were all born evil, so we shouldn’t be surprised if someone has a
mental illness. (we are controlled by forces that we cannot control)
Structure of the mind (According to freud):
1. ID
2. Superego
3. Ego
2nd psychological explanation: behaviorism: human beings are controlled by the moving in
the environment, or we are rewarded by the environment.
- classical conditioning (Pavlov; Watson)
3rd psychological explanation: humanistic: all of us are born very good, no one is born bad.
- Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers
STATEMENTS:
1. Each category has strengths, and each has weaknesses. we don’t fall on a single
explanation, we don’t look at one cause, we look everywhere for the various causes
of psychological disorders. (complete view of what is happening) INTEGRATIVE
APPROACH
2. we don’t fall on one, but we fall on several explanations (psychopathology)
3. biopsychosocial: look at biological contributions, psychological contributions, and
social contributions. (also known as the integrative approach) (does not have to
contain all three bases, differs in each disorder)