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Describing and Explaining Abnormality - lecture 2
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Aims & Objectives: Understand how psychopathology has been defined and treated throughout history.
Appreciate the pros and cons of diagnostic systems and alternative frameworks.
Key Concepts of Abnormality:
1. Statistical Deviance: Behavior that is infrequent.
1. Pros: Commonsense appeal, psychometric reliability.
2. Cons: Subjective; some frequent behaviors (e.g., depression) are pathological,
while some rare behaviors (e.g., genius) are not.
2. Maladaptive Behavior: Behavior that harms an individual or others.
1. Pros: Intuitively appealing.
2. Cons: Some pathologies (e.g., phobias) may serve adaptive purposes.
3. Subjective Distress: Individuals judge their own abnormality based on their level of
distress.
1. Pros: Personal perspective.
2. Cons: Subjectivity varies; some conditions (e.g., antisocial personality
disorder) involve little self-distress.
4. Breaking Social Norms: Behaviors that violate societal standards.
1. Cons: Cultural and generational variability (e.g., homosexuality was once
considered abnormal).
Historical Approaches to Abnormality:
Primitive Times: Mental illness attributed to evil spirits; treated through
trephination.
Ancient Civilizations: Hippocrates believed imbalances in body fluids (“humors”)
caused mental disorders.
Middle Ages: Mental illness seen as punishment by God or demonic possession.
18th-19th Century: Moral treatment emerges, leading to psychotherapy.
Freud: Introduced psychoanalytic therapy, focusing on unconscious conflict and
early trauma.
Paradigms in Psychopathology:
1. Psychoanalytic: Mental illness stems from unconscious conflict (Freud).
2. Behavioral Models: Disorders arise from maladaptive learning (Pavlov, Skinner).
Focus on classical conditioning (e.g., systematic desensitization for phobias).
3. Cognitive Models: Mental disorders stem from biased thinking patterns (Beck).
Therapy focuses on changing thoughts and beliefs.
4. Genetic/Neuroscience Paradigm: Interaction between genes, environment, and brain
chemistry.
Diagnostic Systems:
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM): Used in research;
latest version is DSM-5 (2013).
International Classification of Diseases (ICD): Used clinically; latest version is
ICD-11 (2018).
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