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AP PSYCH REVIEW
ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY
2013-2014
(7 – 9 %)
 Key Names
Aaron Beck
Martin Seligman
David Rosenhan
 The Basics:
o Psychological disorders can manifest themselves in a person’s behavior
or thoughts
o Includes relatively common problems (depression, substance abuse, and
learning disabilities) as well as the study of rare and severe disorders
(schizophrenia and bipolar)
 What Makes it Abnormal?
o The behavior is maladaptive or disturbing to the individual
 Ex: an agoraphobic fears open spaces, thus will be unable to leave
their home
o The behavior is disturbing to others
 Ex: a person with zoophilia is sexually aroused by animals
o The behavior is unusual or not shared by many members of the
population
 Ex: having visions or communicating with the dead is not
commonplace in the US
o The behavior is irrational
 Terms Associated with Abnormal Behavior
o Insane  used by uneducated people to mean psychological disorders in
general
 Insane is not a medical term it is a legal term differentiating
those who can be held responsible for their crimes (the sane) and
those who because of a psychological disorder cannot
o DSM-IV-TR Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(DSM)
 Contains every major disorder
 Employs a multiaxial approach to diagnosis based on the idea that
many factors can impact one’s mental health
 Axis I: Lists the Clinical Disorders
 Axis II: Personality and Developmental Disorders
 Axis III: General Medical Conditions
 Axis IV: Psychosocial Conditions
 Issues in the environment affecting a person’s mental
health
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Axis V: Global Assessment of Functioning
 Classifies one’s psychological functioning on a scale of 1100
 Higher numbers = higher levels of functioning
 The Different Perspectives on the Causes of Psychological Disorders
o Psychoanalytic/Psychodynamic
 Internal, unconscious conflicts
o Humanistic
 Failure to strive toward one’s potential or being out of touch with
one’s feelings
o Behavioral
 Reinforcement history and the environment
o Cognitive
 Dysfunctional or irrational ways of thinking
o Sociocultural
 Dysfunctional society
o Biomedical
 Organic problems, biochemical imbalances, genetic
predispositions
 Anxiety Disorders and Their Cause
o All related in their common symptom anxiety
o Most common types phobias, generalized anxiety disorder, panic
disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and posttraumatic stress
disorder
o Specific phobia
 Intense irrational fear of a situation or object
 Ex: claustrophobia  fear of enclosed spaces
 Ex: arachnophobia  fear of spiders
 Ex: agoraphobia  fear of public spaces
o Social phobias
 Fear of a situation in which one could be embarrassed in public
o Generalized Anxiety Disorder
 One experiences constant low-level anxiety
 Feeling out of sorts or nervous is not uncommon for those with
GAD
o Panic disorder
 One who suffers from intense, recurring attacks of anxiety without
provocation
 Panic attacks increase in frequency and the person suffers
additional anxiety due to the preoccupation of suffering another
attack
o Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
 Persistent, unwanted thoughts (obsessions) cause someone to feel
the need (compulsion) to engage in a particular behavior
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Obsessions result in anxiety and the anxiety is reduced when the
person performs the behavior
 Ex: a person who is preoccupied with cleanliness may
shower repeatedly, thus impeding any other action
o Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
 Involves flashbacks or nightmares following one’s involvement in
particularly troubling events
 Ex: War veterans
o Causes of Anxiety Disorders
 Psychoanalytic  unresolved id, ego, and superego conflicts
 Ex: a young boy’s repressed sexual attraction to his mother
causes a conflict between the id and the superego
 Behaviorists since all behavior is learned, anxiety disorders are
learned
 Ex: acrophobia  fear of heights
o When little Jameson visited the Empire State
Building his parents left him alone at the top
 Cognitive Theorists  anxiety disorders originate from a
dysfunctional way of thinking
 Ex: you believe that you must excel at everything and place
undue stress and it turn anxiety on yourself
 Somatoform Disorders and the Cause
o Occur when a person manifests a psychological problem into a physical
one
 Hypochondriasis  frequent physical complaints, of which there
is no medical cause
 may also believe minor problems are the indicative of
severe physical illness
 conversion disorder  the existence of a severe problem
(blindness or paralysis) when in fact the person can perform these
actions
 no biological reason exists for the condition
o Causes of Somatoform Disorders
 Psychodynamic theorists  outward manifestations of unresolved
unconscious conflicts
 Behaviorist  experiencing conversion disorder is nothing more
than role playing to get out of unpleasant tasks
 Hypochondriasis  reinforced as the person receives a
great deal of attention
 Dissociative Disorders and Their Cause
o Dissociative (psychogenic) amnesia  when a person cannot remember
things without any physiological cause
 Not the same as organic amnesia which results from damage to the
brain
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o Dissociative fugue  experience psychogenic amnesia and find
themselves in a strange environment
 Ex: Jacinto wakes up with no recollection of who or where he is,
and no one else in the environment can answer that either
o Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)  formerly multiple personality
disorder
 The person has several personalities, rather than one integrated
one
 The personalities may be of different ages and gender
 At least two personalities will be complete opposites
 People with DID have a history of sexual abuse or other childhood
trauma
o Causes of Dissociative Disorders
 Psychoanalytic perspective  a traumatic event has been so
thoroughly repressed it causes a split in consciousness
 Behaviorists  those who have experienced trauma find it
rewarding not to think about it
 Cases of DID are rare outside the US
 Many psychologists question its validity
 Favor the view the person is simply role playing
 Mood or Affective Disorders and Their Causes
o Major depressive disorder known as unipolar depression
 Referred to as the “common cold” of psychological disorders
 The length of the depressive episode must be taken into account
 Clinically depressed people remain so for more than two weeks
w/o clear reason
 Appear fatigued, experience loss of appetite, and lose interest in
otherwise enjoyable activities
o Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
 Experiencing depression only in the winter months
 Treated with light therapy
o Bipolar
 Involves both manic and depressed episodes
 Depressed episodes are those described in unipolar depression
 Manic episodes include heightened sense of self confidence,
anxiety, inflated sense of well-being, and engage in risky behaviors
 Some can experience mania without depression
o Dysthymic disorder
 Symptoms similar to major depression only less intense
 In order to diagnose the person must have the symptoms for at
least two years
o Causes of Mood Disorders
 Psychoanalytic approach  anger directed inward, loss during the
early psychosexual stages, or an overly punitive superego
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Behaviorists  being felt sorry for while depressed reinforces the
behavior
 Cognitivist theory
 Aaron Beck  the cognitive triad  people have unrealistic
negative ideas about themselves, their world, and their
futures
 Other cognitivist theories point to one’s attributional style
 Pessimistic attributional styles are more likely to promote
depression
 Martin Seligman  learned helplessness
 Depression is positively correlated with feelings of learned
helplessness
 One loses hope over their control over the situation
 Biological approach
 Low levels of serotonin = unipolar depression
 Bipolar = more receptor sites for acetylcholine
 Low levels of norepinephrine = unipolar depression
 Bipolarity and unipolar depression seem to run in families
 Schizophrenic Disorders and Their Causes
o Is the most debilitating of the psychological disorders
o Strikes people as they enter young adulthood
o Most common symptom is disordered, distorted thinking manifested
through hallucinations or delusions
 Hallucinations  perceptions w/o any sensory stimulation
 Ex: seeing/hearing things that aren’t there
 Delusions  beliefs that have no basis in reality
 Ex: I am going to get a 5 without any studying
o Two types of delusions
 Delusions of persecution  the belief people
are out to get you
 Delusions of grandeur the belief you enjoy
greater power or influence than you actually
do
o Types of schizophrenia
 Disorganized schizophrenia
 Marked by a disorganization of thought
 Make up their own words (neologisms)
 String together nonsense words that rhyming (clang
associations)
 Have inappropriate affect (emotions)
o May laugh when someone dies
 May have flat affect  the absence of emotion
 Paranoid schizophrenia
 Characterized by intense delusions of persecution
o Ex: people are out to hurt or get you
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Catatonic schizophrenia
 Characterized by odd or eccentric movements
 Patients may remain motionless in strange postures for
hours at a time w/o any real reason
 Patients may move jerkily as well
 Waxy flexibility  allow their body to be moved into any
alternative shape and will hold that pose
 Increasingly rare in the US
 Undifferentiated schizophrenia
 Marked by distorted thinking but no symptoms of the other
forms of schizophrenia
o Divisions of schizophrenic symptoms
 Positive refers to an excess of behavior
 Ex: neologisms and hallucinations
 Negative  refers to deficits in appropriate behaviors
 Ex: no emotion or catatonia
o Causes of Schizophrenia
 Biological approach is the dominant approach to its explanation
 Dopamine hypothesis  high levels of dopamine are linked
to schizophrenia
o Antipsychotic drugs used to treat schizophrenia
lower dopamine levels and decrease disordered
thought and behavior
o Extensive use of antipsychotics leads to tardive
dyskinesia
 Muscle tremors and stiffness similar to
Parkinson’s
o PD is treated with L-DOPA which increases
dopamine levels and can produce schizophrenic-like
distortions in thought
 Enlarged brain ventricles also points to some biological
basis in that brain asymmetries are present
 Genetic predisposition is also a biological factor linked to
schizophrenia
 Cognitive-behavioral explanation
 Double-binds
o When a person is given contradictory messages
 Ex: Tommie is told that hitting girls is not
right, but his father regularly beats his
mother. The conflicting messages may lead to
distorted ways of thinking.
 Diathesis-stress model
 Diathesis (genetic predisposition) + stress (environment) =
schizophrenia
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 Personality Disorders
o Well-established, maladaptive ways of behaving that negatively impact
people’s ability to function
Personality Disorder
Characteristics
Antisocial personality disorder
Show little regard for other’s feelings.
The world is viewed as a hostile
place. Criminals fall into this
category.
Dependent personality disorder
Rely too much on the attention and
help of others.
Paranoid personality disorder
Have feelings of being persecuted.
Narcissistic personality disorder
See themselves as the center of the
universe.
Histrionic personality disorder
Engage in overly dramatic behaviors
to draw attention to one.
Obsessive-compulsive personality
Can be concerned with certain
disorder
thoughts and performing certain
behaviors. Not as debilitating as OCD
 Other Types of Psychological Disorders
o Paraphilias or psychosexual disorders marked by attraction to an
object, person, or activity not usually seen as sexual
 Pedophilia  attraction to children
 Zoophilia  attraction to animals
 Fetishism  attraction to objects (shoes, chairs, door knobs, etc.)
 Voyeur  someone who gets sexually aroused by watching others
perform sexual acts on each other
 Masochist  one who enjoys having pain inflicted upon
themselves
 Sadist one who enjoys inflicting pain on others
 Most paraphilias occur in men, but masochism is more common in
women
o Eating Disorders
 Anorexia  loss of more than 15% of ones average body weight
for ones age and height
 Intense fear of fat and food
 Distorted body image
 Predominates in girls and young women and is a form of
self-starvation
 Bulimia
 Commonly involves a binge (eating) cycle and a purge
(vomiting) cycle
o Substance use disorders
 A diagnosis made when the person uses drugs regularly and their
use negatively affects the person’s life
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Substance dependence = addiction
 When the person cannot cut down on their use of the
substance
o Autism
 Falls under the spectrum of developmental disorders
 These children tend to seek out less social and emotional contact
than other children
 Slow to develop language skills and less likely to seek out their
parents when distressed
o ADHD
 Also classified as a developmental disorder
 Marked by deficits in attention or hyperactivity
 More common in boys than girls
o Alzheimer’s
 An example of a developmental disorder emerging later on in life
 Marked by the deterioration of one’s cognitive abilities; mostly
memory
 The Rosenhan Study (1978)
o David Rosenhan and his associates conducted a study in which he and his
associates gained admission to a number of mental hospitals
o Claimed to have been hearing voices
o All were admitted as schizophrenics
o Once they gained admission  they stopped reporting the symptoms and
were released with the diagnosis “schizophrenia in remission”
o The questions it raised:
 Should people once diagnosed with a psychological disorder carry
that label with them?
 To what extent are behaviors influenced by the environment, and
to what extent do they inhere in the person?
 What is the level of institutional care like, if imposters could go
days or weeks without being discovered?
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