Special fields of psychology

The early intelligence scales yielded a mental-age score, expressing the

child’s ability to do as well as average children who were older, younger,

or equivalent in chronological age. The deviation IQ used today expresses

the individual’s position in comparison to a representative group of people

of the same age. The average IQ is set at 100; about half of those who take

the test achieve scores between 90 and 110. IQ scores may vary according to

testing conditions, and, thus, it is advisable to understand results of the

tests as falling within a certain range, such as average or superior.

Interest Inventories. Self-report questionnaires on which the subject

indicates personal preferences among activities are called interest

inventories. Because interests may predict satisfaction with some area of

employment or education, these inventories are used primarily in guidance

counseling. They are not intended to predict success, but only to offer a

framework for narrowing career possibilities. For example, one frequently

used interest inventory, the Kudor Preference Record, includes ten clusters

of occupational interests: outdoors, mechanical, computational, scientific,

persuasive, artistic, literary, musical, social service, and clerical. For

each item, the subject indicates which of three activities is best or least

liked. The total score indicates the occupational clusters that include

preferred activities.

Objective Personality Tests. These tests measure social and emotional

adjustment and are used to identify the need for psychological counseling.

Items that briefly describe feelings, attitudes, and behaviors are grouped

into subscales, each representing a separate personality or style, such as

social extroversion or depression. Taken together, the subscales provide a

profile of the personality as a whole. One of the most popular

psychological tests is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

(MMPI), constructed to aid in diagnosing psychiatric patients. Research has

shown that the MMPI may also be used to describe differences among normal

personality types.

Projective Techniques. Some personality tests are based on the phenomenon

of projection, a mental process described by Sigmund Freud as the tendency

to attribute to others personal feelings or characteristics that are too

painful to acknowledge. Because projective techniques are relatively

unstructured and offer minimal cues to aid in defining responses, they tend

to elicit concerns that are highly personal and significant. The best-known

projective tests are the Rorschach test, popularly known as the inkblot

test, and the Thematic Apperception Test; others include word-association

techniques, sentence-completion tests, and various drawing procedures. The

psychologist’s past experience provides the framework for evaluating

individual responses. Although the subjective nature of interpretation

makes these tests particularly vulnerable to criticism, in clinical

settings they are part of the standard battery of psychological tests.

Interpretation of Results

The most important aspect of psychological testing involves the

interpretation of test results.

Scoring. The raw score is the simple numerical count of responses, such as

the number of correct answers on an intelligence test. The usefulness of

the raw score is limited, however, because it does not convey how well

someone does in comparison with others taking the same test. Percentile

scores, standard scores, and norms are all devices for making this

comparison.

Percentile scoring expresses the rank order of the scores in percentages.

The percentile level of a person’s score indicates the proportion of the

group that scored above and below that individual. When a score falls at

the 50th percentile, for example, half of the group scored higher and half

scored lower; a score at the 80th percentile indicates that 20 percent

scored higher and 80 percent scored lower than the person being evaluated.

Standard scores are derived from a comparison of the individual raw score

with the mean and standard deviation of the group scores. The mean, or

arithmetic average, is determined by adding the scores and dividing by the

total number of scores obtained. The standard deviation measures the

variation of the scores around the mean. Standard scores are obtained by

subtracting the mean from the raw score and then dividing by the standard

deviation.

Tables of norms are included in test manuals to indicate the expected range

of raw scores. Normative data are derived from studies in which the test

has been administered to a large, representative group of people. The test

manual should include a description of the sample of people used to

establish norms, including age, sex, geographical location, and occupation.

Norms based on a group of people whose major characteristics are markedly

dissimilar from those of the person being tested do not provide a fair

standard of comparison.

Validity. Interpretation of test scores ultimately involves predictions

about a subject’s behavior in a specified situation. If a test is an

accurate predictor, it is said to have good validity. Before validity can

be demonstrated, a test must first yield consistent, reliable measurements.

In addition to reliability, psychologists recognize three main types of

validity.

A test has content validity if the sample of items in the test is

representative of all the relevant items that might have been used. Words

included in a spelling test, for example, should cover a wide range of

difficulty.

Criterion-related validity refers to a test’s accuracy in specifying a

future or concurrent outcome. For example, an art-aptitude test has

predictive validity if high scores are achieved by those who later do well

in art school. The concurrent validity of a new intelligence test may be

demonstrated if its scores correlate closely with those of an already well-

established test.

Construct validity is generally determined by investigating what

psychological traits or qualities a test measures; that is, by

demonstrating that certain patterns of human behavior account to some

degree for performance on the test. A test measuring the trait “need for

achievement,” for instance, might be shown to predict that high scorers

work more independently, persist longer on problem-solving tasks, and do

better in competitive situations than low scores.

Controversies. The major psychological testing controversies stem from two

interrelated issues: technical shortcomings in test design and ethical

problems in interpretation and application of results. Some technical

weaknesses exist in all tests. Because of this, it is crucial that results

be viewed as only one kind of information about any individual. Most

criticisms of testing arise from the overvaluation of and inappropriate

reliance on test results in making major life decisions. These criticisms

have been particularly relevant in the case of intelligence testing.

Psychologists generally agree that using tests to bar youngsters from

educational opportunities, without careful consideration of past and

present resources or motivation, is unethical. Because tests tend to draw

on those skills associated with white, middle-class functioning, they may

discriminate against disadvantaged and minority groups. As long as unequal

learning opportunities exist, they will continue to be reflected in test

results. In the U.S., therefore, some states have established laws that

carefully define the use of tests in public schools and agencies. The

American Psychological Association, meanwhile, continues to work actively

to monitor and refine ethical standards and public policy recommendations

regarding the use of psychological testing.

8. Development psychology

Developmental Psychology study of behavioral changes and continuity

from infancy to old age. Much emphasis in psychology has been given to

the child and to the deviant personality. Developmental psychology is

particularly significant, then, in that it provides for formal study of

children and adults at every stage of development through the life

span.

Developmental psychology reflects the view that human development and

behavior throughout the life span is a function of the interaction

between biologically determined factors, such as height or temperament,

and environmental influences, such as family, schooling, religion, and

culture. Studies of these interactions focus on their consequences for

people at different age levels. For example, developmental

psychologists are interested in how children who were physically abused

by their parents behave when they themselves become parents. Studies,

although inconclusive, suggest that abused children often become

abusive parents.

Other recent studies have focused on the relationship between the aging

process and intellectual competence; contrary to the traditional notion

that a person’s intellectual skills decline rapidly after the age of

55, research indicates that the decline is gradual. American studies of

adulthood, building on the work of Erik Erikson, point to stable

periods with a duration of 5 to 7 years, during which energy is

expended on career, family, and social relationships, punctuated by

“transitional” periods lasting 3 to 5 years, during which assessment

and reappraisal of major life areas occurs. These transitional periods

may be smooth or emotionally stormy; the “midlife crisis” is an example

of such a transition. Whether such transitions are the same for men and

women, and whether they are universal, is currently under study.

9. Social psychology

Social Psychology branch of psychology concerned with the scientific

study of the behavior of individuals as influenced, directly or

indirectly, by social stimuli. Social psychologists are interested in

the thinking, emotions, desires, and judgments of individuals, as well

as in their overt behavior. An individual’s inner states can be

inferred only from some form of observable behavior. Research has also

proved that people are affected by social stimuli whether or not they

are actually in the presence of others and that virtually everything an

individual does or experiences is influenced to some extent by present

or previous social contacts.

Development of Theory. Social psychology is rooted in the earliest

intellectual probes made by individuals into their relations with

society. Many of the major problems of concern to contemporary social

psychology were recognized as problems by social philosophers long

before psychological questions were joined to scientific method. The

questions posed by Aristotle, the Italian philosopher Niccol

Machiavelli, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, and others

throughout history are still asked, in altered form, in the work of

present-day social psychologists.

The more recent history of social psychology begins with the

publication in 1908 of two textbooks—each having the term social

psychology in its title—that examine the impact of society on the

development and behavior of individuals. One of these was written by

the British psychologist William McDougall, and the other by the

American sociologist Edward Alsworth Ross. McDougall framed a

controversial theory of human instincts, conceived of as broad,

purposive tendencies emerging from the evolutionary process. Ross, on

the other hand, was concerned with the transmission of social behavior

from person to person, such as the influence of one person’s emotions

on another’s in a crowd, or the following of fads and fashions.

Another textbook on social psychology, published in 1924 by the

American psychologist Floyd H. Allport, had an important influence on

the development of social psychology as a specialization of general

psychology. Allport extended the principles of associative learning to

account for a wide range of social behavior. He thus avoided reference

either to such mysterious social forces as were proposed by Ross or to

the elaborate instinctive dispositions used by McDougall and his

followers to account for social behavior. Through the remainder of the

decade, the literature of social psychology continued to be devoted to

similar discussions and controversies about points of view, and little

empirical work, that is, work relying on experience or observation, of

theoretical or practical significance was done.

Early Experimentation. In the 1930s empirical research was first

undertaken on such matters as animal social behavior, group problem-

solving, attitudes and persuasion, national and ethnic stereotypes,

rumor transmission, and leadership. The German-American psychologist

Kurt Lewin emphasized the necessity of doing theoretical analysis

before conducting research on a problem, the purpose of the research

being to clarify explanatory mechanisms hypothesized to underlie the

behavior being studied. The theory proposes an explanation of certain

behavior and allows the investigator to predict the specific conditions

under which the behavior will or will not occur. The investigator then

designs experiments in which the appropriate conditions are

methodically varied and the occurrence of the behavior can be observed

and measured. The results allow modifications and extensions of the

theory to be made.

In 1939 Lewin together with two of his doctoral students published the

results of an experiment of significant historical importance. The

investigators had arranged to have the same adults play different

leadership roles while directing matched groups of children. The adults

attempted to establish particular climates—that is, social

environmental conditions—of democratic, autocratic, or completely

laissez-faire leadership. The reactions of the children in the groups

were carefully observed, and detailed notes were taken on the patterns

of social interaction that emerged. Although the experiment itself had

many deficiencies, it demonstrated that something as nebulous as a

democratic social climate could be created under controlled laboratory

conditions.

The originality and success of this research had a liberating effect on

other investigators. By the end of World War II, an outpouring of

experimental research involving the manipulation of temporary social

environments through laboratory stagecraft began. At the same time,

important advances occurred in nonexperimental, or field, research in

social psychology. The objective rather than the speculative study of

social behavior is the current trend in social psychology.

Research Areas. Social psychology shares many concerns with other

disciplines, especially with sociology and cultural anthropology. The

three sciences differ, however, in that whereas the sociologist studies

social groups and institutions and the anthropologist studies human

cultures, the social psychologist focuses attention on how social

groups, institutions, and cultures affect the behavior of the

individual. The major areas of research in social psychology are the

following.

Socialization. Social psychologists who study the phenomena of

socialization, meaning the process of being made fit or trained for a

social environment, are interested in how individuals learn the rules

governing their behavior toward other persons in society, the groups of

which they are members, and individuals with whom they come into

contact. Questions dealing with how children learn language, sex role,

moral and ethical principles, and appropriate behavior in general have

come under intensive investigation. Also widely studied are the methods

by which adults learn to adapt their patterns of behavior when they are

confronted by new situations or organizations.

Attitudes and Attitude Change. Attitudes have generally been regarded

as learned predispositions that exert some consistent influence on

responses toward objects, persons, or groups. Attitudes are usually

seen as the products of socialization and therefore as modifiable.

Because the behavior of a person toward others is often, although not

always, consistent with his or her attitudes toward them, the

investigation of how attitudes are formed, how they are organized in

the mind, and how they are modified has been considered of great

practical as well as theoretical importance.

The discovery that attitudes follow from behavior as well as vice versa

emerges from the well-tested assumption that people desire to preserve

logical consistency in their views of themselves and their

environments. A number of theories of cognitive consistency have become

important in social psychological thinking. These theories stress the

idea that individuals have a personal stake in believing that their own

thoughts and actions are in agreement with one another, and that

perceiving inconsistency between one’s actions and thoughts leads to

attempts to reduce the inconsistency. Through research, social

psychologists attempt to understand the conditions under which people

notice an inconsistency and the conditions under which they will

attempt to reduce it by changing significant attitudes. Studies support

the consistency-theory prediction that the attitudes of a person about

a group of people can often be changed by inducing the person to change

his or her behavior toward the group; the attitude change represents

the efforts of the person to bring his or her ideas about the group

into agreement with how he has just acted toward its members.

Social Affiliation, Power, and Influence. The factors that govern

whether and with whom people will affiliate, as well as whether and how

they will attempt to influence or be influenced by others, have

received much attention by social psychologists. Researchers have

determined, for example, that if people are unsure of how they should

feel or behave in response to a new or unpleasant situation, they will

seek the company of others who may be able to provide the lacking

information. Social psychologists have also found that firstborn and

only children are generally more inclined to join groups throughout

their lives than are those born later.

Group Structure and Functioning. Social psychologists have studied many

issues related to questions of how the group and the individual affect

one another, including problems of leadership functions, styles, and

effectiveness. Social psychologists investigate the conditions under

which people or groups resolve their conflicts cooperatively or

competitively and the many consequences of those general modes of

conflict resolution. Research is conducted also to determine how the

group induces conformity and how it deals with deviant members.

Personality and Society. Some social psychologists are particularly

concerned with the development and consequences of stable individual

differences among people. Differences in the degree of achievement

motivation have been found to be measurable and to have important

consequences for how a person behaves in various social situations.

Systems of attitudes toward authority, such as the notion of the

authoritarian personality, have been found to relate to attitudes

toward ethnic minorities and to certain aspects of social behavior. A

personality syndrome known as Machiavellianism, named after the Italian

political philosopher Niccolт Machiavelli, has been used to predict the

social manipulativeness of people in interaction and their ability to

dominate certain interpersonal situations.

Investigative Techniques

Numerous kinds of research methods and techniques are being used in social

psychology. The tradition of theory-based investigation remains strong in

the discipline. In recent years rigorously exact mathematical models of

social behavior have been used increasingly in psychological studies. Such

models are projections, based on theory and in arithmetic detail, of social

behavior in a possible system of social relationships.

Other techniques include the questionnaire and the interview, both used

widely in public opinion polls and studies of consumer preferences. These

two methods pose a considerable challenge to investigators. The kind of

control of the environment that is possible in the laboratory is not

available in the field, and the effects of subtle variables that can be

observed in experiments are easily obscured by other variables that may

exist in natural environments.

Frequently, behavior in natural settings is systematically observed, or

computers are programmed to simulate social behavior. Special techniques

are used for analysis of statistics and other data and for attitude

measurement as well as measurement of social choice and interpersonal

attractiveness. Also important is psychophysiological measurement, that is,

the measurement of shared mental and physiological characteristics. Cross-

national and cross-cultural research is one of the modern techniques,

designed to provide comparisons of behavior between nations and cultures;

the same research study is carried out in several different countries in

order to determine the cross-cultural validity of the research.

In the study of social behavior in animals, a laboratory environment

facilitates controlled experimentation, that is, experimentation

considering the previous history of the animals as well as their present

environmental conditions. Simple behavioral acts, such as a pigeon pecking

at an object, can be isolated and schedules of reinforcement—that is,

repetition of stimuli—can be maintained. Social psychological research with

animals has led to important new techniques for their training.

Applied Social Psychology

The principles developed in laboratory and field research in social

psychology have been applied to many social situations and problems.

Applied researchers and consultants have worked to ameliorate problems

found in ethnic relations, international relations, industrial and labor

relations, political and economic behavior, education, advertising, and

community mental health. Industries, organizations, schools, and task

groups of many kinds regularly use the services of applied social

psychologists to improve interpersonal relations, to increase understanding

of relations between members of groups in conflict with one another, and to

diagnose and help correct problems in group and organizational

productivity.

10. Psychiatry and mental health

Psychiatry is the realm in which medical science and psychology join to

provide help for persons whose mind (as one says) is disturbed and whose

behavior does not conform to accept social patterns. Psychopathology and

clinical psychology are integral sub-fields of this branch of medical

psychology which, of necessity, also includes neurology, mental

deficiency or retardation, forensic psychology, certain aspects of

abnormal psychology, social psychology and psychotherapy. Mental illness

has been recognized as such since the days of Aristotle and Hippocrates,

and its long modern history has been able described by some scientists.

Mental Health, state characterized by psychological well-being and self-

acceptance. The term mental health usually implies the capacity to love

and relate to others, the ability to work productively, and the

willingness to behave in a way that brings personal satisfaction

without encroaching upon the rights of others. In a clinical sense,

mental health is the absence of mental illness.

The Mental Health Movement

Concern for the mentally ill has waxed and waned through the centuries, but

the development of modern-day approaches to the subject dates from the mid-

18th century, when reformers such as the French physician Philippe Pinel

and the American physician Benjamin Rush introduced humane “moral

treatment” to replace the often cruel treatment that then prevailed.

Despite these reforms, most of the mentally ill continued to live in jails

and poorhouses—a situation that continued until 1841, when the American

reformer Dorothea Dix campaigned to place the mentally ill in hospitals for

special treatment.

The modern mental health movement can be traced to the publication in 1908

of A Mind That Found Itself, an account of the experience of its author,

Clifford Whittingham Beers, as a mental patient. The book aroused a storm

of public concern for the mentally ill. In 1909 Beers founded the National

Committee for Mental Hygiene.

Public awareness of the need for greater governmental attention to mental

health services led to passage of the National Mental Health Act in 1946.

This legislation authorized the establishment of the National Institute of

Mental Health to be operated as a part of the U.S. Public Health Service.

In 1950 the National Committee for Mental Hygiene was reorganized as the

National Association for Mental Health, better known as the Mental Health

Association.

In 1955 Congress established a Joint Commission on Mental Illness and

Health to survey the mental health needs of the nation and to recommend new

approaches. Based on the commission’s recommendations, legislation was

passed in 1963 authorizing funds for construction of facilities for

community-based treatment centers. A similar group, the President’s

Commission on Mental Health, reported its findings in 1978, citing

estimates of the cost of mental illness in the U.S. alone as being about

$17 billion a year.

Scope of the Problem

According to a common estimate, at any one time 10 percent of the American

population has mental health problems sufficiently serious to warrant care;

recent evidence suggests that this figure may be closer to 15 percent. Not

all the people who need help receive it, however; in 1975 only 3 percent of

the American population received mental health service. One major reason

for this is that people still fear the stigma attached to mental illness

and hence often fail to report it or to seek help.

Analysis of the figures on mental illness shows that schizophrenia afflicts

an estimated 2 million Americans, another 2 million suffer from profound

depressive disorders, and 1 million have organic psychoses or other

permanently disabling mental conditions. As much as 25 percent of the

population is estimated to suffer from mild or moderate depression,

anxiety, and other types of emotional problems. Some 10 million Americans

have problems related to alcohol abuse, and millions more are thought to

abuse drugs. Some 5 to 15 percent of children between the ages of 3 and 15

are the victims of persistent mental health problems, and at least 2

million are thought to have severe learning disabilities that can seriously

impair their mental health.

In addition, according to the President’s Commission, the list of mental

health problems should be extended beyond identifiable psychiatric

conditions to include the damage to mental health associated with

unrelenting poverty, unemployment, and discrimination on the basis of race,

sex, class, age, and mental or physical handicaps.

Prevention

Public health authorities customarily distinguish among three forms of

prevention. Primary prevention refers to attempts to prevent the occurrence

of mental disorder, as well as to promote positive mental health. Secondary

prevention is the early detection and treatment of a disorder, and tertiary

prevention refers to rehabilitative efforts that are directed at preventing

complications.

Two avenues of approach to the prevention of mental illness in adults were

suggested by the President’s Commission. One was to reduce the stressful

effects of such crises as unemployment, retirement, bereavement, and

marital disruption; the second was to create environments in which people

can achieve their full potential. The commission placed its heaviest

emphasis, however, on helping children. It recommended the following steps:

1) good care during pregnancy and childbirth, so that early treatment can

be instituted as needed;

2) early detection and correction of problems of physical, emotional, and

intellectual development;

3) developmental day-care programs focusing on emotional and intellectual

development;

4) support services for families, directed at preventing unnecessary and

inappropriate foster care or other out-of-home placements for children.

Treatment

Care of the mentally ill has changed dramatically in recent decades. Drugs

introduced in the mid-1950s, along with other improved treatment methods,

enabled many patients who would once have spent years in mental

institutions to be treated as outpatients in community facilities instead.

(A series of judicial decisions and legislative acts has promoted community

care by requiring that patients be treated in the least restrictive setting

available.) Between 1955 and 1980 the number of people in state mental

hospitals declined from more than 550,000 to fewer than 125,000. This trend

was due partly to improved community care and partly to the cost of

operating hospitals; in an effort to save public money, some large state

mental hospitals have been closed, forcing alternatives to be found for

patients. This is generally considered a progressive trend because when

patients spend extended periods in hospitals they tend to become overly

dependent and lose interest in taking care of themselves. In addition,

because the hospitals are often located long distances from the patients’

homes, families and friends can visit only infrequently, and the patients’

roles at home and at work are likely to be taken over by others.

The psychiatric wards of community general hospitals have assumed some of

the responsibility for caring for the mentally ill during the acute phases

of illness. Some of these hospitals function as the inpatient service for

community mental health centers. Typically, patients remain for a few days

or weeks until their symptoms have subsided, and they usually are given

some form of psychotropic drug to help relieve their symptoms. Following

the lead of Great Britain, American mental hospitals now also give some

patients complete freedom of buildings and grounds and, in some instances,

freedom to visit nearby communities. This move is based on the conclusion

that disturbed behavior is often the result of restraint rather than of

illness.

Treatment of patients with less severe mental disorders has also changed

markedly in recent decades. Previously, patients with mild depression,

anxiety disorders, and other neurotic conditions were treated individually

with psychotherapy. Although this form of treatment is still widely used,

alternative approaches are now available. In some instances, a group of

patients meets to work through problems with the assistance of a therapist;

in other cases, families are treated as a unit. Another form of treatment

that has proven especially effective in alleviating phobic disorders is

behavior therapy, which focuses on changing overt behavior rather than the

underlying causes of a disorder. As in the serious mental illnesses, the

treatment of milder forms of anxiety and depression has been furthered by

the introduction of new drugs that help alleviate symptoms.

Rehabilitation

The release of large numbers of patients from state mental hospitals,

however, has caused significant problems both for the patients and for the

communities that become their new homes. Adequate community services often

are unavailable to former mental patients, a large percentage of whom live

in nursing homes and other facilities that are not equipped to meet their

needs. Most of these patients have been diagnosed as having schizophrenia,

and only 15 to 40 percent of schizophrenics who live in the community

achieve an average level of adjustment. Those who do receive care typically

visit a clinic at periodic intervals for brief counseling and drug

monitoring.

In addition to such outpatient clinics, rehabilitation services include

sheltered workshops, day-treatment programs, and social clubs. Sheltered

workshops provide vocational guidance and an opportunity to brush up on an

old skill or learn a new one. In day-treatment programs, patients return

home at night and on weekends; during weekdays, the programs offer a range

of rehabilitative services, such as vocational training, group activities,

and help in the practical problems of living. Ex-patient social clubs

provide social contacts, group activities, and an opportunity for patients

to develop self-confidence in normal situations.

Another important rehabilitative facility is the halfway house for patients

whose families are not willing or able to accept them after discharge. It

serves as a temporary residence for ex-patients who are ready to form

outside community ties. A variant is the use of subsidized apartments for

recently discharged psychiatric patients.

Research

Many different sciences contribute to knowledge about mental health and

illness. In recent decades these sciences have begun to clarify basic

biological, psychological, and social processes, and they have refined the

application of such knowledge to mental health problems.

Some of the most promising leads have come from biological research. For

example, brain scientists who study neurotransmitters—chemicals that carry

messages from one nerve cell to another—are contributing to knowledge of

normal and abnormal brain functioning, and they may eventually discover

better treatment methods for mental illness. Other researchers are trying

to discover how the brain develops—they have learned, for example, that

even in adults some nerve cells partially regenerate after being

damaged—and such research adds to the understanding of mental retardation,

untreatable forms of brain damage, and other conditions.

Psychological research relevant to mental health includes the study of

perception, information processing, thinking, language, motivation,

emotion, abilities, attitudes, personality, and social behavior. For

example, researchers are studying stress and how to cope with it. One

application of this type of research may help to prevent mental disorders;

in the future, psychologists may be better able to match people (and their

coping skills) to work settings and job duties.

Research in the social sciences focuses on problems of individuals in

contexts such as the family, neighborhood, and work setting, as well as the

culture at large. One example of such work is epidemiological research,

which is the study of the occurrence of disease patterns, including mental

illness, in a society.

11. Forensic psychology and criminology

The study of abnormal behaviour often leads to special investigations

into the origins or causes of crime. This in turn will lead to the

psychological study of criminals and also of the victims of crime. The

literature on this topic is growing and there exist now a number of

useful indexing services to help with the retrieval of particular

contributions from many countries. While most of these indexes and

abstracts are orientated towards the work of, and happenings in, the

courts, all of them contain, references to the behaviour of criminals

or social deviants. Criminology and penology abstracts has been in

existence since 1960; its abstracts are arranged under broad subject

heading which include psychology, psychopathology, psychiatry, social

behaviour of groups.

12. Psychology, religion and phenomenology

The long traditional links between religions and psychology go back to

classical antiquity. They received much impetus in the middle ages and

again during the many periods of religious and political fervour that

stirred Europe during the past six centuries, reaching various

climactic peaks through seers, visionaries and martyrs. Every one of

these advocated social reforms on earth to attain a new heaven, or

threatened new hells should the reforms not be adopted. All were

persecuted by the established religious or political power, or both;

then as now, the defenders of the status quo almost invariably accused

the challengers of being madmen or psychopaths. It is all a matter of

firmly held beliefs uttered from pulpits,chancery ballconies and soap

boxes as well as printed in broadsides, pamphlets, or large books, or

smeared on the walls of houses with a wide brush

13. Parapsychology

Psychical Research, also parapsychology, scientific investigation of

alleged phenomena and events that appear to be unaccounted for by

conventional physical, biological, or psychological theories.

Parapsychologists study two kinds of so-called psi phenomena:

extrasensory perception (ESP), or the acquiring of information through

nonsensory means; and psychokinesis (PK), or the ability to affect

objects at a distance by means other than known physical forces.

Psychical research also investigates the survival of personality after

death and deals with related topics such as trance mediumship,

hauntings, apparitions, poltergeists (involuntary PK), and out-of-body

experiences. The name of this field of investigation is taken from the

Society of Psychical Research, founded in England in 1882 and in the

U.S. in 1884; both groups continue to publish their findings today.

Historical Development

Among the early achievements of the British group was the investigation of

hypnotism, a field later claimed by medicine and psychology. The society

also investigated phenomena produced at spiritualistic seances and the

claims of spiritualism. Psi phenomena to be investigated were classified as

either physical or mental. The physical effects, or PK, include the

movement of physical objects or an influence upon material processes by the

apparent direct action of mind over matter. The mental manifestations, or

ESP, include telepathy, which is the direct transmission of messages,

emotions, or other subjective states from one person to another without the

use of any sensory channel of communication; clairvoyance, meaning direct

responses to a physical object or event without any sensory contact; and

precognition, or a noninferential response to a future event.

One of the first specific investigations in the field was the examination,

by the British chemist and physicist Sir William Crookes, of the phenomena

produced at seances held by the Scottish medium Daniel Dunglas Home. Home,

a physical medium, held his seances in full light, and the validity of the

paranormal phenomena he produced has never been successfully impugned. The

contents of verbal utterances by mental mediums were also studied.

Significant early research involved the American medium Leonore E. Piper,

whose apparent psychical gifts were discovered by the American philosopher

and psychologist William James. Other lines of investigation dealt with

psychic experiences that seemed to occur spontaneously in everyday life,

and involved the controlled testing of persons with apparently outstanding

ESP abilities.

Rhine’s Laboratory

In the U.S., one of the earliest groups to become active in parapsychology

was the Parapsychology Laboratory of North Carolina’s Duke University,

which began publishing literature in the 1930s. There, under the direction

of the American psychologist Joseph Banks Rhine, methods were developed

that advanced psychical investigations from the correlations of isolated

and often vague anecdotal reports to a mathematical study based on

statistics and the laws of probability.

In the experiments dealing with ESP, Rhine and his associates used mainly a

deck of 25 cards, somewhat similar to ordinary playing cards but bearing on

their faces only five designs: star, circle, cross, square, and wavy lines.

If a subject correctly named 5 out of the shuffled deck of 25 concealed

cards, that was considered pure chance. Certain subjects, however,

consistently named 6 out of 10 cards correctly; so Rhine and his associates

concluded that this demonstrated the existence of ESP. In their experiments

on PK, the group used ordinary dice that were thrown from a cup against a

wall or tumbled in mechanically driven cages. In these tests, an apparent

relationship was found between the mental effort of subjects to “will”

particular faces of the dice to appear upward and the percentage of times

the faces actually did so. The results obtained in many individual

experiments and in the research as a whole, Rhine and his workers decided,

could not reasonably be attributed to the fluctuations of chance.

Rhine retired from Duke University in 1965 and transferred his research to

a privately endowed organization, the Foundation for Research on the Nature

of Man. Since that time parapsychology has become better established in

other universities, as illustrated by the offering of credit courses in the

subject in increasing numbers. In addition, independent research centers

continue to be founded, among them the American Society for Psychical

Research, with headquarters in New York City. The Parapsychological

Association, an international group of scholars actively working in the

field, was formed in 1957 and was granted affiliation status by the

American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1969.

Criticisms

Although parapsychologists are increasingly employing and refining

scientific methodologies for their observations, one of the chief

criticisms of their work is that experiments in psi phenomena can rarely be

duplicated. Under the most rigorous laboratory controls, for example,

experiments on phenomena such as out-of-body experiences—in which

individuals demonstrate an apparent ability to locate their center of

perception outside their bodies—indicate that even reputable psychics are

rarely able to duplicate earlier, high-scoring performances. The scores of

such individuals, in fact, tend to drop to the level of probability the

more the experiment is repeated. Nonparapsychologists find psi experiments

even more difficult to repeat, and a majority of conventional scientists

dismiss parapsychology findings as unscientific or at best inconclusive.

A similar criticism is based on the claim by most parapsychologists that

psi phenomena occur beyond the law of causality, which is one of the

fundamental premises of any scientific investigation. Indeed, results of

psi experiments often turn out to be far from or even contradictory to the

original predictions. Parapsychologists admit that psi phenomena fall so

far outside ordinary comprehension that they are often unsure whether an

ESP event or a PK event has occurred; Rhine himself stated that one kind of

event could not occur without the other. Because these phenomena are

difficult to define or isolate when they appear to happen—and, further,

because the phenomena occur only for a select group of observers—most

scientists think that psi investigations fall far short of the rules of

objectivity required by the scientific method. As a result, many

parapsychologists, rather than trying to demonstrate the reality of psi

phenomena to a skeptical scientific community, have turned to exploring how

such phenomena might actually work; they even have drawn on quantum physics

for empirical support. Some workers in the field object to the very notion

of repeatability of experiments as foreign to the nature of psi phenomena;

they consider the scientific method, as currently understood, too

restrictive a formulation for exploring the unknown.

14. Industrial Psychology

Psychologists in industry serve many roles. In the personnel office,

they assist in hiring through testing and interviewing, in developing

training programs, in evaluating employees, and in maintaining good

employee relations and communications. Some psychologists do research

for marketing and advertising departments. Others work in the field of

human engineering, which involves designing machines and workplaces to

make them more suitable for people.

School Psychology

Psychologists in the educational system give most of their attention to

counseling and guidance. They help students plan their school and work

careers. Educational psychologists deal with the processes of teaching and

learning; for example, they may investigate new methods of teaching

children how to read or to do mathematics, in order to make classroom

learning more effective.

Clinical Psychology

Many applied psychologists work in hospitals, clinics, and private

practice, providing therapy to people who need psychological help. By

testing and interviewing, they classify their patients and engage in all

forms of treatment that are not exclusively medical, such as drug therapy

and surgery.

A special contribution of clinical psychology is behavior therapy, which is

based on principles of learning and conditioning. Through behavior therapy,

clinical psychologists try to change the behavior of the patient and to

remove unpleasant or undesirable symptoms by arranging the proper

conditioning experiences or the proper rewards for desired behavior. A

patient with a phobia about dogs, for example, might be “desensitized” by a

series of rewards given for closer and closer contact with dogs in

nonthreatening situations. In other forms of therapy, the psychologist may

try to help patients better understand their problems and find new ways of

dealing with them.

Vocabulary

Contents

Physiological psychology - психофизиология. Изучает психику в единстве с ее

нейрофизиологическим субстратом - рассматривает соотношение мозга и

психики.

Psychoanalysis - психоанализ. Основывается на идее о том, что поведение

определяется не

только и не столько сознанием, сколько бессознательным.

Behaviourism - бихевиоризм. Направление в американской психологии ХХ в.,

отрицающее

сознание как предмет научного исследования и сводящее психику к различным

формам

поведения, понятого как совокупность организма на стимулы внешней среды.

Gestalt psychology - гештальт-психология. Программа изучения психики с

точки зрения

целостных структур - гештальтов, первичным по отношению к своим

компонентам.

Cognition - когнитивная психология. Исходит из того, что любая ассоциация

между стимулом и

реакцией создается сначала в мозге.

Tests and Measurements - тесты

Development psychology - возрастная психология. Отрасль психологии,

изучающая закономерности этапов психического развития и формирования

личности в связи с возрастом - на протяжении онтогенеза человека от

рождения до старости

Social psychology - социальная психология. Изучает психологические

особенности и

закономерности поведения и деятельности людей, обусловленные их включением

в группы

социальные и существованием в них, а также психологические характеристики

самих этих

групп.

Psychiatry and mental health - психиатрия и психическое здоровье. Область

клинической

медицины, изучающая психические болезни

Forensic psychology - судебная психология. Область психологии юридической,

изучающая круг

вопросов, относящихся к судопроизводству.

Сriminology - криминология.

Рhenomenology - феноменология.

Parapsychology- парапсихология (психотроника). Именование гипотез и

представлений, относящихся к психическим явлениям, объяснение коих не имеет

строгого научного обоснования.

Industrial Psychology - индустриальная психология.

2. Physiological psychology

Perception - восприятие

Certain skills - определенные навыки

Innate - врожденный

Perception - восприятие

Nervous system - нервная система

Circulatory system - гормональная регуляция

Central nervous system - центральная нервная система

Spinal cord - спинной мозг

Peripheral nervous system - периферическая нервная система

Glands- железа

Muscles - мышца

Sensory - чувствительный

Neuron - нейрон

Somatic system - соматическая система

Autonomic system - вегетативная система

Sympathetic division - симпатический отдел

Parasympathetic division - парасимпатический отдел

Knee-jerk reflex - рефлекс коленный (пателлярный)

3. Psychoanalysis

Unconscious - бессознательное

Conscious - сознательное

Latent dream - тайные (латентные) мысли

Manifest dream - явные мысли

Instinctual drives - основные инстинкты

Infantile sexuality - инфантильная сексуальность

Adult sexuality - взрослая сексуальность

Oral, anal and genital zones - оральная, анальная и фаллическая стадии

Oedipal period - эдипов комплекс

Структурные компоненты души:

Id - Ид (оно) “содержит все унаследованное, все, что есть при рождении. Ид

резервуар энергии для всей личности, содержание Ид бессознательно

Ego - эго - та часть психического аппарата, которая находится в контакте с

внешней реальностью. Развивается из Ид по мере того, как ребенок начинает

осознавать свою личность. Эго защищает Ид.

Superego - суперэго. Развивается и Эго. Служит судьей или цензором Эго.

Thinking - мышление

Motor control - моторные контроль

Defense mechanisms - защитные механизмы

Repression - подавление

Projection - проекция

Reaction formation - реактивные образование. Явная и обычно бессознательная

инверсия желания

Anxiety - тревожность

Analytical psychology - аналитическая психология

Libido - либидо - половое влечение

Personal unconscious - личное бессознательное

Collective unconscious - коллективное бессознательное

Archetypes - архетипы. Психические структуры, формы без собственного

содержания, которые организуют и канализируют психологический материал.

Persona - персона. Это то, какими мы представляем себя миру

Neurosis - невроз

Primary trauma of birth - первичная травма детства

Mental, emotional and sensory powers - ментальная, эмоциональная и

чувственная сила

Situation neuroses - ситуационный невроз

Character neuroses - невротик

Complex unconscious fantasies in children - комплекс бессознательных

фантазий в детстве

Death instinct - инстинкт смерти. Под ним понимаются присущие индивиду -

как правило,

бессознательные - тенденции к саморазрушению и возврату в неорганическое

состояние.

Depressive position - депрессивное состояние

Paranoid position - параноидальное состояние

7. Gestalt psychology

Associationism - ассоциативная психология

8. Cognition psychology

Attention - внимание

Perception - восприятие

Memory - память

Reasoning - мотивация

Judgment - суждение

Imagining - воображение

Thinking - мышление

Speech - речь

Psycholinguistics - психолингвистика. Научная дисциплина, изучающая

обусловленность процессов речи и ее восприятия структурой соответствующего

языка, или языка вообще.

Intelligence - интеллект

7. Tests and Measurements

Achievement tests - тест достижений

Aptitude tests - тест на профпригодность

Intellegence tests - тест умственных способностей

Verbal abilities - способности на восприятие вербального (знакового)

материала

Infant intelligence tests - тесты на определение уровня интеллекта детей

Interest inventories - опросники профориентации

Objective Personality tests - объективные качества личности

Social extroversion or depression - социальные экстроверсия и интроверсия

Personality types - психотипы

Projective techniques - Проективные тесты

Validity - валидность. Указывает, что именно тест измеряет и насколько

хорошо он это делает.

Criterion-related validity - критериально-связывающая валидность

Construct validity - конструктивная валидность

9. Social psychology

Emotions - эмоции

Desires - желания

Social Affiliation - социальная аффилиация (стремление быть в обществе

других людей)

Influence - влияние

10. Psychiatry and mental health

Patterns - образ жизни

Depressive disorders - депрессия

Organic psychoses - органический психоз. Глубокие расстройства психики,

психической деятельности; проявляются в нарушении отражения реального мира,

возможности его познания, изменении поведения и отношения к окружающему.

13. Parapsychology

Extrasensory perception (ESP) - экстрасенсорное восприятие

Psychokinesis (PK) - психокинез

Trance mediumship, hauntings, poltergeists (involuntary PK) - трансовый

медиумизм, телепатия, полтергейст

Out-of-body experience - опыт вне телесного сознания

Hypnotism - гипноз (техника воздействия на индивида путем фокализации его

внимания с целью сузить поле сознания и подчинить его влиянию,, контролю

внешнего агента - гипнотизера, внушения коего гипнотизируемый будет

выполнять.

LITERATURE

1. Borchardt D.H. How to find out in Psychology. Pergamon Press 1984

2. Stedman`s concise Medical dictionary. First Webster`s New World Edition

1987.

3. Encarta Encyclopedia.1996

4. Никошкова Е.В. Англо-русский словарь по психологии. М: РУССО, ИП РАН,

1998

5. Ривкин В.Л., Морозов Н.В. Русско-английский медицинский словарь-

справочник с толкованиями. М: РУССО, 1996

6. Словарь практического психолога. Минск: Харвест, 1998

7. Хрестоматия по психологии личности. Самара: Издательский Дом “Бахрах”,

1996

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