Psych Vocab

Front 1

Judgement

Back 1

mental act of comparing or evaluating choices w/in the framework of a given set of values for the purpose of electing a course of action

Front 2

la belle indifference

Back 2

inappropriate attitude of calm or lack of concern about one's disability. May be seen in conversion disorder.

Front 3

malingering

Back 3

feigning disease to achieve a specific goal, for example to avoid an unpleasant responsibility

Front 4

mania

Back 4

mood state characterized by elation,agitation, hyperactivity, hypersexuality, and accelerated thinking and speaking (flight of ideas)

Front 5

memory

Back 5

process whereby what is experienced or learned is established as a record in the CNS (registration) where it persists with a variable degree of permanence (retention) and can be recollected or retrieved from storage at will (recall)

Front 6

mental retardation

Back 6

Subaverage general intellectual functioning that originates in the developmental period and is associated with impaired maturation and learning, and social maladjustment.
mild(between 50 and 55 to 70),moderate(be-tween 35 and 40 to between 50 and 55),severe(between 20 and 25 to between 35 and 40), and profound (below 20 to 25).

Front 7

micropsia

Back 7

False perception that objects are smaller than they really are. Sometimes called
lilliputian hallucination.

Front 8

mood

Back 8

Pervasive and sustained feeling tone that is experienced internally and that, in the extreme, can markedly influence virtually all aspects of a person’s behavior and perception of the world. Distinguished from affect, the external expression of the internal feeling tone.

Front 9

mood-congruent delusion

Back 9

Delusion with content that is mood appropriate(e.g.,depressed patients who believe that they are responsible for the destructionof the world).

Front 10

mood-incongruent delusion

Back 10

Delusion based on incorrect reference about external reality, withcontent that has no association tomood or is mood in appropriate(e.g.,depressed patients who believe that they are the new Messiah).

Front 11

mood-incongruent hallucination

Back 11

Hallucination not associated with real external stimuli, with content that is not consistent with depressed or manic mood(e.g.,in depression, hallucinations not involving such themes as guilt, deserved punishment, or inadequacy; in mania, not involving such themes as inflated worth or power).

Front 12

mood swings

Back 12

Oscillation of a person’s emotional feeling tone between periods of elation and periods of depression.

Front 13

mutism

Back 13

Organic or functional absence of the faculty of speech.

Front 14

narcissism

Back 14

In psychoanalytic theory, divided into primary and secondary types:primary narcissism, the early infantile phase of object relationship development, when the child has not differentiated the self from the outside world, and all sources of pleasure are unrealistically recognized as coming from within the self, giving the child a false sense of omnipotence; secondary narcissism, when the libido, once attached to external love objects, is redirected back to the self.

Front 15

negativism

Back 15

verbal or nonverbal opposition or resistance to outside suggestion and advice; commonly seen in catatonic schizophrenia in which the patient resists any effort to be moved or does the opposite of what is asked

Front 16

neologism

Back 16

new word or phrase word whose derivation cannot be understood; often seen in schizophrenia. It also has been used to mean word that has been incorrectly constructed but whose origins are nonetheless understandable (e.g, headshoe to mean hat)

Front 17

nihilistic delusion

Back 17

Depressive delusion that the world and everything related to it have ceased to exist

Front 18

obsession

Back 18

persistent and recurring idea, thought, or impulse that cannot be eliminated from consciousness by logic or reasoning. involuntary and ego dystonic

Front 19

orientation

Back 19

state of awareness of oneself, and one's surroundings in terms of time, place and person

Front 20

panic

Back 20

acute intense attack of anxiety associated with personality disorganization; the anxiety is overwhelming and accompanied by feelings of impending doom

Front 21

paranoia

Back 21

rare psychiatric syndrome marked by the gradual development of a highly elaborate and complex delusional system, generally involving persecutory or grandiose delusions with few other signs of personality disorganization or thought disorder

Front 22

paranoid delusions

Back 22

include persecutory delusions and delusions of reference, control and grandeur

Front 23

paranoid ideation

Back 23

Thinking dominated by suspicious, persecutory, or grandiose content of less than delusional proportions.

Front 24

perception

Back 24

Conscious awareness of elements in the environment by the mental processing of sensory stimuli; sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to the mental process by which all kinds of data, intellectual, emotional, and sensory, are meaning fully organized.

Front 25

perseveration

Back 25

(1) Pathological repetition of the same response to different stimuli, as in a repetition of the same verbal response to different questions. (2)Persistent repetition of specific words or concepts in the process of speaking. Seen in cognitive disorders, schizophrenia, and other mental illness.

Front 26

phobia

Back 26

Persistent, pathological, unrealistic, intense fear of an object or situation; the phobic person may realize that the fear is irrational but, nonetheless, cannot dispel it.

Front 27

pica

Back 27

craving and eating of nonfood substances, such as paint and clay

Front 28

poverty of speech content

Back 28

speech that is adequate in amount but conveys little information because of vagueness, emptiness, or stereotyped phrases.

Front 29

poverty of speech

Back 29

restriction in the amount of speech used; replies may be monosyllabic

Front 30

pressured speech

Back 30

increse in the amount of spontaneous speech; rapid, loud, accelerated speech as it occurs in mania, schizophrenia, and cognitive disorders.

Front 31

pseudodementia

Back 31

(1) Dementia-like disorder that can be reversed by appropriate treatment and is not caused by organic brain disease.(2) Condition in which patients show exaggerated indifference to their surroundings in the absence of a mental disorder; also occurs in depression and factitious disorders.

Front 32

psychomotor agitation

Back 32

Physical and mental overactivity that is usually nonproductive and is associated with a feeling of inner turmoil, as seen in agitated depression.

Front 33

psychosis

Back 33

Mental disorder in which the thoughts, affective response, ability to recognize reality, and ability to communicate and relate to others are sufficiently impaired to interfere grossly with the capacity to deal with reality; the classic characteristics of psychosis are impaired reality testing, hallucinations, delusions, and illusions.

Front 34

rationalization

Back 34

An unconscious defense mechanism in which irrational or unacceptable behavior, motives, or feelings are logically justified or made consciously tolerable by plausible means.

Front 35

reaction formation

Back 35

Unconscious defense mechanism in which a person develops a socialized attitude or interest that is the direct antithesis of some infantile wish or impulse that is harbored consciously or unconsciously. One of the earliest and most unstable defense mechanisms, closely related to repression; both are defenses against impulses or urges that are unacceptable to the ego.

Front 36

reality testing

Back 36

Fundamental ego function that consists of tentative actions that test and objectively evaluate the nature and limits of the environment; includes the ability to differentiate between the external world and the internal world and to accurately judge the relation between the self and the environment.

Front 37

regression

Back 37

Unconscious defense mechanism in which a person undergoes a partial or total return to earlier patterns of adaptation; observed in many psychiatric conditions, particularly schizophrenia.

Front 38

repression

Back 38

Freud’s term for an unconscious defense mechanism in which unacceptable mental contents are banished or kept out of consciousness; important in normal psychological development and in neurotic and psychotic symptom formation.

Front 39

seizure

Back 39

An attack or sudden onset of certain symptoms, such as convulsions, loss of consciousness, and psychic or sensory disturbances; seen in epilepsy and can be substance induced.

Front 40

shame

Back 40

Failure to live up to self-expectations; often associated with fantasy of how person will be seen by others.

Front 41

somatic delusion

Back 41

delusion pertaining to the functioning of one's body

Front 42

stereotypy

Back 42

continuous mechanical repetition of speech or physical activities observed in catatonic schizophrenia

Front 43

stuttering

Back 43

frequent repetition or prolongation of a sound or syllable, leading to markedly impaired speech fluency

Front 44

sublimation

Back 44

Unconscious defense mechanism in which the energy associated with unacceptable impulses or drives is diverted into personally and socially acceptable channels; unlike other defense mechanisms,it offers some minimal gratification of the instinctual drive or impulse.

Front 45

systemitized delusion

Back 45

group of elaborate delusion related to a single event or theme

Front 46

tangentiality

Back 46

Oblique, digressive, or even irrelevant manner of speech in which the central idea is not communicated

Front 47

thought broadcasting

Back 47

Feeling that one’s thoughts are being broadcast or projected into the environment.

Front 48

thought disorder

Back 48

Any disturbance of thinking that affects language, communication, or thought content; the hallmark feature of schizophrenia. Manifestations range from simple blocking and mild circumstantiality to profound loosening of associations, incoherence, and delusions; characterized by a failure to follow semantic and syntactic rules that is inconsistent with the person’s education, intelligence, or cultural background.

Front 49

thought insertion

Back 49

Delusion that thoughts are being implanted in one’s mind by other people or forces.

Front 50

tic disorders

Back 50

Predominantly psychogenic disorders characterized by involuntary, spasmodic, stereotyped movement of small groups of muscles; seen most predominantly in moments of stress or anxiety, rarely as a result of organic disease.

Front 51

trance

Back 51

sleep like state of reduced conciousness and activity

Front 52

unconscious

Back 52

1) One of three divisions of Freud’s topographic theory of the mind in which the psychic material is not readily accessible to conscious awareness by ordinary means; its existence maybe manifest in symptom formation, in dreams, or under the influence of drugs. (2) In popular usage, any mental material not in the immediate field of awareness. (3)Denoting a state of unawareness, with lack of response to external stimuli, as in a coma.

Front 53

undoing

Back 53

Unconscious primitive defense mechanism, repetitive in nature, by which a person symbolically acts out in reverse something unacceptable that has already been done or against which the ego must defend itself; a form of magical expiatory action, commonly observed in OCD.

Front 54

vegetative signs

Back 54

In depression, denoting characteristic symptoms such as sleep disturbance (especially early morning awakening), decreased appetite, constipation, weightloss, and loss of sexual response.

Front 55

verbigeration

Back 55

meaningless and stereotyped repetition of words or phrases, as seen in schizophrenia

Front 56

word salad

Back 56

incoherent, essentially incomprehensible, mixture of words and phrase commonly seen in far-advanced cases of schizophrenia

Front 57

xenophobia

Back 57

abnormal fear of strangers