Descriptionary

anwesenheit the perception or feeling of someone's presence nearby, even though nobody is there, a nor­mal symptom of the grief process.

anxiety uneasiness and apprehension, sometimes disabling.

anxiety hierarchy a list of situations given by an individual that are ranked for how much anxiety they produce, from slight to extreme.

aphagia inability to eat.

aphasia loss of speech or the ability to comprehend speech, often a symptom of brain disease.

asocial lacking interest in other people.

astasia hysterical state in which the person believes he or she has lost the ability to stand or walk. Also called abasia.

atavism the reverting to a primitive behavior or state of mind.

attachment a child's bond with a parent or care- giver.

attention deficit disorder (ADD) in some children, a disorder characterized by an inability to pay atten­tion accompanied by impulsiveness.

aura a sense of strangeness, altered consciousness, or deja vu that precedes or accompanies an epileptic seizure.

autism poorly understood brain disorder character­ized by withdrawal from reality and absorption in inner fantasies.

aversion therapy a method of teaching someone to avoid a negative behavior, such as cigarette smoking, through unpleasant associations or punishment.

aversive conditioning changing someone's behavior by punishing them.

avoidant personality disorder a disorder in which one suffers from distorted thinking and irrationally avoids feared people, places, or things. Agoraphobia and social phobia fall into this category.

behaviorism a school of psychology that holds that valid data can come only from objective observation and experimentation.

belief-bias effect a behavior in which one's reason­ing ability is skewed or corrupted by one's biases, values, attitudes, etc.

biofeedback with the help of a feedback machine, the self-regulating of heart rate, blood pressure, and brain waves to achieve desired results such as deep relaxation.

biometeorology the study or science of the effects of various weather patterns on human health or behavior.

bipolar disorder mental illness characterized by alternating periods of elation and depression. Also known as manic depression. See manic-depressive psychosis.

blanking out losing one's train of thought, speech, or action, possibly indicating anxiety or exhaustion.

blocking a sudden dropout or interruption in the free or spontaneous flow of speech, possibly indicat­ing a troubling or uncomfortable thought.

blunted affect a toned-down or bland presentation of one's emotional state.

body dysmorphic disorder a disorder in which the sufferer falsely believes that a particular body part is deformed or defective when it is not.

body image one's concept of one's own body, espe­cially its attractiveness, which is highly prone to both negative and positive distortion.

borderline personality disorder a disorder char­acterized by persistent instability, impulsivity, and unpredictability accompanied by a chronic sense of emptiness and suicidal impulses.

bulimia an eating disorder characterized by binge- ing followed by intentional vomiting.

burnout extreme disillusionment, stress, and exhaus­tion, most often referring to one's work experience.

Capgras syndrome the delusion that someone has been replaced by an impostor. The sufferer may also think that he himself has been replaced, a syndrome seen in paranoid schizophrenia and other brain disease.

cardioneurosis a neurotic manifestation of anxiety characterized by pain in the heart, palpitations, and a sensation of suffocation.

cataphasia frequent repetition of the same word or phrase.

catatonic stupor in which the person becomes motionless and mute.

catharsis the reduction of a negative emotion or impulse by the verbal expression or acting out of that emotion or impulse.

classical conditioning the teaching of an individual to relate one stimulus, such as a bell, to another stimulus, such as food, as in Pavlov's dogs.

classical paranoia an isolated paranoia revolving around a single subject in one's life, in which the per­son may otherwise be normal.

closure the final acts and thoughts involved in putting behind oneself any psychological trial or turmoil.

codependency an unhealthy relationship in which one is manipulated by the other two suffers from a serious problem such as a neurosis or substance abuse.