1. Amber Gilewski Tompkins Cortland Community College
Chapter 1 Abnormal Behavior in Historical Context
Amber Gilewski
Tompkins Cortland Community College

2. What is a Psychological Disorder?
Psychological Dysfunction
Breakdown in cognitive, emotional, or behavioral functioning
Personal Distress
Difficulty performing appropriate and expected roles
Impairment is set in the context of a person’s background
Atypical or Not Culturally Expected Response
Reaction is outside cultural norms

3. Classroom Activity: Distinguishing Normal from Abnormal Behavior
Case # 1: Tom is uncomfortable riding escalators. As a result, Tom avoids using any escalator.
Case #2: Rachel has been caught urinating in the corner of her bedroom. Is her behavior abnormal?

4. Historical Ideas about Abnormal Behavior
Three Dominant Traditions
Supernatural – outside of ourselves
Biological – deals with body
Psychological – deals with mind

5. The Supernatural Tradition
Deviant Behavior as a Battle of “Good” vs. Evil
Caused by demonic possession, witchcraft, sorcery
Treatments included exorcism, torture, beatings, and crude surgeries
Enlightened view – natural and treatable
The Moon and the Stars
Paracelsus and lunacy

6. The Biological Tradition
Hippocrates: Abnormal Behavior as a Physical Disease
Hysteria “The Wandering Uterus”
Galen Extends Hippocrates Work
Humoral theory of mental illness
Treatments remained crude

7. The 19th Century
General Paresis (Syphilis) and the Biological Link With Madness
Pasteur discovered the cause – A bacterial microorganism
Led to penicillin as a successful treatment
John Grey, Dorthea Dix, & the reformers
Bolstered the view that mental illness = physical illness

8. The Development of Biological Treatments
Mental disorder treatment in 1930’s – insulin, ECT, brain surgery
Joseph Von Meduna – schizophrenia and epilepsy
Treatment of psychotic disorders in 1950’s – first effective medications

9. The Psychological Tradition
•Psychosocial – social/cultural factors
•The Rise of Moral Therapy – Pinel & Pussin (France), William Tuke (England), and Benjamin Rush (U.S.)
More humane treatment of institutionalized patients
Encouraged and reinforced social interaction
• Decline of moral therapy due to beliefs about brain pathology & increase in psychiatric patients

10. Psychoanalytic Theory
Freudian Theory of the Structure and Function of the Mind (Id, Ego, Superego)
Defense mechanisms (denial, displacement, projection, rationalization, reaction formation, repression, sublimation)
Neo-Freudians – Anna Freud, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler

11. Humanistic Theory Major Players Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers
Major Themes
That people are basically good
Humans strive toward self-actualization
Therapist conveys empathy and unconditional positive regard

12. The Behavioral Model
Derived from a Scientific Approach to the Study of Psychopathology
Classical Conditioning
(Pavlov; Watson)
John Wolpe – systematic desensitization
B.F. Skinner – operant conditioning