Fundamental Abnormal Psychology

Category       : E-Books

Author          : Ronald J. Comer

Publisher      : WORTH Publisher

Year              : 2010

Page              : 196

Language      : English

File Type       : Pdf

Size               : 4,034 KB

Review         : Abnormal psychological functioning is deviant, but deviant from what? Alexandra’s and Brad’s behaviors, thoughts, and emotions are different from those that are considered normal in our place and time. We do not expect people to cry themselves to sleep each night, wish themselves dead, or obey voices that no one else hears. In short, behavior, thoughts, and emotions are deemed abnormal when they violate a society’s ideas about proper functioning. Each society establishes norms— explicit and implicit rules for proper conduct. Behavior that violates legal norms is called criminal. Behavior, thoughts, and emotions that violate norms of psychological functioning are called abnormal.

Judgments of abnormality vary from society to society. A society’s norms grow from its particular culture—its history, values, institutions, habits, skills, technology, and arts. A society that values competition and assertiveness may accept aggressive behavior, whereas one that emphasizes cooperation and gentleness may consider aggressive behavior unacceptable and even abnormal. A society’s values may also change over time, causing its views of what is

psychologically abnormal to change as well. In Western society, for example, a woman’s participation in the business world was widely considered inappropriate and strange a hundred years ago. Today the same behavior is valued.

Judgments of abnormality depend on specific circumstances as well as on cultural norms. What if, for example, we were to learn that the fears and desperate unhappiness of Alexandra were in fact occurring in the days following the deadly terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001—an attack that killed her husband as he was at work on the 94th floor of the North Tower and wrecked the family’s nearby apartment, shattering the secure and happy life they had all once known? In the ensuing weeks, as the horror and losses settled in, as she came to the conclusion that her missing husband must indeed be dead, as she and her daughters moved from one temporary location to another, Alexandra stopped expecting anything except more of the same. In this light, Alexandra’s reactions do not seem quite so inappropriate. If anything is abnormal here, it is her situation. Many painful human experiences produce intense reactions—largescale catastrophes and disasters, rape, child abuse, war, terminal illness, chronic pain (Resick, 2000; Ursano et al., 1999). Is there an “appropriate” way to react to such things? Should we ever call reactions to them abnormal?