THINK ! – Can a person not achieve all 6 and still be normal?
– Culturally Relative. For example, in a collectivist culture, self-actualisation may not be seen as important, rather that the actualisation of the group is the priority.
Evaluation – Defining Abnormality
These four definitions are useful for identifying different kinds of abnormality depending on the situation and the definition that is the most suitable – the one thing that needs to be remembered is that all the definitions are culturally relative – therefore abnormality can ever only be defined in the context of how a particular culture would view that behaviour.
Statistical Frequency shows us a quantifiable way of identifying abnormality so that we can compare and contrast numbers of people who display varying levels of the abnormality.
However, it doesn’t distinguish between desirable or undesirable behaviour, which means good things that are rare, are considered abnormal. The problem with this is that the word “abnormal” has negative connotations.
Deviation From Social Norms shows us the viewpoint of the rest of society and how they would see the behaviour to be, according to the social “norms”. This considers other peoples’ views but it doesn’t look at the individual. It also excludes people who don’t agree with the rest of society’s “norms”.
Failure to Function Adequately looks at the abnormality on an individual level and whether the person is able to cope on their own or not according to the society they live in. This is a more personal way of looking at abnormality and from it we can help the individual more specifically during therapy.
However, “functioning adequately” means different things to different people.
Deviation From Ideal Mental Health takes a positive approach at identifying abnormality as it tries to identify what is desirable behaviour, rather than what is undesirable like the rest of the definitions.
However, it is difficult to achieve all of the requirements on the checklist all at once at any time, and the lists need to be modified depending on the person.
Test Yourself!
How well are you doing so far?
Behavioural Model of Abnormality
This model claims that all abnormality is learnt through classical or operant conditioning, or by Social Learning. During therapy, the therapist looks purely at the behaviour and how to change it.
Assumption about Causes:
Abnormal behaviours are learned through conditioning
- No behaviour (normal or abnormal) is innate, it is all learned via experience
- Classical conditioning (learning by association) and operant condition (learning by rewards & punishment)
Only behaviour is important! Mental illnesses do not “exist” in this model as the mind is considered an unnecessary concept.
The same laws apply to humans and animals
- According to evolution, all humans and animals are made from the same basic units, with “higher” animals having more of these units hence being more complex combination.
- According to behaviourists, the findings of studying rats and other animals can be generalised to humans.
Assumption about Treatments:
What is learned can be unlearned. Through the laws of classical conditioning, you can unlearn behaviour, e.g. systematic desensitisation (breaking the stimulus-response link)
Focus on symptoms
- Useful for phobias, easting disorders, etc but they don’t look at underlying causes, only focusing on changing the behaviour
- Behaviourists don’t use the DSM, but other checklists are used.
Goldfried & Davidson (1976)
Behavioural Classification System [5 categories]
1 : - Difficulties in stimulus control of behaviour
2 : - Deficient behavioural repertoires
3 : - Aversive behavioural repertoires
4 : - Difficulties with incentive or reward systems
5 : - Aversive self-reinforcing systems
Criticisms of Causes:
Scientific and testable – easy to construct research to see how association and rewards affect behaviour, e.g. Little Albert
Can’t account for all human behaviour
- some phobias develop from something they’ve never experienced. Could be explained through an evolutionary link (adopted adaptive behaviours for survival) or in a cognitive way (they were told of an event, which caused them to have a phobia)
- disregards thoughts and emotions so it cannot be a complete account of human behaviour
Criticisms of Treatments:
Effective:
- Lots of behavioural therapies work well for phobias, etc
- However it may just be the relationship with the therapist that helps them to recover as they are getting increased attention.
Treating the symptoms, not the cause – can get symptom substitution
Ethical issues – treatment is aimed at undesirable behaviour but who decides what is undesirable?
Useful Definitions To Remember:
Classical Conditioning – learning through association
Operant Conditioning – learning through rewards and punishment
Vicarious Reinforcement – seeing someone else’s behaviour reinforced, increasing likelihood of imitation of behaviour yourself
Generalisation – response generalises over to similar stimuli
Extinction – unlearning behaviour or the behaviour dying out from no reinforcement
Spontaneous Recovery – behaviour is extinct but one exposure to stimulus brings back response
Shaping – giving progressive reinforcement as they get closer to desired behaviour
Psychodynamic Model of Abnormality
The psychodynamic approach emphasises the dynamics of behaviour and what drives us to behave in particular ways. As individuals develop and change, so do their underlying drives. Abnormality is explained as being caused by underlying psychological conflicts of which they are not aware of (called unconscious forces). The focus is mostly on past experiences, particularly early parent/child relationships which are believed to be the root of the majority of psychological conflicts.
Assumption about Causes:
Disorder from psychological causes – unresolved conflicts from childhood which are unconscious
Unresolved conflicts cause mental disorder – unresolved conflict between the Id, Ego and Superego of a person. If defence mechanisms are overused they could cause disturbed behaviour, e.g. abnormality.
Early experiences cause mental disorder – the Ego is not developed enough as a child to deal with traumas so they are repressed
Unconscious motivations cause mental disorder – the unconscious is the largest part of the mind and has a powerful affect on behaviour; it can’t be controlled unless it’s brought into the conscious.
Assumption about Treatments:
Making the unconscious conscious – this is bringing out the traumas into the conscious mind and dealing with them. This is done in many ways, e.g. hypnosis, ink blot tests, psychotherapy, dream analysis, etc.
Treatment concerns the past – the focus of psychoanalysis is on the person’s childhood and not what’s happening now
Criticisms of Causes:
Very influential – Freud’s theory has had a huge influence on our understanding of normal and abnormal behaviour. He was the first to focus on the unconscious and the effects of a person’s childhood on their adult life.
Too much emphasis on sex – didn’t pay attention to social factors in regards to peoples’ mental health. Also, most of his patients were sexually repressed female Viennese Jews.
Poor research evidence:
– Freud only studied a small sample of people and he generalised his findings to all humans which is inaccurate to do so.
– Also, the only child he ever studied was by correspondence with his father, yet his whole theory is based on childhood (although he did observe his own children).
Criticisms of Treatments:
Ignores the present:
- May be related to past but ignoring present factors too is dangerous.
Only suitable for certain people:
- Psychotherapy is only suitable for certain people; YAVIS (young, attractive, verbally skilled, intelligent and successful)
- Treatment is highly subjective as there is only one psychologist making the analysis
Highly subjective and not falsifiable:
- It’s impossible to prove Freud wrong because his theory cannot be scientifically tested.
- Psychodynamic psychologists have an answer for everything (person is “in denial” if they cannot remember any traumas consciously)
Psychoanalysis:
During psychotherapy, the analyst attempts to find out about the individual’s unconscious thoughts. This could be done through:
- free association: a patient talks freely about anything that comes into their mind at the mention of a particular topic
- rich interpretation: of the patient’s thoughts and feelings in reference to Freud’s theory
- dream analysis: dreams are considered repressed wishes. The dream (known as the manifest content) represents the real meaning of the dream (known as the latent content) through symbols. These may be personal or universal, e.g. a tower represents a phallus.
Biological Model of Abnormality
This model is prescribed (no pun intended!) to the views of psychiatry, also known as medical psychology. Abnormality is said to be caused by genetic factors or bodily malfunction, rooted in underlying psychological processes. A cure is employed to remove that cause. A strong belief here is that mental disorders should be called illnesses and dealt with in the same manner that physical illnesses are. They use the DSM- IV (Diagnostic & Statistical Manual) which outlines different disorders.
This model places much emphasis on scientific investigation and understanding, so it is highly respected for being a more “scientific” approach to psychology. However, the view that disorders are “diseases” is a controversial one.
Assumption about Causes:
Abnormality is caused by physiological factors such as genes, biochemical substances, neuroanatomy and micro organisms.
Abnormality is inherited, as shown through family studies, twin studies (especially those of MZ [monozygotic] twins) and the study of concordance rates between them
Certain genes lead to abnormal biochemistry and/or abnormal neuroanatomy:
- genetics might cause you to have abnormal levels of biochemicals or neurotransmitters
- for example, schizophrenics have larger ventricles (not known if a cause or effect)
Assumption about Treatments:
Treatments should be somatic (physical):
- if no cause is identified then the symptoms are treated by not the cause
- “patient” may become addicted to the drugs or develop symptom substitution
Treatment should follow the medical model by treating disorders as “mental illnesses”:
- identify the symptoms, diagnose the syndrome using DSM-IV or ICD-10 and prescribe a suitable treatment
Criticisms of Causes:
Human or inhumane? – eventually provided more humane treatment once superstitious ideas were disregarded, e.g. no longer being seen as possession.
Cause or effect? – it’s still not clear whether biochemistry or neuroanatomy are a cause or an effect of a disorder.
Inconclusive evidence:
– there’s no evidence abnormality is caused purely by biological factors as the concordance rates are never 100%
– It’s much better to look at it through the diathesis-stress model which explains that genes for an illness need to be “switched on” or triggered by something first.
Criticisms of Treatments:
Treats the symptoms but not the causes:
- Drugs treating the symptoms do not treat the cause and people may become addicted to the drugs, as well as possibly developing symptom substitution.
Mental illnesses are not like physical illnesses as a doctor has to make a subjective decision that could be biased.
Ethical issues – people who are sectioned have no say in taking medication
Somatic Therapies
These are kinds of treatments which are used by the medical model:
Drugs – such as anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, anti-anxiety drugs, etc. A specific example would be dopamine for schizophrenics or lithium carbonate for people with bi-polar disorder.
ECT (Electroconvulsive therapy) – often used for the elderly with chronic depression
Psychosurgery – such as frontal lobotomy surgeries
Gene therapy – this includes controversial issues such as “designer babies”, etc
Cognitive Model of Abnormality
This emphasises that cognitive distortions (dysfunctional thought processes) and cognitive deficiencies (the absence of sufficient thinking and planning) could be at the root of many psychological disorders. This is the youngest approach to psychology as it was only proposed within the latter half of the last century.
Therefore, abnormality is explains in terms of irrational and negative thinking.
The human mind is thought of like a computer, with processes and input/output.
Assumption about Causes:
Abnormality is caused by faulty thinking, expectations, attitudes and direct behaviour.
- The issue isn’t the problem, but the way the individual perceives it.
- Examples of faulty thinking are maladaptive conclusions and upsetting thoughts about oneself.
The individual is in control – unlike the other three models, the individual is seen as having control over their own behaviour, with abnormality being ‘faulty control’.
Assumption about Treatments:
Changes the way the client thinks by looking at faulty negative thoughts and changing them to positive thoughts.
This can be done by challenging their belief systems (of being worthless, etc). It focuses on the way they think about past and present situations.
Active involvement of the client:
- only the client knows their thought processes and so only they can change them
- the therapist assists by challenging their faulty thinking
Criticisms of Causes:
Cause or effect? – it’s still not clear whether abnormality causes faulty thinking, or if faulty thinking causes abnormality.
Blames the client, not situational factors – the therapist may ignore life events that contribute to the disorder by saying that it is all in the client’s thought processes and that it is up to them to change them.
Criticisms of Treatments:
Effective:
- Cognitive and cognitive behavioural techniques are becoming more popular as they work well with disorders like depression, low self-esteem, etc
- Also offers good long term strategies for coping with problems in the future
Blame is on the individual:
- The therapist blames the client as being responsible for their thought processes by saying they are in control of their own faulty thinking.
- Some psychologists explain depression as an indulgence of self-defeating thoughts
- Clients who fail cognitive therapy will feel worse about themselves because the blame is put onto them
- Could be unethical as this causes the person to be even more distressed
Therapies
The common factor between all cognitive therapists is that they all believe faulty thinking is the cause of abnormality. Therapy usually involves identifying the self defeating statements of the individual and challenging them. The client often keeps a diary of their positive and negative thoughts, practices positive affirmations, etc.
Evaluation – Models of Abnormality
These four models of psychology are useful for looking at curing abnormality in very different ways, depending on the situation and what kind of psychologist the client/patient goes to. It is never certain that only one kind of treatment will help cure someone of an abnormality as everyone is different.
The Behavioural Model is useful as it tries to eliminate the behaviour that the abnormality is causing, however since it does not try to cure the causes of the problem, only the product, this usually means that the abnormality is not entirely dealt with.
The Psychodynamic Model is helpful for a lot of people as it is a coherent system of ideas and theories which many find useful. This model does not work for everyone however as many people believe Freud’s ideas are too outdated and irrelevant today, whereas others have updated his theory with new modern ideas.
The Biological Model looks at the abnormality very scientifically – diagnosing mental illnesses is a very “black and white/set in stone” process. Many peoples’ symptoms are helped through the psychiatric treatments this model offers, although a main criticism is that the psychological causes of the abnormality are not being dealt with.
The Cognitive Model is gaining more attention as time goes on, especially when mixing techniques with the other models. It explains abnormality by the thought processes of the individual and seeks to change them, which should in turn change their behaviour and rid them of the abnormality.
However a lot of responsibility and pressure is put on the client and they can often feel worse from the treatment if they feel they are to blame for their abnormality.
Fun Word Search!
