Download or read book Psychological Adaptive Mechanisms written by Thomas P. Beresford, MD and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book will demonstrate how to use novel, systematic method for recognizing psychological adaptive mechanisms (known in psychoanalytic theory as ego defenses) in clinical encounters. This clinical method is based in published theoretical and empirical studies of these mechanisms over the past 14 years as well as working with successive classes of mental health trainees of varying disciplines at the University of Colorado. The result is an approach that trainees both apprehend and find useful. This work will offer the mental health disciplines, and even wider audiences, a platform both for 1) clinical use in everyday practice, 2) continuing clinical studies of adaptive psychology as well as 3) direct application of psychological adaptive mechanisms theory in clinical research that will improve the diagnosis and treatment of persons with mental or emotional disorders. This an important empirical model for understanding how humans adapt to the stressful experiences of their lives. They have developmental, biological, and evolutionary significance and all of these will be discussed in the book. Psychological Adaptive Mechanisms are observable behaviors that range on a developmental hierarchy from the Primitive defenses of normal early childhood and of major mental illness in adults, through the Mature defenses of fully functioning adulthood. They also serve to limit and to direct the human anxiety response, giving the "fight or flight" reaction to threat many more than those two classically described behavioral options.These mechanisms are likely transduced by the brain and, in providing wider ranges of adaptive behavior, most probably reflect an evolutionary selection towards greater flexibility of adaptation.
Download or read book Psychological Adaptive Mechanisms written by Thomas P. Beresford and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2012-06-21 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a clinical tool for recognizing, and understanding, human adaptive responses to stress and the anxiety it causes. For use in the here-and-now, the recognition algorithm systematically delineates the observable hierarchy of psychological adaptive mechanisms, known in psychoanalytic theory as ego defenses, established in previous longitudinal research. Based in a theoretical model, it teaches practical, systematic recognition of these mechanisms which are not only helpful to know when seeing a patient but also when observing human behavior in everyday life.
Download or read book Models of Action written by Clive D.L. Wynne and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2013-06-17 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents an international group of researchers who model animal and human behavior--both simple and complex. The models presented focus on such subjects as the pattern of eating in meals and bouts, the energizing and shaping impact of reinforcers on behavior, transitive inferential reasoning, responding to a compound stimulus, avoidance and escape learning, recognition memory, category formation, generalization, the timing of adaptive responses, and chromosomes exchanging information. The chapters are united by a common interest in adaptive behavior--whether of human, animal, or artificial system--and clearly demonstrate the rich variety of ways in which this fascinating area of research can be approached. In so doing, the book demonstrates the range of thought that qualifies as theorizing in the contemporary study of the mechanisms of adaptive behavior. It has two purposes: to bring together a very wide range of approaches in one place and to give authors space to explain how their ideas developed. Journal literature often presents fully-formed theories with no explanation of how an idea came to have the shape in which it is presented. In this volume, however, leaders in different fields provide background on the development of their ideas. Where once psychologists and a few zoologists had this field to themselves, now various types of computer scientists have added great energy to the mix.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science written by Todd K. Shackelford and published by Springer. This book was released on 2021-03-20 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive, twelve volume reference work reflects the interdisciplinary influences on evolutionary psychology and serves as a major resource for its history, scientific contributors and theories. It draws on biology, cognitive science, anthropology, psychology, economics, computer science and paleoarchaeology to provide a multifaceted picture of behavioral adaptation in humans and how it adds to our academic and clinical understanding. Edited by a noted figure in evolutionary psychology, with many seminal and renowned contributors, this encyclopedia offers the full breadth of an area that is the forefront of behavioral thinking and investigation.
Download or read book Adaptation to Life written by George E. Vaillant and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-01 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1939 and 1942, one of America's leading universities recruited 268 of its healthiest and most promising undergraduates to participate in a revolutionary new study of the human life cycle. The originators of the program, which came to be known as the Grant Study, felt that medical research was too heavily weighted in the direction of disease, and their intent was to chart the ways in which a group of promising individuals coped with their lives over the course of many years. Nearly forty years later, George E. Vaillant, director of the Study, took the measure of the Grant Study men. The result was the compelling, provocative classic, Adaptation to Life, which poses fundamental questions about the individual differences in confronting life's stresses. Why do some of us cope so well with the portion life offers us, while others, who have had similar advantages (or disadvantages), cope badly or not at all? Are there ways we can effectively alter those patterns of behavior that make us unhappy, unhealthy, and unwise? George Vaillant discusses these and other questions in terms of a clearly defined scheme of "adaptive mechanisms" that are rated mature, neurotic, immature, or psychotic, and illustrates, with case histories, each method of coping.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences written by Virgil Zeigler-Hill and published by Springer. This book was released on 2020-03-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Encyclopedia provides a comprehensive overview of individual differences within the domain of personality, with major sub-topics including assessment and research design, taxonomy, biological factors, evolutionary evidence, motivation, cognition and emotion, as well as gender differences, cultural considerations, and personality disorders. It is an up-to-date reference for this increasingly important area and a key resource for those who study intelligence, personality, motivation, aptitude and their variations within members of a group.
Download or read book The Development of Defense Mechanisms written by Phebe Cramer and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea that the human mind-that faculty of the intellect which we use to define and discern the truth-might also be used to deceive itself is not new. The classic orator Demosthenes warned of this possibility in 349 B.C. when he wrote that "Nothing is more easy than to deceive one's self; what a man wishes he generally believes to be true." 1 Even Jean Jacques Rousseau, who suggested the possibility of man as "noble savage," alerts us to this paradox, when he writes "Jamais fa nature ne nous trompe; c'est toujours nous qui nous trompons" ("Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves). 2 But it was Sigmund Freud who placed this idea firmly into the field of psychopathology and then, later, into a general psychological theory. According to Freud, understanding the function of a defense mechanism means not only fathoming the origin of pathological symptoms but also comprehending a model of the mind that includes both conscious and unconscious mental processes. From this initial focus on the general process of defense, Freud and his followers went on to identify various forms this process might take, with the result that today we have a list of 3 more than 37 defense mechanisms described in the literature.
Download or read book Characterizing Human Psychological Adaptations written by Gregory R. Bock and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-30 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains chapters by some of the leading figures in the field of evolutionary psychology. The latest data are presented on evolutionary theories in perception, information, various aspects of social behaviour, language, learning and aggression. A common theme running through the printed discussions in this book is the important problem of how we can develop and test rigorous characterizations of evolved mental adaptations.
Download or read book Adapting Minds written by David J. Buller and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2006-02-17 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was human nature designed by natural selection in the Pleistocene epoch? The dominant view in evolutionary psychology holds that it was—that our psychological adaptations were designed tens of thousands of years ago to solve problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. In this provocative and lively book, David Buller examines in detail the major claims of evolutionary psychology—the paradigm popularized by Steven Pinker in The Blank Slate and by David Buss in The Evolution of Desire—and rejects them all. This does not mean that we cannot apply evolutionary theory to human psychology, says Buller, but that the conventional wisdom in evolutionary psychology is misguided. Evolutionary psychology employs a kind of reverse engineering to explain the evolved design of the mind, figuring out the adaptive problems our ancestors faced and then inferring the psychological adaptations that evolved to solve them. In the carefully argued central chapters of Adapting Minds, Buller scrutinizes several of evolutionary psychology's most highly publicized "discoveries," including "discriminative parental solicitude" (the idea that stepparents abuse their stepchildren at a higher rate than genetic parents abuse their biological children). Drawing on a wide range of empirical research, including his own large-scale study of child abuse, he shows that none is actually supported by the evidence. Buller argues that our minds are not adapted to the Pleistocene, but, like the immune system, are continually adapting, over both evolutionary time and individual lifetimes. We must move beyond the reigning orthodoxy of evolutionary psychology to reach an accurate understanding of how human psychology is influenced by evolution. When we do, Buller claims, we will abandon not only the quest for human nature but the very idea of human nature itself.
Download or read book Coping written by C. R. Snyder and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is intended for psychologists, social workers, counsellors, clergy, and general readers with some background in psychology.
Download or read book The Psychology of Adaptation To Absurdity written by Seymour Fisher and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The major goal of this book is to explore and integrate all that is scientifically known about the utility of magical plans and strategies for coping with life's inevitable absurdities. Make-believe has great adaptive value and helps the average individual to function better in cultures saturated with puzzling contradictions. This book traces the origins of pretending (illusion-construction) and the developmental phases of this skill. Further, it analyzes how parents depend on pretending to secure conformity and self-control from their children. It unravels the ways in which make-believe is utilized to defend against death-anxiety and feelings of fragility. It examines the relationship between pretending and the classical defense mechanisms -- and particularly weighs the evidence bearing on the potential protective power of embracing religious beliefs. Finally, it defines the diverse contributions of make-believe to the construction of the self-concept, the defensive maneuvers typifying psychopathology, and the maintenance of somatic health. In short, this book pulls together a spectrum of scientific information concerning the defensive value of illusory make-believe in coping with those aspects of life -- such as death, loss, suffering, and injustice -- that are experienced as unreasonable and beyond understanding. The volume is unique not only in the breadth of the literature it analyzes but also in demonstrating the contribution of make-believe to both the psychological and somatic aspects of behavior. No previous work has documented in such detail and across so many domains how basic the capacity to engage in make-believe is to human adaptation.
Download or read book Mechanisms of Adaptive Behavior written by Clark Leonard Hull and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 533 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Adaptive Gait and Postural Control From Physiological to Pathological Mechanisms Towards Prevention and Rehabilitation written by Helena Blumen and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2020-04-06 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency written by Sheldon Glueck and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1951 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This authors studied two cohorts of juveniles -- 500 persistently delinquent boys, and 500 non-delinquents -- in an attempt to establish the causes of criminal behaviour. Factors studied included : family, ethnic derivation, age, intelligence, area of residence, body types and medical, social and psychological factors. The data used by the Gluecks was re-analysed in 1995 by Robert Sampson and John H. Laub, published their results in two books : Crime in the making, and Shared beginnings, divergent lives.
Download or read book Stress and Health written by William R. Lovallo and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2015-01-29 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stress and Health: Biological and Psychological Interactions is a brief and accessible examination of psychological stress and its psychophysiological relationships with cognition, emotions, brain functions, and the peripheral mechanisms by which the body is regulated. Updated throughout, the Third Edition covers two new and significant areas of emerging research: how our early life experiences alter key stress responsive systems at the level of gene expression; and what large, normal, and small stress responses may mean for our overall health and well-being.
Download or read book Psychopathology of Human Adaptation written by George Serban and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Undoubtedly this symposium will prove to be an important landmark in the development of our understanding of the psychopathology of human adaptation in general, as well as of the general adaptation syndrome and stress in particular. It was organized to give an opportunity to an international group of experts on adaptation and stress research to present summaries of their research that could then later be exhaustively analyzed. The carefully structured program brings out three major aspects of adapta tion to stress in experimental animals and man. The first section deals with the neurophysiology of stress responses, placing major emphasis upon the neuroanatomical and neurochemical aspects involved. The second section is devoted to the psychology and psychopathology of adaptive learning, motivation, anxiety, and stress. The third section examines the role played by stress in the pathogenesis of mental diseases. Many of the relevant subjects receive particularly detailed attention. Among these, the following are especially noteworthy: The existence of reward and drive neurons. Constitutional differences in physiological adaptations to stress and d- tress. Motivation, mood, and mental events in relation to adaptive processes. Peripheral catecholamines and adaptation to underload and overload. Selective corticoid and catecholamine responses to various natural stimuli. The differentiation between eustress and distress. Resistance and overmotivation in achievement-oriented activity. The dynamics of conscience and contract psychology. Sources of stress in the drive for power. Advances in the therapy of psychiatric illness. The application of experimental studies on learning to the treatment of neuroses.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Stress Health and Coping written by Susan Folkman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few publications have changed the landscape of contemporary psychology more than Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman's landmark work, Stress, Appraisal, and Coping. Its publication in 1984 set the course for years of research on the dynamic processes of psychological stress and coping in human beings.Now more than a quarter-century later, The Oxford Handbook of Stress, Health, and Coping pushes the field even further with a comprehensive overview of the newest and best work in this dynamic subject. Edited by Susan Folkman and comprising chapters by the field's leading scientists, this new volume details the expanded knowledge base that has emerged from extensive research on stress and coping processes over the last several decades.Featuring 22 topic-based chapters -- including two by Folkman -- this volume offers unprecedented coverage of the two primary research topics related to stress and coping: mitigating stress-related harms and sustaining well-being in the face of stress. Both topics are addressed within their relevant contexts, including chronic illness, calamity, bereavement, and social hardship.The Oxford Handbook of Stress, Health, and Coping is an essential reference work for students, practitioners, and researchers across the fields of health psychology, medicine, and palliative care.
