This What Is… Insights Into Psychology series, which runs weekly on Fridays, explores the meaning of a wide range of terms that come from the field of psychology, psychiatry, and other related areas. These are all researched posts with supporting references, which means I get to learn something new each week and you get to learn along with me!
If there’s a term you’d like to see covered in the Insights Into Psychology series, let me know in the comments below. For more about psychological effects, Wikipedia has a list of psychological effects page.
There’s also a collection of psychological tests here.
Insights Into Psychology posts
A – C terms
- Alexithymia: an inability to identify/describe emotions
- Amnesia
- Anal triad: in psychoanalytic theory, the elements that made up an anal retentive personality
- Anosognosia: a lack of insight into one’s own mental illness
- Antisociality: when you think of “antisocial”, you might actually be thinking of “asocial”
- Anxiety vs worry: they’re similar, but different
- Assertiveness
- Attachment theory
- Attention
- Attribution theory: do you attribute things that happen to factors outside or inside of yourself?
- Autonomy
- CBT for pain (cognitive behavioural therapy)
- Codependency
- Cognitive biases: there’s a wide range of inaccurate shortcuts our brains like to make
- Cognitive remediation: a type of rehabilitation therapy for people with severe mental illness
- Compassion
- Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT)
- Competitiveness
- Conformity
- Consumer culture
- Containment: the process of containment in therapy
- Conversion disorder: an uncommon disorder involving physical symptoms (including apparent paralysis) due to mental causes
- Conversion “therapy”: religious attempts to force people to become heterosexual
D – G terms
- Dark triad/tetrad: a combination of the traits psychopathy, narcissism, Machiavellianism, and sadism
- DARVO: a type ofresponse to sexual assault allegations: Deny; Accuse; Reverse Victim and Offender)
- Defense mechanisms: identified in psychoanalytic theory
- Deindividuation: when individual identity is subsumed by group identity
- Diathesis-stress model (relationship between environment and biological vulnerability)
- Dreaming
- Ego dystonic & ego syntonic thoughts/feelings/behaviours
- Emetophobia: a type of specific phobia related to vomiting
- Emotional Abuse
- Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), aka “tapping”
- Emotional intelligence
- Enmeshment: an extreme lack of boundaries between two people
- Enneagram personality typology
- Exposure and response prevention (ERP), a type of CBT intervention
- False pregnancy: the formal name is pseudocyesis
- Folie à deux: the current DSM diagnosis is shared psychotic disorder
- Gaslighting: a form of emotional abuse
H – L terms
- Illusory truth effect: messages that are familiar are assumed to be true even when they’re not
- Imposter syndrome
- Inner child
- Insanity: a legal term for being unable to differentiate right from wrong at the time of committing an offense
- Intergenerational trauma: the effects of collective trauma are passed to the next generation that didn’t live through the trauma
- Invalidation
- IQ: intelligence quotient
- Jealousy & envy: similar but distinct emotions
- Judgementality
- Just world fallacy (fallacy of fairness)
- Kleptomania: this is an actual DSM diagnosis
- Libido
- Locus of control: who controls what happens in your life?
- Love
M – P terms
- Malingering: feigning mental illness
- Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
- Melancholia: a subtype of depression
- Memory
- Motivation: can be intrinsic or extrinsic
- Motivational interviewing: a style of communication to promote motivation to change
- Munchausen by proxy: the official diagnostic term is currently factitious disorder imposed on another
- Myers-Briggs personality typology
- Narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder
- Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP)
- Neuroticism: a personality trait
- Paranoia and paranoid delusions
- Perfectionism
- Personality trait vs. disorder: we all have personality traits, but only some people have a personality disorder
- Pluralistic ignorance: what everyone thinks the group norm is may not actually be the norm at all
- Psychoanalytic theory: a la Sigmund Freud
- Psychodynamic psychotherapy: a type of therapy based on psychoanalytic theory
- Psychological testing
- Psychology of advertising
- Psychomotor retardation: a slowing of movement and thoughts that can ocur in depression
- Psychopathy
R – S terms
- Reactance: a form of psychological resistant
- Reading: psychological effects that impact how we read
- Reality
- Recovery: in a psychosocial mental health context
- Repression and suppression: defense mechanisms to push information out of conscious awareness
- Resilience
- Rumination
- Safety behaviour: a concept from cognitive behavioural therapy
- Seasonal affective disorder: the DSM diagnosis would be major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder with seasonal features
- Self-efficacy
- Self-esteem
- Sex vs. gender: a look at terms pertaining to gender identity and biological sex
- Shame and guilt: same is “I am a bad person” and guilt is “I did a bad thing”
- Sleep
- Social isolation
- Stanford prison experiment
- Stockholm syndrome: a form of trauma bonding
- Stoicism: an ancient Greek/Roman philosophy that’s recently picked up steam again
- Stress
T – Z terms
- Trauma vs PTSD: people can experience trauma that is able to be processed so it doesn’t reach the extreme of PTSD
- Trolling
- Type A personality
- Ultra rapid cycling in bipolar disorder
- Unconditional positive regard: this concept is from Carl Rogers’ humanistic psychology
- Window of tolerance: model of nervous system regulation in trauma survivors
- Wounded healer (Jungian archetype)
