In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week’s term is psychomotor retardation (PMR). Psychomotor retardation, one of the less common but more outwardly observable symptoms of depression, involves a slowing of movement and thoughts. It’s been described as far back as Ancient Greek times. PMR is one […]
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week’s terms are transference and countertransference. The concept of transference was first proposed by Sigmund Freud. In therapy, it occurs when a client unconsciously redirects feelings associated with one person, often an important figure in the earlier part of their
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week’s term is motivational interviewing. Motivational interviewing (MI) is a therapeutic communication approach. It’s often used in the field of addictions, but it’s got some very useful tidbits that are more broadly applicable to motivation for any sort of change.
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week’s term is memory. Memory is highly complex. There are multiple different types, as well as multiple areas of the brain that are involved. Memories not only need to be encoded in the first place, but they also need to
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week’s term is codependency. We hear about codependency often, particularly in relation to addiction, and it’s sometimes confused with dependency. What does it actually mean, though? Dependency vs. codependency While dependency involves relying on another person to help meet one’s own
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week’s term is mental illness recovery. The word recovery can have various connotations depending on the context. It began to gain popularity in the context of mental health in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when it was used by
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week’s term is autonomy. While autonomy falls more under the umbrella of philosophy than psychology, it also has significant implications for mental health care. The philosopher Immanuel Kant identified several key elements of autonomy, including both the right and the capacity
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week’s term is perfectionism. Perfectionism involves self-defeating thoughts and behaviours associated with unrealistic expectations of flawlessness. This causes significant levels of stress and feelings of failure, and it contributes to the use of maladaptive coping mechanisms. It can involve a
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week’s term is operant conditioning. Operant conditioning relates to the way actions are affected by stimuli from the environment. The concept was developed by B.F. Skinner in the 1930’s, and builds on Pavlov’s classical conditioning experiments in which dogs were observed
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week’s term is neuro-linguistic programming. Every so often, I read something that refers to neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). I really had no idea what it was, so I thought it was worth taking a closer look. The site nlp.com likens NLP to
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