Differences and Clinical Psychology

Differences

We are different, and focused on personality and intelligence.

Personality

The style of dealing with other people.

• Reliability: the outcome should be repeatable.
• Validity: the experiment uncovers some sense of causation.

Many measurements are not reliable or valid, such as Rorschach Inkblot.

Big Five Personality Factors(OCEAN):

• Neuroticism - stability (N)
• Extroversion - introversion (E)
• openness to experience - non openness (O)
• agreeableness - antagonism (A)
• conscientiousness - undirectedness (C)

Intelligence

General intelligence and specific ability.

IQ test might be self-fulfilling prophecy.

Behavioral Genetics

Heredity, the variance due to genetic differences.

The difference is the sum of variance of heredity, shared environment, and non-shared environment.

The methodology is to test the MZ vs. DZ vs. adopted vs. twins but raised separately:

• High heritability(0.3 - 0.7)
• non-shared environment(0.7 - 0.3)
• Shared environment does NOT matter!

Parenting

Judith Rich Harris claimed that parents and parenting do not matter for shaping children’s intelligences or personalities.

child effects

the child is making the parents good, not vice-versa

Clinical Psychology

The notion of metal disorder is social deviance, or illness? Thought the following are illness:

• Schizophrenia
• Mood disorders
• Anxiety disorders
• Disassociation disorders
• Personality disorders

Schizophrenia

Affects 1% of world population

• hallucination
• delusion
• disorganized speech and behaviors
• absence of normal cognition.

Subtypes include:

• Paranoid
• Catatonic
• Disorganized

Possible triggers:

• Oxygen deprivation in birth
• prenatal viral infection
• stress producing circumstance
• difficult family environment

Mood Disorders

Depression and bipolar depression.

• No “reasonable” cause
• at least 2 weeks

More common in women then men:

• women have a harder life, lower pay, poverty, etc.
• hormone.
• men is less likely to report depression due to the social expectations.
• men tend to deny and distract, while women tend to accept and ruminate about it.

Causes:

• highly heritable
• might be related to norepinephrine and serotonin.

Bipolar is more heritable than normal depression.!

Anxiety disorder

Irrational, uncontrollable, and disruptive. Affects 5% of people

Phobia

Preparedness theory

You are psychologically “ready” to be afraid of something(often associated with ancestral environment).

Obsessive-compulsive disorder

Related to genes, and neurotransmitters.

Dissociative disorders

• Dissociative amnesia
• Dissociative fugue
• Dissociative identity disorder, aka multi personality disorder

Fewer than 25% psychiatrists believe DID is a valid disorder.

Personality disorder

• paranoid
• narcissistic
• dependent
• histrionic
• borderline

Anti-social: sociopaths and psychopath.

Therapy

• Psychodynamic therapy, proposed by Freud.
• Behavior therapy proposed by skinner.
• Cognitive therapy: identify and correct distorted thinking. CBT combines the behavior and cognitive therapy.

In general, therapy do better for the wellbeing. The sharing session also provide more retrospects.