Abnormal Psychology Essay

Abnormal psychology is a branch of psychology that deals with psychopathology and abnormal behavior. Abnormal behavior is disruptive in classes unable to control tempers and loud. Abnormal Phycology is when someone’s thoughts are causing them discomfort and they act on it. This will then allow someone to be diagnosed mentally Ill. Normal Psychology: See more: Satirical elements in the adventure of Huckleberry Finn essay Normal psychology is the study of the human behavior and the mind. It is stereotype in way that judge’s criteria are normal or abnormal. Normal psychology is a common way to diagnose behavior by the ability to be Maladaptive. Two aspects make this flexible and common. Maladaptive to one’s self is the inability to reach goals, and to adapt to the everyday demands of life. Also there is Maladaptive to society, the interference in social functioning.(Spoor 1999) Being in either of these categories someone would be diagnosed mentally ill. Comparison of Normal and Abnormal Psychology: Normal Psychology and abnormal psychology works together because they both are decisions made that people chose to react to. In a normal setting someone can be sitting and reading a book quietly. Then another person comes along and makes loud distracting noises that the person either chooses to adhere to or ignore. Abnormal psychology has worked out more problems that were associated with normal psychology. Therapies and treatments are advanced, illnesses and disorders are common and frequent, and studies are in depth. The root of normal psychology has attached itself to abnormal psychology. The study of how a person feels, thinks, interprets, and behaves is the root of both of these psychological paths and they are intertwined. Abnormal Psychology Essay Jeffrey Dahmer was a sex offender and serial killer mainly between the years 1978 and 1991. He is well known for his severely atypical behaviors. Among his outward manners that are recognized as abnormal are paraphilia-specifically necrophilia and sexual sadism. Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims, whom were boys and men, suffered from rape, violence, dismemberment and finally their murders. Dahmer’s slow progression of killings soon turned into an obsession, which would later land him in prison with a sentence for fifteen life terms or a total of 957 years in prison. Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was born to Joyce and Lionel Dahmer in Wisconsin, and eight years later moved with his family to Ohio. In his younger years, between the ages of ten and fifteen, Jeffrey became more and more antisocial; he was very quiet and socially distant from his family members and had signs of anhedonia (loss of interest in hobbies and interactions with people). Discovered later, this behavior may have been caused by peers at school consistently mocking Jeffrey without him putting up any defense for himself. See more:  The 3 Types of Satire Essay His fetishes and discoveries of unique hobbies began in a biology class in 9th grade where Jeffrey and his classmates dissected a fetal pig. At the end of the class, Jeffrey collected the remains of the pig and returned to the house, deciding to keep its skeleton. Dahmer’s fascination with this initial incident began to grow and carry over to other animals, such as dogs and cats. In an interview with Stone Phillips Dahmer says, â€Å"There may have been some violence involved, some underlying subconscious feelings of violence†¦ I just†¦ it was a compulsion, it became a compulsion. As this continued throughout his teenage years, Jeffrey Dahmer began to consume alcohol regularly. In the same interview he admits, â€Å"I was drinking a lot during that time and just, I don’t know, looking for some way to find some fulfillment, some pleasure and I acted on my fantasies and that’s where everything went wrong. † Soon, his alcoholism, too, got out of hand and he became an alcoholic while still finishing high school. Jeffrey Dahmer attempted to attend college at Ohio State University, but his lost of interest in attending classes combined with his heavy consumption of alcohol caused him to drop out after only a quarter of a semester. During this time, his parents, Joyce and Lionel got divorced. Jeffrey’s father made him join the Army after dropping out of Ohio State, but after a couple years, his alcohol problem again caused him to be removed. After being discharged from the Army, Dahmer decided against facing his father so he decided to live in Miami, Florida where the majority of his time was spent in a hospital. In 1981 Jeffrey Dahmer was first arrested for public intoxication. In 1982, Jeffrey went back to Wisconsin to live with his grandmother. Late nights, alcohol binges, and belligerent behavior characterized his time living there. His grandmother was tolerant of his peculiar behavior at first, which included several strange incidences: she had found a male mannequin dressed up in Jeffrey’s closet, a . 357 Magnum under his bed, and she could recall many instances where awful smells would waft from the basement. Dahmer once claimed that the terrible smell was from a squirrel that he had caught, killed, and dissolved with chemicals. (Dahmer’s father was chemist, and this claim was made from Jeffery to his father; it seems as though Jeffery told his father so that he would be proud of him). Jeffrey was arrested again in 1982 and in 1986, both times for indecent exposure. The second offense that he was arrested for in 1986 was for masturbation in front of two young males. It was only two years later that Jeffrey’s so-far-tolerant grandmother told him that he could not live with her anymore due to the many strange happenings. Jeffrey was arrested in the same year, 1988, for sexually fondling and drugging a young teenage boy (age thirteen); for this, he was put on probation for five years and for one year he was assigned to a work release camp where he was registered as a sex offender from the incident with the thirteen year old boy. Due to good behavior and a built up trust with the authorities, Dahmer was paroled from his work release camp two months early. Jeffrey Dahmer began killing at age eighteen, which was during the summer of 1978. Since this was after his parent’s divorce, Dahmer’s mother no longer lived at the same house and his father was away for business duties. Jeffrey had brought a man over to the house offering to drink alcohol with him, and when the man tried to leave, Jeffrey beat him to death with a ten-pound weight to the head. Dahmer did not murder again until nine years later where he killed a man randomly after picking him up; Dahmer said he could not recollect anything about this murder. After the second murder, Jeffrey Dahmer’s killings increased dramatically adding two more to the same year (1989), five the following year (1990), and several after that. On July 22, 1991 Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested for the alleged 17 murders (which would later be reduced to 15). Psychological Functioning: Jeffrey Dahmer is a unique human being who struggled with necrophilia, which is having sexual attraction to corpses. Upon arrest, officers found many severed heads, dismembered body parts, an altar made of skeletons, and several corpses. This makes Dahmer seem like a collector in a way, but I think that his collections go beyond what people might consider a just a fetish. Often, those who are diagnosed with necrophilia behave in this was because they strongly desire to have full possession of and control over someone without the person resisting or refraining from being with them. I think this is a lot of what Jeffrey Dahmer dealt with in his life because he confesses it himself in his interview with Stone Phillips saying, â€Å"The only motive that there ever was- was to completely control a person, a person that I found physically attractive and keep them with me as long as possible, even if that meant just keeping a part of them. † Another reason for necrophilia could be a person’s desire for increased self-esteem; being attracted to a corpse was the only way Jeffrey could avoid rejection. As we know that Jeffrey was teased and picked on when he was young and during his teenage years, I think that his murders and necrophilia are related to these difficult times in his life. I think that once he established that he could have control over his victims, he went on a power trip and began to obsess over the supremacy he felt when he was controlling someone. It is reported that during the times that Dahmer was picked on and mocked in school, he never stood up for himself and never fought back. I think this led to an internalization of his feelings. He most likely built up some hostility to those people who tormented him and took advantage of him. Jeffrey Dahmer also began his attraction to males in his teenage years as he reports going to gay bars and bath clubs. The combination of his withheld anger and aggression towards his tormentors and the frustration that came from being attracted to men could have very well led to his outward aggression and finally to his killing spree. When Jeffrey talks about the things that he would do to victims, especially evident in his first crime, his pattern began to develop and it is in direct correlation to these things: he would seek out men (doing whatever it took to draw their attention), he would get them alone one way or another (either by bring them to the house or drugging them), and after having sex with them or taking advantage of them in whatever way he found pleasurable he would kill them. While he found it enjoyable to partake in sexual encounters while them men ere still alive, Jeffrey Dahmer found himself even more attracted to the corpses of those men and he found it fascinating to dismember them and keep just â€Å"a part of them. † I believe that this is where his necrophilia came from. In Jeffrey’s first murder we can see the power struggle where he desired to have sex with the man who wanted to leave. Through his sexual desires, Dahmer channeled his anger that he was being rejected and he lashed out and beat the man to death in the head with a ten-pound dumbbell. This extreme behavior is what leads me to believe that he showed signs of sadism. A sexual sadist finds pleasure in inflicting physical pain on someone and watching him or her suffer. I also can see that maybe Dahmer was frustrated with his sexual desires toward men and he felt his only way to stop this was to destroy the root of the problem; unfortunately, Jeffrey saw the men he was attracted to as his problem and in his desire to eliminate his problem he began killing the men who made him feel this way. In some ways, I am also convinced that Jeffrey Dahmer was competent and could take full responsibility of the killings because of his strategic behavior. His victims and murders were not random. Dahmer was also able to recognize that he was not completely satisfied in his initial encounters with the male species and when those things were no longer enough for him, he started purchasing sleeping pills in order to first drug his victims so that he could then take advantage of them. If Jeffrey Dahmer was not sane and competent than this organized behavior would not be evident in his tendencies. In the interview with Stone Phillips, Dahmer says, â€Å"After the second time, it seemed like the compulsion to do it was too strong and I didn’t even try to stop it after that; but before the second time, things had been building up gradually: going to bookstores, going to the bars- the gay bars, bath clubs; when that wasn’t enough, buying sleeping pills using it on various guys in the bath clubs. It just escaladed slowly but surely and after the second time which was not planned, it was out of control—it felt like it was out of control. The way that he uses his words here implies that he does take responsibility and that he fully knew what he was doing; as he says, â€Å"it was out of control—it felt like it was out of control,† he recognizes that he had the ability to make a choice and he chose to sexually victimize the men he was attracted to and then kill them. I am convinced that all of the things mentioned above lend themselves to his atypical functioning, but one thing that was not addressed was his parent’s role in all of this. Although they were divorced and parted during a time in Jeffrey’s life where he was having difficulties in other areas, I do not think that this was an issue or trigger to any of his behaviors. In an interview Jeffrey actually defends his parents saying that it makes him mad when people accuse them of playing any role in his decisions because they were not even aware of the type of issues Jeffrey was dealing with. From what Dahmer admits, we know that it was a gradual escalation of compulsive feelings that led to his abnormal behaviors. On November 28, 1994 while in prison, Jeffrey was beaten by an inmate and died from head trauma. Abnormal Psychology Essay As many know Psychology is the study of the human mind, consciousness, and behavior. Psychology is also an enormous field of study and contains many sub divisions that pertain to more specific areas of the human psyche. One of these subdivisions is the study of Abnormal Psychology. Abnormal psychology focuses studies on an atypical region of any particular society, as to find out why these abnormalities occur. These conditions can vary in how abnormal they are from barely noticeable to extremes that require special needs. Examples of these could be a mild case of depression (not as noticeable) to a severe case of Schizophrenia (extremely noticeable). Various examples will be addressed and explained but first, in order to fully understand the process of abnormal psychology one must know the difference between normal and abnormal. (Mcleod) As individuals one decides what one likes or dislikes, but not what â€Å"normal† society is to like or dislike. Defining what normal is can be harder than one may think. See more: Is the Importance of being earnest a satirical play essay Researchers have worked for years to clearly define normal with no luck in getting a precise definition to relate human behavior to. Normal psychology is defined by the time, place, and people involved, thus making it difficult because culture changes with evolution and values. In order for one to define abnormal psychology, an individual must first define normal psychology. Understanding that normal psychology is outlining what are acceptable actions helps one understand abnormal psychology is dependent on the situation for a definition. Abnormal psychology is best defined as a deviation from what a group decides is acceptable or unacceptable. Psychologist use synonyms for abnormal, such as unusual or maladaptive, to define characteristic traits on a scale with normal in the middle and barriers on each side of normal to compensate for the recurring abnormal behavior, any behavior past those barriers is considered extremely opposite of the norm and rare. There are few true experiments done on abnormal psychology because it is not ethical to manipulate an experiment to control certain conditions. Determining if something or someone is presenting normal or abnormal behavior depends on the object or the person. There are a few mental disorders and illnesses that better compare and contrast aspects of abnormal psychology to normal psychology; a somewhat common disorder is Bipolar Disorder. Bipolar Disorder, many wonder about what this illness is. This disorder was once described as manic depressive disorder; symptoms of this disorder include but are not limited to periods of deep depression which may alternate with mania. Mania is described as a unique state of mind in which a person may feel invincible or that anything in the world is possible for them to accomplish (Abell & Ey, July). Individuals who suffer from bipolar disorder can go long periods of time without sleep or have the polar opposite and have extreme amounts of energy. There are approximately 1-2% of adults in the world diagnosed with bipolar disorder; while scientists do not yet know what causes the chemical changes in the brain they do know that this disorder does have a genetic component. Some scientists believe that bipolar disorder is linked with network connectivity in the brain, it has been shown with neuroscience that neurocognitive abnormalities, particularly in executive function tasks which link to the frontal cortex. However studies have shown that there are no major losses of grey matter in the cortex but there are several changes in the white matter (Ferrier, April). Another fairly common disorder amongst abnormal psychology is Down syndrome. Down syndrome is a genetic condition which causes delays in physical and intellectual development. It has been studied and found to occur once in every 691 births. A person who has Down syndrome has an extra chromosome so instead of having 46 they have 47 chromosomes. Down syndrome is usually detected at birth or very shortly after, it is a disorder that can also be detected by genetic testing while the child is in utero. This disorder is confirmed by a chromosome study called a karyotype. A karyotype provides a visual study of the chromosomes grouped by their size, number and shape they are studied by examining blood and tissue cells. Scientists believe the cause of Down syndrome is that there is an error in the cell division this is called nondisjunction. Psychologists and scientists alike do not know why this occurs but it is known that this phenomenon occurs at conception and there is nothing the mother could have done during pregnancy to avoid such from happening (National Association for Down Syndrome, 2012). These two disorders are caused by actual chemical and genetic differences in the brain where as the next two examples are illnesses that are linked to more subtle differences that are much less noticeable at first glance. Schizophrenia is a mental illness that makes it hard to tell what is real and what is not. People with this illness hear voices in their heads and often times think people are plotting to harm them in some way. For this reason, they will seem agitated or will tend to separate themselves from society. About one percent of Americans suffer from this mental illness. People with this illness do not make sense when they talk and can sit for hours without moving. Family’s that have loved ones with this illness are largely affected by this, because people with schizophrenia often times have difficulty maintaining a job and become very dependent on close relatives. Dyslexia is a reading disability that happens when the brain does not process or recognize certain symbols. People that suffer from dyslexia have a brain that takes longer to make connections and does it in more steps. Often times people with dyslexia have trouble matching the letters with the sounds and combination the letters make. When these individuals struggle with this step, it makes the remaining process of steps for the brain even more difficult. A majority of people with dyslexia are really intelligent and can often times retain a lot of information but reading poses a real challenge for them. Dyslexia is actually very common today but is still widely considered a mental illness because of the brains connectivity issues. These four examples show that abnormal psychology not only focuses the rare or uncommon disorders but includes even many of the vast common illnesses of today. Each of the disorders and illnesses listed have several approaches for healing and therapy, this is because of the different views and thought processes from each of the schools of thought give several alternatives. Each school of psychology has a different theory of how the mind works and where mental disorders originate. Thusly, each school has its own way of addressing psychological problems. The most common schools of thought used in therapy are: psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, cognitive, humanistic and biological (Mote, 2013). In psychodynamic theory, it is believed that mental disorders originate from tension between your conscious and unconscious mind. This is usually caused by some kind of trauma, physical or emotional, from childhood. Psychoanalysis, a lengthy form of therapy that attempts to bring awareness to the unconscious elements of a person’s mind, is the preferred form of treatment in the psychodynamic school (Mote, 2013). Cognitive-behavioral theory focuses, â€Å"on the person’s life as it is now – the current and conscious thought patterns and behaviors† (Mote, 2013). Basically, this school of thought focuses on what we are going through now and how that is affecting our mental health rather than trying to find a reason from the past. Therapy from this school focuses on how to change behaviors and will usually give â€Å"homework† to do before the next session (Mote, 2013). The theory behind cognitive therapy is that problematic thinking patterns, called cognitive distortions, are the stimulus for psychological disorders (Mote, 2013). These are considered to be automatic thoughts rather than unconscious like in previous schools. Therapy in this school consists of identifying and altering the cognitive distortions in order to bring a resolution to the disorder (Mote, 2013). Humanistic therapy focuses on the individual and their defining qualities, what makes them special and unique. Therapists of this school try to make their clients aware of their emotions, values, and motivations to bring about change to their psyche (Mote, 2013). One of the most important parts of therapy in this school is the relationship between the therapist and their client. The goal is, â€Å"establishing and maintaining a sense of acceptance and respect for the client† (Mote, 2013), this is considered a hallmark of the school and is one of the most valuable techniques a therapist can use. Biological theory believes that mental disorders are caused by the brains pathology, essentially saying that the brain itself is flawed and causing the problems (Mote, 2013). The most common therapy for this is the use of medications, called pharmacotherapy; only a physician can prescribe these medications. Most of the medications focus on neural transmitter points and work to either increase or decrease the amount of activity in these sites (Mote, 2013). Even though each school of psychology approaches mental disorders differently, each method of therapy is affective against psychological issues. Every school may not be best for everyone though; finding a therapy that works for the individuals needs is key. In conclusion abnormal psychology is yet a small branch of the vast tree that is â€Å"psychology†, yet still provides extremely important studies which help ociety define that what is â€Å"normal†. Abnormal Psychology will always be a changing field as is normal psychology; it is defined by what society sees as abnormal and normal. A recent example of this could be homosexuality vs. drunk driving, the two as seen in societies eyes have switched from being accepted and unaccepted in the last 60 years. Whichever way society progresses will help better define what truly abnormal behavior is, and with the several schools of thought at its disposal hopefully society can continue helping those in need. Abnormal Psychology Essay The authors of this study were Sarra Hayes, Colette Hirsche, and Andrew Mathews. It was published in the August 2008 issue of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. These researchers administered a questionnaire to measure the degree one worries to several students at staff at King’s College London in the United Kingdom. Among these participants, 32 people were selected for the study. This group was divided between those who worried often (high worriers) and those who rarely fretted (low worriers). The groups were then given a key pressing task in which they had to hit any key as soon as they heard a beep. These participants were also asked to fill out a thought rating scale to find out what kinds of positive thoughts they were having during the task. Finally, the groups were also given a filler task to reduce any carryover effect a previous trial of the key pressing task may have had. The researchers concluded that those who worried the most were more distracted from even the simplest task of hitting a random key when one hears a beep. Positive thoughts, however, did not seem to be as distracting. In the end, the researchers found that working memory is negatively affected by worrying. See more:  Social Satire in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Essay This study struggled with a major weakness of an exceptionally small sample size, but it remains valuable because it surveyed a nonclinical sample. The participants represented a sample of people who worried, but did not demonstrate levels of anxiety that disturbed their everyday functioning. While I do not believe any of the participants in this study were harmed or endangered, I would not have wanted to participate in this research. I do not enjoy tedious tasks and I am quick to identify the role of filler activities in a study. The key pressing task seems relatively boring and I prefer research that has a more direct and positive impact in the lives of others. Since I think that the findings do contribute to our understanding of how humans are able to balance worrying with their other cognitive tasks, I do see the value in this study. I would be interested to hear how the researchers might propose preventing worrying or helping those chronic worriers utilize their memories more effectively. Works Cited Hayes, Sarra, Hirsch, Colette, and Mathews, Andrew. â€Å"Restriction of Working Memory Capacity During Worry. † Journal of Abnormal Psychology August 2008: 712-717.