The brain, with the spinal cord and network of nerves, controls information flow throughout the body, voluntary actions, such as walking, reading, and talking, and involuntary reactions, such as breathing and heartbeat. The human brain is a soft, shiny, grayish white, mushroom-shaped structure. Encased within the skull, the brain of an average adult weight about 3 lb (1.4 kg). At birth, the averag…
Brainwashing has been used predominantly in reference to severe programs of political indoctrination, although it is used occasionally in connection with certain religious, especially cultic, practices. Brainwashing works primarily by making the victim's existing beliefs and attitudes nonfunctional and replacing them with new ones that will be useful in the environment created by the captor…
Like Dr. Benjamin Spock (1903-) before him, T. Berry Brazelton has earned a nationwide reputation as a trusted expert on child care, reaching a mass audience through books, personal appearances, newspaper columns, videos, and a cable-TV program. His research on infant behavior and development led him to formulate the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS), a series of clinical tests used in h…
Josef Breuer made the crucial observations upon which early psychoanalytic theory was based. He discovered that neuroses could arise from unconscious processes and, furthermore, that the neurotic symptoms could disappear when these underlying causes became part of the conscious mind. He communicated these findings to Sigmund Freud and the two men entered into a collaboration. Breuer emphasized hyp…
Episodes that are classified as brief reactive psychoses may last more than two hours but less than one month. Typical triggering events can be the death of a spouse or other loved one, combat trauma, financial disaster, or any other major event involving psychosocial stress. Brief reactive psychosis has a sudden onset, typically in late adolescence and early adulthood, and is characterized by del…
Pierre Paul Broca, the son of a Huguenot doctor, was born near Bordeaux, France, in 1824. After studying mathematics and physical science at the local university, he entered medical school at the University of Paris in 1841. He received his M.D. in 1849. Though trained as a pathologist, anatomist, and surgeon, Broca's interests were not limited to the medical profession. His versatility and…
Jerome S. Bruner was born in New York City and educated at Duke University. During World War II, Bruner worked on the subject of propaganda and popular attitudes for U.S. Army intelligence at General Dwight D. Eisenhower's headquarters in France. He obtained his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1947, after which he became a member of the faculty, serving as professor of psychology, as well …
The symptoms of bulimia, or bulimia nervosa, include eating uncontrollably (binging) and then purging by dieting, fasting, exercising, vomiting, or abusing laxatives or diuretics. A binge involves a large amount of food, for example, several boxes of cookies, a loaf of bread, a half gallon of ice cream, and a bucket of fried chicken, eaten in a short and well-defined time period. Specific behavior…
Bullying usually involves an older or larger child (or several children) victimizing a single child who is incapable of defending himself or herself. Although much bullying goes unreported, it is estimated that in the average school an incident of bullying occurs approximately once every seven minutes. Bullying occurs at about the same rate regardless of class size or school size, but, for an unkn…
The term bystander effect, or bystander apathy, was first employed by psychologists in the early 1960s. The 1964 murder of New Yorker Kitty Genovese provides an illustration of this phenomenon. Genovese, who was being savagely attacked outside her apartment building, screamed for help for over 30 minutes. Although 40 neighbors heard Genovese's desperate cries, no one came to her aid or even…
The eldest of five children born to Reverend Wolcott Calkins, a strong-willed, intellectually gifted evangelical minister, and Charlotte Grosvenor Whiton, a daughter of an established New England Puritan family, Mary Whiton Calkins grew up in a close-knit family that valued education. As her mother's mental and physical health began to deteriorate, Calkins took on increased responsibilities…
A case study (or case history) consists of an intensive, detailed description and analysis of a particular individual, group, or event. Information may be obtained by means of careful observation, interviews, psychological tests, or archival records. Case study research is useful when the researcher is starting to investigate a new area in which there is little information available. Case studies …
The term catharsis originated from the Greek word katharsis, meaning to purge, or purgation. In psychology, the term was first employed by Sigmund Freud's colleague Josef Breuer (1842-1925), who developed a "cathartic" treatment for persons suffering from hysterical symptoms through the use of hypnosis. While under hypnosis, Breuer's patients were able to recall traumat…
The English word for cathexis—which replaces the German besetzung—is derived from the Greek word for "I occupy." Through the process of cathexis, which Sigmund Freud saw as analogous to the channeling of an electrical charge, the psychic energy of the id is bound to a selection of objects. An infant's earliest cathected objects are his mother's breast, his…
James McKeen Cattell developed an approach to psychological research that continues to dominate the field of psychology today. During psychology's early years, most research focused on the sensory responses of single individuals studied in depth because Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), the first experimental psychologist, favored this approach. As Cattell's ideas developed, his perspective…
Raymond B. Cattell was one of psychology's most prolific scholars. In a career spanning over half a century he wrote more than 50 books and 500 research articles, and his contributions to personality and intelligence testing are widely regarded as invaluable. Yet some of his theories about natural selection, particularly as put forth in a philosophy known as Beyondism, were attacked as raci…
The central nervous system contains billions of nerve cells, called neurons, and a greater number of support cells, or glia. Until recently, scientists thought that the only function of glial cells—whose name means "glue"—was to hold the neurons together, but current research suggests a more active role in facilitating communication. The neurons, which consist of three …
Character is most often used in reference to a set of basic innate, developed, and acquired motivations that shape an individual's behavior. These qualities of an individual's motivation are shaped during all stages of childhood. By late adolescence, around age 17, the traits that make up individual's character are normally integrated into a unique and distinctive whole. The t…
Jean Martin Charcot was born in Paris on Nov. 29, 1825, the son of a carriage maker. He took his medical degree at the University of Paris in 1853 and was appointed professor of pathological anatomy there in 1860. In 1862 he was appointed senior physician at the Salpêtrière, a hospital for the treatment of the mentally ill. It became a center for psychiatric training and psychiatric …
For much of history, children were considered the property of parents. The family system was rarely, if ever, intervened upon by society. If a mother or father routinely abused their children, the abuse went unnoticed, or if noticed, merely ignored. It was largely considered a parent's prerogative to do whatever he or she wanted with their child. Over the past several decades, however, the …
The first detailed scientific study of child development was probably Charles Darwin's Biographical Sketch of an Infant (1877), based on a log he had kept on the development 1877 Charles Darwin's Biographical Sketch of an Infant, observations on development of his eldest child. 1880 G. Stanley Hall, the "father of child psychology in America," publishes The Contents of …
The future adult begins not at birth but at conception, with the creation of a unique set of genes, half from the mother, half from the father. This genetic blueprint is called the genotype; its outward manifestation is the phenotype. Sometimes the phenotype is controlled directly by the genotype, for example, eye color. More often, the phenotype represents the interaction of the genotype and the …
Child psychologists study human development from the earliest stages of life through adolescence and adulthood. These scientists focus on many areas of growth. In the early years of life they include motor skills, perceptual analysis and inference, language and speech, social behavior, and the emergence of basic emotions of fear, sadness, anxiety, shame, and guilt. The two important strategies for…
Noam Chomsky was born in Philadelphia and educated at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his B.A. (1949), M.A. (1951), and Ph.D. (1955). In 1955, he was appointed to the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he has served as professor of foreign languages and linguistics. He has also taught courses and lectured at many universities throughout the world, i…
Many psychologists have made history within their profession; few, however, have had an impact on the laws of a nation. Such was the case with Kenneth Bancroft Clark, whose work the Supreme Court cited in its historic Brown v. Board of Education ruling. In the 1954 case, which overturned racial segregation in public schools, the Court referred to a 1950 paper by Clark, and described him as a �…
Classical conditioning is an important concept in the school of psychology known as behaviorism, and it forms the basis for some of the techniques used in behavior therapy. Classical conditioning was pioneered by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) in the 1890s in the course of experiments on the digestive systems of dogs (work which won him the Nobel Prize in 1904). Noticing that the…
Developed in the 1930s by the American psychologist Carl Rogers, client-centered therapy—also known as non-directive or Rogerian therapy—departed from the typically formal, detached role of the therapist common to psychoanalysis and other forms of treatment. Rogers believed that therapy should take place in the supportive environment created by a close personal relationship between c…
Clinical psychologists apply research findings in the fields of mental and physical health to explain dysfunctional behavior in terms of normal processes. The problems they address are diverse and include mental illness, mental retardation, marital and family issues, criminal behavior, and chemical dependency. The clinical psychologist may also address less serious problems of adjustment similar t…
The term clique has two levels of significance. In its neutral usage by social researchers, it denotes a group of people who interact with each other more intensively than with other peers in the same setting. In its more popular form it has negative connotations. It is used to describe an adolescent social group that excludes others on the basis of superficial differences, exercising greater than…
The concept of codependence was first developed in relation to alcohol and other substance abuse addictions. The alcoholic or drug abuser was the dependent, and the person involved with the dependent person in any intimate way (spouse, lover, child, sibling, etc.) was the codependent. The definition of the term has been expanded to include anyone showing an extreme degree of certain personality tr…