Anglais pour psychologues (Lynn Leger) : Defining Abnormal Behavior

Defining Abnormal Behavior

When starting a discussion of abnormal behavior, students sometimes ask, "How can anybody tell what is abnormal, anyway?" There are several different criteria that can be used:

What are some of the different ways to define abnormal behavior?

1. Statistical abnormality. A behavior may be judged abnormal if it is statistically unusual in a particular population.

2. Violation of socially-accepted standards. An abnormal behavior might be defined as one that goes against common or majority or presumed standards of behavior. For example, one might be judged abnormal in one's failure to behave as recommended by one's family, church, employer, community, culture, or subculture.

3. Theoretical approaches. Theories approach abnormality by starting with a theory of personality development, If normal development can be defined, then abnormality is defined by the failure to develop in this way. For example, if adults normally arrive at a moral stage that prohibits killing other people, and someone does not arrive at this stage, that person might be called abnormal.

4. Subjective abnormality. Abnormal behavior can be defined by a person's feeling of abnormality, including feelings of anxiety, strangeness, depression, losing touch with reality, or any other sensation recognized and labeled by an individual as out of the ordinary.

5. Biological injury. Abnormal behavior can be defined or equated with abnormal biological processes such as disease or injury. Examples of such abnormalities are brain tumors, strokes, heart disease, diabetes, epilepsy, and genetic disorders.

Personality Disorders

Personality disorders are, by definition, exaggerations of normal personality traits that are both inflexible and maladaptive (Widiger and Trull, 1985). Let us examine those two words.

1. Inflexible. People with personality disorders find they cannot change, even if they want to. In some cases they do not consider themselves abnormal and are brought into treatment (if ever) by people around them, such as parents or marriage partners, rather than volunteering for treatment.

2. Maladaptive. By definition, an abnormality prevents some normal, expected talent or ability from being expressed, or it has an adverse impact on the individual's ability to live harmoniously with others. To say personality disorders are maladaptive is to say they harm people or make it harder for people to live normal and productive lives.

Schizophrenia

Psychoses are major psychological disorders in which a person experiences a breakdown of normal reality-orientation. In other words, the person seems to be living in another world and may have trouble with routine tasks such as getting dressed or holding a job. Schizophrenics suffer disturbances of thought or speech, blunted or inappropriate emotions, hallucinations (perception of things which are not there), and delusions (persistently held, false beliefs).

The prefix schizo means split, but schizophrenia is not the same thing as "split personality." Mental health professionals were disappointed when a movie by comedian Jim Carrey re-introduced the error in 2000, referring to Carrey's character, who had a multiple personality, as "schizophrenic." Schizophrenia has nothing to do with multiple personality, and sufferers of Dissociative Identity Disorder (multiple personality) are seldom schizophrenic. The name schizophrenia comes from the gap that develops between a schizophrenic and reality. A schizophrenic may laugh at nothing, hear voices, or develop strange delusional systems, giving the impression of being split off from normal reality.

The disorganized type (formerly called hebephrenic) schizophrenic shows disorganized speech and behavior as well as flat or inappropriate affect. (The word affect is pronounced AFF-ect in this context and means emotion.) A person with flat affect seems emotionless. A person with inappropriate affect may weep uncontrollably at something that seems harmless, or laugh hysterically at nothing in particular. This type of schizophrenic is called "disorganized" because a primary symptom of the problem is difficulty in performing ordinary daily activities such as showering or getting dressed.

Catatonic schizophrenics have disordered motor activity. They can be wildly active with inappropriate and purposeless activity, or they may be completely still. The still reaction is best known and is what most people mean by a catatonic state. It is also called waxy flexibility because the individual acts like a wax figure, holding perfectly still, yet remains flexible. One can reposition the limbs of a person in a catatonic state, and that person will keep the same position—or the limbs will gradually fall due to muscle fatigue and the effects of gravity—while the catatonic person remains staring straight ahead, hardly blinking, not reacting to anything.

Paranoid schizophrenia is the most common type of schizophrenia. It is characterized by prominent delusions that usually involve some form of threat or conspiracy, such as secret plots to control people's brains through radio transmissions. 

There is a difference between paranoid schizophrenia and the paranoid personality disorder. The paranoid personality disorder is not a form of schizophrenia. The person with only a personality disorder does not have delusions or hallucinations, just extreme suspiciousness. 

Depression 

Affective (AFF-ect-iv) disorders are disturbances of mood. Depression is the most common. In its most severe form, depression is crippling. Typical symptoms are hopelessness, inability to take initiative, and "frozen emotions." The present moment seems joyless if not unbearable; the future seems bleak.

Mania 

Mania, the opposite of depression, features frantic activity and wild plans. Although a person experiencing a manic episode is sometimes euphoric (filled with joy) this does not always happen. The manic person's emotions are intense but not always joyful. For example, such a person may be very irritable. A "flight of ideas" is common in mania: the thought process wanders or takes off on wild tangents.

The bipolar disorder ("Manic-Depression")

Mania and depression alternate in the disorder once known as manic-depression. Psychologists now call this the bipolar (two-sided) disorder.

Anxiety 

Disorders Panic Attacks 

The obsessive-compulsive disorder

OCD stands for obsessive-compulsive disorder. Obsessions are persistent thoughts that a person cannot make go away. Compulsions are irresistible impulses. In obsessive-compulsive disorder, a person (who might otherwise seem perfectly normal) feels compelled to think about certain things, or perform certain actions, even though these thoughts and actions may not make any sense and the person may know they do not make sense. 

Dissociative Identify Disorder

The most dramatic and unusual dissociative state is multiple personality disorder (MPD), which was, renamed dissociative identity disorder (DID) in the 4th edition of the DSM manual.