People and Society

Psychiatry Psychiatrists treat patients privately and in hospital settings through a combination of psychotherapy and medication. There ...

Psychoactive Drugs The role of psychoactive drugs, also called psychotherapeutic agents or psychotropic drugs, in the treatment of menta...

Psychoanalysis Developed in Vienna, Austria, by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), psychoanalysis is based on an approach in which the therapis...

Psychological Abstracts Founded in 1927, Psychological Abstracts contains nonevaluative summary abstracts of literature in the field of...

Psychological Disorder While psychological disorders are generally signaled by some form of abnormal behavior or thought process, abnorm...

Psychology As psychology has grown and changed throughout its history, it has been defined in numerous ways. As early as 400 B.C., the a...

Psychophysics Psychophysics originated with the research of Gustav Fechner (1801-1887), who first studied the relationship between inco...

Psychosexual Stages Austrian psychotherapist Sigmund Freud described personality development during childhood in terms of stages based ...

Psychosis Psychosis may appear as a symptom of a number of mental disorders, including mood and personality disorders, schizophrenia, de...

Psychosomatic Disorders The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSMIV) classifies ...

Psychotherapy Psychoanalysis,the first modern form of psychotherapy, was called the “talking cure,” and the many varieties of therapy pr...

Psychotic Disorders Formerly, all psychological disorders were considered either psychotic or neurotic. Psychotic disorders were those t...

Puberty The word puberty is derived from the Latin pubertas, which means adulthood. Puberty is initiated by hormonal changes triggered b...

Ethel Dench Puffer Ethel Dench Puffer was born in Framingham, Massachusetts, the eldest of four daughters. Her family was of native New ...

Punishment Punishment is defined as the administration of aversive stimulus to reduce or eliminate unwanted behavior. It can be either p...

Qualitative Methods Research psychologists can collect two kinds of information: quantitative data and qualitative data. Quantitative da...

Race and Intelligence Throughout human history, people have tended to divide each other into groups. Most often, physical characteristic...

Racism Racism is most commonly used to describe the belief that members of one’s own race are superior physically, mentally, culturally,...

Otto Rank Otto Rank was Sigmund Freud’s closest collaborator for 20 years. Later, he strongly influenced the development of psychothera...

Rape Rape is essentially an act of power and dominance. Although an estimated 15 to 40 percent of American women are victims of rape or ...