[PDF] Psychological Adaptive Mechanisms eBook

Author : Thomas P. Beresford, MD
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 338 pages
File Size : 27,35 MB
Release : 2012-05-01
Category : Medical
ISBN : 0199794502

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This book will demonstrate how to use novel, systematic method for recognizing psychological adaptive mechanisms (known in psychoanalytic theory as ego defenses) in clinical encounters. This clinical method is based in published theoretical and empirical studies of these mechanisms over the past 14 years as well as working with successive classes of mental health trainees of varying disciplines at the University of Colorado. The result is an approach that trainees both apprehend and find useful. This work will offer the mental health disciplines, and even wider audiences, a platform both for 1) clinical use in everyday practice, 2) continuing clinical studies of adaptive psychology as well as 3) direct application of psychological adaptive mechanisms theory in clinical research that will improve the diagnosis and treatment of persons with mental or emotional disorders. This an important empirical model for understanding how humans adapt to the stressful experiences of their lives. They have developmental, biological, and evolutionary significance and all of these will be discussed in the book. Psychological Adaptive Mechanisms are observable behaviors that range on a developmental hierarchy from the Primitive defenses of normal early childhood and of major mental illness in adults, through the Mature defenses of fully functioning adulthood. They also serve to limit and to direct the human anxiety response, giving the "fight or flight" reaction to threat many more than those two classically described behavioral options.These mechanisms are likely transduced by the brain and, in providing wider ranges of adaptive behavior, most probably reflect an evolutionary selection towards greater flexibility of adaptation.

Author : Thomas P. Beresford
Publisher : OUP USA
Page : 340 pages
File Size : 48,46 MB
Release : 2012-06-21
Category : Medical
ISBN : 0199794499

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This book provides a clinical tool for recognizing, and understanding, human adaptive responses to stress and the anxiety it causes. For use in the here-and-now, the recognition algorithm systematically delineates the observable hierarchy of psychological adaptive mechanisms, known in psychoanalytic theory as ego defenses, established in previous longitudinal research. Based in a theoretical model, it teaches practical, systematic recognition of these mechanisms which are not only helpful to know when seeing a patient but also when observing human behavior in everyday life.

Author : Thomas P. Beresford
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 338 pages
File Size : 27,85 MB
Release : 2012-06-21
Category : Medical
ISBN : 0199794499

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This book provides a clinical tool for recognizing, and understanding, human adaptive responses to stress and the anxiety it causes. For use in the here-and-now, the recognition algorithm systematically delineates the observable hierarchy of psychological adaptive mechanisms, known in psychoanalytic theory as ego defenses, established in previous longitudinal research. Based in a theoretical model, it teaches practical, systematic recognition of these mechanisms which are not only helpful to know when seeing a patient but also when observing human behavior in everyday life.

Author : Clive D.L. Wynne
Publisher : Psychology Press
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 43,89 MB
Release : 2013-06-17
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 113478757X

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This volume presents an international group of researchers who model animal and human behavior--both simple and complex. The models presented focus on such subjects as the pattern of eating in meals and bouts, the energizing and shaping impact of reinforcers on behavior, transitive inferential reasoning, responding to a compound stimulus, avoidance and escape learning, recognition memory, category formation, generalization, the timing of adaptive responses, and chromosomes exchanging information. The chapters are united by a common interest in adaptive behavior--whether of human, animal, or artificial system--and clearly demonstrate the rich variety of ways in which this fascinating area of research can be approached. In so doing, the book demonstrates the range of thought that qualifies as theorizing in the contemporary study of the mechanisms of adaptive behavior. It has two purposes: to bring together a very wide range of approaches in one place and to give authors space to explain how their ideas developed. Journal literature often presents fully-formed theories with no explanation of how an idea came to have the shape in which it is presented. In this volume, however, leaders in different fields provide background on the development of their ideas. Where once psychologists and a few zoologists had this field to themselves, now various types of computer scientists have added great energy to the mix.

Author : George E. Vaillant
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 415 pages
File Size : 33,45 MB
Release : 2012-08-01
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 0674072154

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Between 1939 and 1942, one of America's leading universities recruited 268 of its healthiest and most promising undergraduates to participate in a revolutionary new study of the human life cycle. The originators of the program, which came to be known as the Grant Study, felt that medical research was too heavily weighted in the direction of disease, and their intent was to chart the ways in which a group of promising individuals coped with their lives over the course of many years. Nearly forty years later, George E. Vaillant, director of the Study, took the measure of the Grant Study men. The result was the compelling, provocative classic, Adaptation to Life, which poses fundamental questions about the individual differences in confronting life's stresses. Why do some of us cope so well with the portion life offers us, while others, who have had similar advantages (or disadvantages), cope badly or not at all? Are there ways we can effectively alter those patterns of behavior that make us unhappy, unhealthy, and unwise? George Vaillant discusses these and other questions in terms of a clearly defined scheme of "adaptive mechanisms" that are rated mature, neurotic, immature, or psychotic, and illustrates, with case histories, each method of coping.

Author : Seymour Fisher
Publisher : Psychology Press
Page : 268 pages
File Size : 31,72 MB
Release : 2014-02-25
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 1317781996

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The major goal of this book is to explore and integrate all that is scientifically known about the utility of magical plans and strategies for coping with life's inevitable absurdities. Make-believe has great adaptive value and helps the average individual to function better in cultures saturated with puzzling contradictions. This book traces the origins of pretending (illusion-construction) and the developmental phases of this skill. Further, it analyzes how parents depend on pretending to secure conformity and self-control from their children. It unravels the ways in which make-believe is utilized to defend against death-anxiety and feelings of fragility. It examines the relationship between pretending and the classical defense mechanisms -- and particularly weighs the evidence bearing on the potential protective power of embracing religious beliefs. Finally, it defines the diverse contributions of make-believe to the construction of the self-concept, the defensive maneuvers typifying psychopathology, and the maintenance of somatic health. In short, this book pulls together a spectrum of scientific information concerning the defensive value of illusory make-believe in coping with those aspects of life -- such as death, loss, suffering, and injustice -- that are experienced as unreasonable and beyond understanding. The volume is unique not only in the breadth of the literature it analyzes but also in demonstrating the contribution of make-believe to both the psychological and somatic aspects of behavior. No previous work has documented in such detail and across so many domains how basic the capacity to engage in make-believe is to human adaptation.

Author : Todd K. Shackelford
Publisher : Springer
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 43,47 MB
Release : 2021-03-20
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9783319196497

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This comprehensive, twelve volume reference work reflects the interdisciplinary influences on evolutionary psychology and serves as a major resource for its history, scientific contributors and theories. It draws on biology, cognitive science, anthropology, psychology, economics, computer science and paleoarchaeology to provide a multifaceted picture of behavioral adaptation in humans and how it adds to our academic and clinical understanding. Edited by a noted figure in evolutionary psychology, with many seminal and renowned contributors, this encyclopedia offers the full breadth of an area that is the forefront of behavioral thinking and investigation.

Author : C. R. Snyder
Publisher : Clarendon Press
Page : 367 pages
File Size : 31,86 MB
Release : 1999
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 0195119347

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This book is intended for psychologists, social workers, counsellors, clergy, and general readers with some background in psychology.

Author : John R. Anderson
Publisher : Psychology Press
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 19,6 MB
Release : 2013-01-11
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 1134747810

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This important volume examines the phenomena of cognition from an adaptive perspective. Rather than adhering to the typical practice in cognitive psychology of trying to predict behavior from a model of cognitive mechanisms, this book develops a number of models that successfully predict behavior from the structure of the environment to which cognition is adapted. The methodology -- called rational analysis -- involves specifying the information-processing goals of the system, the structure of the environment, and the computational constraints on the system, allowing predictions about behavior to be made by determining what behavior would be optimal under these assumptions. The Adaptive Character of Thought applies this methodology in great detail to four cognitive phenomena: memory, categorization, causal inference, and problem solving.