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"The field with which abnormal psychology deals includes physiological and psychological deviations from normal patterns of behavior. Although the frequency of certain deviations is determined by cultural and economic factors and changes during different years, and although it is difficult to obtain reliable statistics on the appearance of certain abnormal manifestations, * it is significant that, as President Truman stated to Congress, "There is no doubt that at least 2,000,000 persons in the United States are mentally ill and that as many as 10,000,000 will probably need hospitalization during some period of their lifetime." But it is not only the large incidence of mental illness which makes the study of abnormal behavior such an important topic in psychology; the area of emotional disturbances extends deeply into normal life. Normal and abnormal are not clear cut dichotomies but only extremes of a threshold upon which man stands. Abnormal psychology can no longer deal with the institutionalized only. We cannot work with ready-made labels which create intolerance towards the abnormal personality on one hand, and increase the worries of normal man with his emotional disturbances on the other. Through the popularization of psychopathological concepts labels such as "neurotic" and "schizophrenic" have been widely abused, creating the dangerous idea that diagnosis and classification of behavior are that easy. Man, however, is a product of his setting; what is normal for a child may be abnormal for an adult, what is normal for a Pygmy is abnormal for an American, what is normal under the conditions of war is abnormal under the conditions of peace. But we not only have to investigate the threshold of what is abnormal, we have to ask how behavior became abnormal. We have to search for motivations, goals and present conditions which push man over the threshold, and to find means of leading him back to adjustment. And finally, we have to study the circumstances under which this threshold can be modified. Mental Hygiene of living conditions as well as of the total personality goes together with postulates towards what ends we are training the clinical psychologist and the social worker. From this point of view the present study of abnormal psychology deals less with clear-cut clinical pictures but more with the structure and genesis of abnormal behavior, with the dynamics of abnormal behavior"--

Psychology, Pathological.

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Psychoanalysis. --- Psychology, Pathological. --- Psychophysiology.

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Psychology, Pathological --- Psychopathologie

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Since the beginning of this century, the crisis of our time has been discussed again and again in its philosophical implications, cultural aspects, sociological consequences, and psychological impact. Since the discovery of the unconscious the individual has been somewhat relieved from his conscious responsibility, the deities of hostile fate have been dethroned, and instead of hopeless chance predictable rules are revealed. It is the conflict between his unconscious drives and his conscious goals, between his desires and accomplishments, between imagination and reality, which more and more splits man's structure and turns one part of him against the other. This is the crisis of personality, which is not a product of the time we live in, nor a product of upbringing and experience; it is a product of our very existence. Crisis in this sense puts at stake the meaning and position which man gives to his life. Man must recognize the challenge to his existence. This demands a new orientation of concepts, which is here suggested by a theory called existential psychology. Existential psychology, an interpretation of data in terms of an individual's value system, has its application in existential psychotherapy by focusing the therapist's attention upon the area in which the patient's values are challenged. In a nondirective method, the patient not only relives his basic conflicts but the crisis that at a deep symbolic level threatens his total personality organization and thus his existence. This successive rediscovery of the self is a creative process and, as such, mobilizes all creative resources of the individual. Instead of destructiveness, creativeness becomes the center of man's personality; a creativeness turned inwards which, if the personality is filled by it, will find its way outwards into creative activity and challenge his environment. Man as questioner of his existence is the theme of existential psychology, and man as creator is the goal of existential psychotherapy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2005 APA, all rights reserved).

Psychology, Pathological. --- Psychoanalysis.

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Educational psychology. --- Psychoanalysis. --- Psychology, Pathological.