Sunday, January 29, 2006

This week in Abnormal Psychology the teacher gave a lecture about different theorists and about psychology in general. I found it interesting when Proffesor Welkowtiz talked about how he recently treated a patient by examing the physiological, psychological and social factors that were bothering his patient. Also this week in class we did different activites. On Thursday's class we did an activity were students in the class talked to each other about a problem in there life but the teacher had us try and look at the positive aspects of our own problems rather then the negative aspects. This was a good exercise to try because it seems to me that there is probably at least one posivitve factor that can come out of most problmatic situations. Chapter 2 of the Essentials of Abnormal Psychology contains a lot of information about the physiology of the human body such as genes, the central nervous system, the brain, the peripheral nervous system, and neurotransmitters, which I think should be a lot of interesting information to cover in the Abnormal Psychology textbook.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

This is my first week of classes at Keene State and today I had my first abnormal psychology class. The textbook the Essentials of Abnormal Psychology the fourth edition covers many serious issues in the field of psychology from eating and sleeping disorders to the legality and ethics of mental health services. The first chapter is interesting because it talks about the defintion of psychopathology and the historical conceptions of abnormal behavior. The three historical approaches of pyschopathology are the supernatural tradition, which would be forces outside of oneself or social envioroment; the biological tradition which is the belief that psychological disorders are influenced by disease or biochemical imbalances; and the psychological tradition which is the view that psychological disorders are influenced by poor psychological development and from social circumstances. From reading the first chapter of the textbook it looks like abnormal psychology will offer many interesting perspectives on very serious issues in the field of psychology.
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