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Psychology Articles

The Role of the Family Structure and Communication in Early Sexual Debut - By Juliabennet on Thursday August 02, 2012
As a New York psychologist, I am aware that the most studied aspect of family structure to be examined with respect to adolescent sexual attitudes and behaviors is parental monitoring and supervision (Kirby, 2002).  Both of these aspects are impor...

How cults create an artificial personality in their followers (and how you can do it too). - Posted on Friday October 29, 2010
The title seems ominous because it mentions that cults make an effort to change ones personality but in a sense we create artificial personalities all the time. We use one when we are shopping, another when we are dating and one when we are buying a ca...

The Revolution of Psychoanalysis - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
"The more I became interested in psychoanalysis, the more I saw it as a road to the same kind of broad and deep understanding of human nature that writers possess." Anna Freud Towards the end of the 19th century, the new discipline of psychology be...

Confessions of a Mind Control Victim - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
Take a look at this video and figure out what you think happened. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0-0Zevp47k The ability to do this to someone comes from The NLP Convincer Strategy. This simply means that for most people they only require a few ...

The Four Elements - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
Empedocles, a Greek philosopher,scientist and healer who lived in Sicily in the fifth century B.C.,believed that all matter is comprised of the four elements of earth, air, fire and water. Fire and air are outwardly reaching elements, reaching up and o...

Narcissistic Personality Disorder - Prevalence and Comorbidity - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
What is the Difference between Healthy Narcissism and the Pathological Kind? In my book "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited", I define pathological narcissism as: "(A) life-long pattern of traits and behaviors which signify infatuation and o...

The History of Personality Disorders - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
Well into the eighteenth century, the only types of mental illness - then collectively known as "delirium" or "mania" - were depression (melancholy), psychoses, and delusions. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the French psychiatrist Pinel co...

Narcissist vs. Psychopath - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
We all heard the terms "psychopath" or "sociopath". These are the old names for a patient with the Antisocial Personality Disorder (AsPD). It is hard to distinguish narcissists from psychopaths. The latter may simply be a less inhibited and less grandi...

Personality Testing; Myth and Realities - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
It is commonly believed myth that personality testing instruments can measure your personality and predict your future behaviors. The pre-employment testing mechanism has been following this creed without any solid evidence. The testing industry claims...

Discover the Secrets of Personality Type - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
Have you ever wondered why your spouse, coworkers, or children seem to think so differently from you? You may not understand why they make the decisions they do, or why they place such importance on things that seem inconsequential to you. It is possib...

MMPI-II Test - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
The MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory), composed by Hathaway (a psychologist) and McKinley (a physician) is the outcome of decades of research into personality disorders. The revised version, the MMPI-II (also known as MMPI-2), was publ...

Narcissism and Personality Disorders - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
Are all personality disorders the outcomes of frustrated narcissism? During our formative years (6 months to 6 years old), we are all "narcissists". Primary Narcissism is a useful and critically important defense mechanism. As the infant separates fro...

Is Road Rage A Psychiatric Disorder? - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
Recent headline: “Road Rage may be due to medical condition called Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED)” WHAT IS THE SCIENCE BEHIND THIS? The study, reported in the June (2006) issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry was based on a national face-...

The Psychology of Torture - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
There is one place in which one's privacy, intimacy, integrity and inviolability are guaranteed – one's body, a unique temple and a familiar territory of sensa and personal history. The torturer invades, defiles and desecrates this shrine. He does so p...

Can't Quit Gambling? Don't Bet On It - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
A preoccupation with gambling may cause some people to risk more than money. They may be gambling their health, happiness and their family's welfare. That's the opinion of experts who define problem gambling as gambling behavior that causes a disrupt...

Highly Sensitive People - Traits and Characteristics - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
One in every twenty people is considered to be a highly sensitive person (HSP). This means that either you yourself may be sensitive or someone you know is. 42% of the population is not highly sensitive, meaning that most things don't bother them the w...

In Defense of Psychoanalysis - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
No social theory has been more influential and, later, more reviled than psychoanalysis. It burst upon the scene of modern thought, a fresh breath of revolutionary and daring imagination, a Herculean feat of model-construction, and a challenge to estab...

Commit To Be Happy - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
Today, why not made a personal commitment to be happy, in spite of what life hands over to you. You have to admit that there are too many things over which you have no control. The only thing you can do is to stop allowing them to make dents in your sp...

Persuasion Techniques - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
Some of the best persuasion techniques have been developed from NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) methods. For example, if you hear a person saying, "I see," a few times, they are probably processing information visually, according to NLP. To influenc...

The Narcissist's Confabulated Life - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
Confabulations are an important part of life. They serve to heal emotional wounds or to prevent ones from being inflicted in the first place. They prop-up the confabulator's self-esteem, regulate his (or her) sense of self-worth, and buttress his (or h...

What is Agoraphobia? - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
Most people have heard of most phobias. Mention claustrophobia, social phobia, or arachnophobia and everyone pretty much knows what you are talking about. Mention agoraphobia, and most people will just shake their heads. Because of this, many people w...

Personality Test: Successful People Have Difficulty Changing - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
A hard working partner at a major law firm, John B., finds that he gets short with co-workers especially when under stress. He is not viewed as a “team player” by other members of the firm and the support staff avoid him. In spite of feedback and coach...

Axes of Personality Disorders - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
Personality disorders are like tips of icebergs. They rest on a foundation of causes and effects, interactions and events, emotions and cognitions, functions and dysfunctions that together form the patient and make him or her what s/he is. The DSM use...

What is Personality? - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
In their opus magnum "Personality Disorders in Modern Life", Theodore Millon and Roger Davis define personality as: "(A) complex pattern of deeply embedded psychological characteristics that are expressed automatically in almost every area of psycholo...

Problem Gambling: What You Should Know - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
Americans spend more on gambling than all other recreation combined. For most, it's a fun diversion but for a few, gambling can become a serious, life-altering problem. Problem gambling is behavior that causes disruptions in any major area of a person...

Four Cognitive Skills for Successful Learning - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
The word "cognition" is defined as "the act of knowing" or "knowledge." Cognitive skills therefore refer to those skills that make it possible for us to know. It should be noted that there is nothing that any human being knows, or can do, that he has ...

Cluster B Personality Disorders - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
The DSM-IV-TR (2000) defines a personality disorder as: "An enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the expectations the individuals culture (and is manifested in two or more of his or her areas of mental life:) c...

The Heart of Grief - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
Hospice patients come to our care after being cut, burned, and poisoned. Surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation treatment are the normative methods of care for most of the patients who enter a life-threatening disease. Hospital staff members are trained ...

How To Tell If Someone Is Lying - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
How to tell if someone is lying? Carefully. All methods of lie-detecting, including polygraph machines, are regularly fooled or used improperly, resulting in mistakes. There are a few good ways described here, but try to confirm the truth by other mean...

The Shattered Identity - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
I. Exposition In the movie "Shattered" (1991), Dan Merrick survives an accident and develops total amnesia regarding his past. His battered face is reconstructed by plastic surgeons and, with the help of his loving wife, he gradually recovers his will...

The Intermittent Explosive Narcissist - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
Narcissists invariably react with narcissistic rage to narcissistic injury. These two terms bear clarification: Narcissistic Injury Any threat (real or imagined) to the narcissist's grandiose and fantastic self-perception (False Self) as perfect, om...

Secret Information - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
Secret information? Okay, probably not much remains truly hidden or forbidden anymore, but there are little secrets about how things work. Salesmen, politicians, and others learn and use subtle techniques to influence you. "Lucky people" use little-kno...

What is the Addictions Recovery Measurement System? - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
As I climbed 15-feet on a wooden ladder to the top of an old platform, next to this wall of leathery gray flesh, I caught a good whiff of fresh animal dung that immediately cleared my sinuses. Attempting to hide my fear from my wife with a poker face, ...

Common Features of Personality Disorders - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
Psychology is more an art form than a science. There is no "Theory of Everything" from which one can derive all mental health phenomena and make falsifiable predictions. Still, as far as personality disorders are concerned, it is easy to discern common...

Is It Possible To Quit Smoking with NLP? - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
We all know how smoking can be a hard to quit habit for thousands, if not millions, of people across the globe. Yeah, smoking sucks and you may be in the situation when smoking is more like a drug for you. Unfortunately for you, smoking can kill you, s...

The Fundamentals of Psychological Theories - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
All theories - scientific or not - start with a problem. They aim to solve it by proving that what appears to be "problematic" is not. They re-state the conundrum, or introduce new data, new variables, a new classification, or new organizing principles...

The Spirit of Soul - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
When was the last time you closed your eyes and simply paid attention to the inner world in you? As you close your eyes and pay attention to your inner self, insight is awakened. You are able to become conscious of what infuses our external world. Each...

The Heart of Soul - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
Hide and Seek is a wonderful game to play with your children. The next time you play this game observe what happens. If you are the person hiding your eyes and counting to 10, feel what happens to your heart as you look for your children. If you pay a...

Does your "shadow" love you? - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
The psychologist, Carl Jung, described hidden part of our psyche as "the shadow". It's the part that sometimes frightens us with the things we don't know, or don't want to know about ourselves. It is essentially our unconscious mind telling us what i...

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) - Pros and Cons - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, fourth edition, text revision [American Psychiatric Association. DSM-IV-TR, Washington, 2000] - or the DSM-IV-TR for short - describes Axis II personality disorders as "deeply ingrained, maladaptive, lifelong beha...

Diagnosing Personality Disorders - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
Personality traits are enduring, usually rigid patterns of behavior, thinking (cognition), and emoting expressed in a variety of circumstances and situations and throughout one's life (typically from early adolescence onward). Some personality traits a...

Can a Dream Tell us of the Future? - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
Much has been written regarding dreams and their meanings or purpose. Mankind has been fascinated with our dreams since the first dreamer awoke and wondered about what their visions meant. Since ancient times we have looked to our dreams to find signs ...

The Ghost Cat in the Attic - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
This is a very strange but true story. Not everyone believes in ghosts but I do and I have had several experiences with the super natural, this is only one of my encounters. This happened when I was only (8) eight years old. My bus driver's wife had ...

Nature VS Nurture Theories of Personality in 21st Century - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
Nature vs Nurture theories have wasted a lot of energy of human beings. Plato is considered first to realize that you are made of not only flesh but also an intellectual soul. The issue may be much older… In Greek Mythology, when gods created man, t...

How to Experience a Lucid Dream - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
Lucid dreaming means dreaming while you know that you are dreaming. The term was coined by Frederik van Eeden who used the word "lucid" in the sense of mental clarity. With practice nearly anyone can experience lucid dreams. Lucidity is not the same a...

Narcissistic Personality Disorder - Clinical Features - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
Clinical Features of the Narcissistic Personality Disorder Opinions vary as to whether the narcissistic traits evident in in infancy, childhood, and early adolescence are pathological. Anecdotal evidence suggests that childhood abuse and trauma inflic...

Distinguishing of Your Temperament - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
Psychology is a very interesting science. With the help of it’s achievements we can research the hidden corners of our souls. This can be really exciting and even make you discover something new about your personality and traits of your character. You ...

Psychoanalysis I - Definitions and Instinct - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
Scientific theories appear influenced for the conditions of the social life in the economic aspects, politicians, cultural etc. They are historical products created by concrete men who live its time and contributes or radically modify the development o...

The Psychopath and Antisocial - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
Roots of the Disorder Are the psychopath, sociopath, and someone with the Antisocial Personality Disorder one and the same? The DSM says "yes". Scholars such as Robert Hare and Theodore Millon beg to differ. The psychopath has antisocial traits for su...

What are hypnotic language patterns? - Posted on Wednesday October 27, 2010
Language is an interesting thing. The most amazing thing isn't that we get confused by it but that we're able to use it so well without confusion. Language is such a powerful tool that, in skilled hands, it can be used to persuade, motivate, seduce a...