Category: Psychology Essay Examples
See our collection of psychology essay examples. These examples are to help you understanding how to write a psychology essay. The realm of pop psychology certainly overlaps the science of psychology, but there are large areas of the two that rarely meet. But many topics in popular psychology may offer students a great opportunity for an essay. Be sure to check our list of psychology essay topics.
A phobia, or phobic disorder, is an irrational or excessive fear of a particular object or situation. The DSM-IV lists three varieties of phobic disorder: social phobia, specific phobias, and agoraphobia, all of which are classified as anxiety disorders. People with social phobia have intense fears of social …
Among child psychologists who have attempted to track the dramatic shifts in cognition, knowledge, and memory that distinguish infants from adults, Jean Piaget has had the greatest influence. Based on intensive observations of a small sample of infants, including his own children, as well as extensive interviews with …
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a disorder in which the survivor of a traumatic or severely stressful event re-experiences the traumatic event exactly as it happened, both in nightmares and in daytime flashbacks. Unlike dreams, these flashbacks can seem completely real, as though the event is actually occurring …
In 1949, Antonio Egas Moniz shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for his discovery of the therapeutic value of frontal leucotomy.” Frontal leucotomy is better known by its more common name, prefrontal lobotomy. The procedure, which involves severing the connection between the most anterior portions of …
Premenstrual dysphoric disorder, or PMDD, has been one of the more controversial additions to the disorders listed in the DSM-IV (it appeared in the DSM-III-R as Late Luteal Phase Dysphoric Disorder), not least because the distinctions between it and premenstrual syndrome (PMS), a perfectly normal, biological part of …
Primal therapy (also known as primal scream) is the brainchild of Arthur Janov. It is a psychodynamic therapeutic technique that claims to cure psychological disorders by encouraging people to feel deeply, and release, the feelings of pain and anger that have been within them since early childhood. Janov …
In a projective test, the examiner presents unstructured, vague, or ambiguous stimuli (such as the inkblots of the Rorschach test) with the belief that responses to the test represent revelations about the unconscious mental processes of the respondent. As of the mid-1990s, five of the fifteen most frequently …
Pseudoscience is simply false science. That is, anything that superficially resembles science, yet isn’t science, is pseudoscience. The difference between them is one of degree rather than of kind, with no single clear boundary demarcating the essential difference. Although the boundaries are fuzzy, however, the distinction is a …
The word psychedelic is formed from Greek roots meaning “mind-manifesting,” an appropriate name for psychoactive (hallucinogenic) drugs that can severely distort perceptions and evoke vivid hallucinations. A hallucination is simply a sensory experience that occurs in the absence of sensory input; in other words, seeing, hearing, feeling, or …
Psychiatry is the medical specialty that concerns itself with the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of psychological disorders. A psychiatrist is, first and foremost, a physician, complete with M.D. degree. In addition to the usual medical training, however, a psychiatrist receives additional special training and clinical experience in the …
As a scientific enterprise, psychology follows the methods of science, meaning that it uses data to generate testable hypotheses and constructs theories to explain the results of those tests. Research efforts are largely devoted to trying to describe people but also attempt to construct explanations. A theory is …
Canadian-born magician and escape artist James Randi had a highly successful career as a stage performer from the 1950s into the 1970s, but since the early 1960s, he has been primarily known as the world’s leading skeptical investigator of paranormal, occult, and supernatural claims. In the beginning of …
Yet another example of therapeutic pseudoscience, rebirthing consists of a series of deep-breathing techniques intended to reduce stress, increase energy, and bring ease and pleasure to one’s life and relationships. This sounds fairly innocuous so far; the problem lies in the reasons given for the technique’s alleged effectiveness. …
In the 1930s, Ida P. Rolf (1896–1979), an organic chemist who had also dabbled in yoga and chiropractic, introduced a form of massage that she believed would relieve people of stress caused by past traumatic experience. According to Rolfing theory, memories of traumatic experiences are stored in various …
St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum) is a plant that has been widely claimed to be an effective natural antidepressant and has thus gained enormous popularity in the United States and Europe. Hypericin, one of many compounds found in the plant, is generally believed to be primarily responsible for …
The linguistic relativity principle, formulated by Edward Sapir (1884–1936) and refined by his student, Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897–1941), states that human thinking is highly dependent on the language spoken by the individual thinker. As language is our main tool for organizing our experiences, the argument goes, the language …
Under hypnosis and during various other types of suggestive therapy, many individuals have eventually “recovered” memories of prolonged sexual, psychological, or physical abuse at the hands of devil worshipping adults. Often these memories date from an age of less than two years old, a time from which most …
The people known today as savants were previously known by the somewhat less-sensitive term idiot savants, reflecting the terminology that was once used with reference to mental retardation. A savant is a person in whom severe mental handicap, usually mental retardation or autism, coexists with exceptional talent in …
Schizophrenia is one of the most severe psychological disorders, as well as one of the more common, and possibly the most widely misunderstood. The disorder’s name is partly responsible for the confusion. It is not unusual to find people confusing schizophrenia with dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder), …
Self-esteem has become a very widely used term over the last thirty years as teachers, parents, and therapists have expended enormous effort and expense on increasing it, on the assumption that raising self-esteem will provide benefits and improve outcomes in many areas of life, including school performance, relationships, …
