An-Az

 

 

Anaclitic Identification: the general tendency to identify with a parent who is supportive and nurturing.

 

Anchoring: the forming of social representations (about self and/or others) by relating new ideas closely to existing knowledge.
In NLP therapies the forming of such representations is often manipulated by using a specific stimulus - sight, sound, touch or word - to automatically recall a particular memory and/or state of mind and body. Effectively this is a form of  Classical Conditioning, although both stimulus and response can be internal - eg: a recalling something (stimulus) creates a certain emotion (response).

Anhedonia:

 

Androcentric Theory: a theory based on male behaviour but applied to females also and therefore possibly skewed by gender bias. Eg: Lawrence Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development has been accused of gender bias as the original studies on which it was based only used boys.

 

Androgens: male sex hormones responsible for the development of male sex characteristics.

 

Androgyny: a mix of masculine and feminine behaviours in the same individual.

 

Androgyny Theory: the argument put forward by Sandra Bem that being in a state of androgyny was more healthy psychologically than being restricted to rigid gender roles - eg: a man crying when emotionally upset (perceived typical female behaviour) would be better than keeping it 'bottled up' and unable to express himself emotionally.
There is some linkage here with the anima/animus concept of Carl Gustav Jung.

 

Anhedonia: a general lack of interest in living - a loss of the ability to enjoy things.
It is regarded as a defining feature of Clinical Depression.

Anisogamy: sexual reproduction in which the gametes of the participating sexes are dissimilar - eg: in humans and most animal species where the male makes microscopic sperm in millions while the female produces a limited number of larger eggs.
In Evolutionary Psychology anisogamy is considered to be the reason behind different attitudes towards sex (unconscious reproductive strategies for passing on their genes) between men (outrightly promiscuous to create as many offspring as possible) and women (needful of resources to nurture limited offspring but ready to cheat on the male provider to get better genes from another male).
From an Integrated SocioPsychology point of view, while this accurately describes BEIGE reproductive imperatives, it is effectively pre-cognitive and ignores the more complex ways of thinking and motivation which can dominate higher up the Spiral.

 

Anima/Animus: respectively the female and male archetypes in the writings of Carl Gustav Jung. He argued that everyone had both components in the psyche and thus was capable of thinking and behaving in a characteristically male or female way.
Popular sayings such as "You need to be more in touch with your feminine side" are derived from Jung's concepts.
 

ANS: see autonomic nervous system.

 

Anomie: a term first used by Émile Durkheim, this is a situation where an individual or group no longer supports or follows the norms of society: a condition of normlessness.

Anorexia Nervosa: an eating disorder in which the individual suffers from an intense fear of becoming fat in spite of being seriously underweight - ususally taken as 85% or less than expected for size and height. This is due to gross undereating - though affected individuals usually see themselves as "normal".
Sufferers are usually young females (below 30 years of age) and the disorder has been largely localised to the Western world post-1950s; however, more recently it has spread into the Far East, including even China.
Sufferers, with low self-esteem in other areas of their lives, seem to be particularly vulnerable to memes about controlling diet to be attractive.

Since the emergence of Anorexia on a significant scale, there has been much debate as to just how clearly it can be differentiated from Bulimia. The term ‘Bulimarexia’ has been conceived to describe a continuum ranging from restrictive anorexics at one end to obese bulemics at the other.

 

Antagonist: a drug that neutralises the effects of a naturally-produced neurotransmitter.
Eg: Chlorpromazine blocks both dopamine and noradrenaline receptors. Lithium blocks noradrenaline receptors.

 

Anthropology: the study of humanity, with emphasis on origins, institutions and beliefs. Cross-cultural studies and cultural relativitism are key components in the structure of modern Anthropology.

Antibody: see immune system.

 

Antidepressant: a stimulant drug which has an agonist effect by increasing the production of serotonin and noradrenaline.

 

Anti-Psychiatry: begun by Thomas Szasz, the view that medical model views of mental illness are mistaken and dangerous and that 'mental illness' is a myth. Szasz proposed that socially-expressed symptoms should be seen as problems in living and appropriate support provided.

 

Anti-Psychotic: a drug used to reduce psychotic symptoms.
Eg: Chlorpromazine for Schizophrenia; lithium for Manic Depressive Psychosis.

 

Anxiety Disorder: mental disorder characterised by levels of fear and apprehension out of all proportion to the threat posed.
Eg: Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, phobias, etc.

Anxious-Resistant: see Attachment Type.

 

Aphasia: a partial or complete loss of language functions due to brain damage.
Eg: Broca's Aphasia is a disruption to speech production caused by damage to Broca's Area.

Archetype: according to Carl Gustav Jung, inherited, unconscious ideas and images that are components of the Collective Unconscious.

 

Arousal: the body's level of alertness and activation as reflected in certain physiological responses such as heart rate or muscle tension.

 

Articulatory-Phonological Loop: see Working Memory Model.

'As If' Frame: an NLP exercise in which the individual imagines they have already achieved a desired state or outcome or overcome a limiting belief (maladaptive schema). They then associate into that state, absorbing its qualities. The exercise gives powerful insights into how to achieve a desired state and on occasion may even free someone from a limiting belief.

 

Ascription: the occupying of jobs, authority within the family and political roles on the basis of inheritance or fixed characteristics such as gender and race.

Asperger's Syndrome: see Autism.

 

Assimilation: see Accomodation.

Assimilation-Contrast Effect: from the work of Muzafer Sherif, this is the recognition that the more extreme someone's views are in a conflict or disagreement, the more they will reject other views - even those which are more moderate versions of their own - such is the contrast they draw. On the other hand, someone with relatively moderate views is more likely to at least partially assimilate the views of moderates on the other side.
Don Beck has done some work on mapping vMEMES to the Assimilation-Contrast Effect and come to the conclusion that BLUE and below are more likely to contrast while the emergence of ORANGE in the hierarchy substantially increases the possibilities of assimilation.

 

Association: a connection or link made between two things that are often presented together - eg: milk and mother.

 

Association Areas: parts of the cerebral cortex involved in higher-order processing - such as associations between sensory and motor activity as well as language.

Association Hypothesis: George Williams' explanation of parental investment - that the adult left in closest proximity to the embryo will be the one that tends to care for the offspring. Where external fertilisation takes place, this will usually be the male; where fertilisation is internal, this will be the female.

Attachment: generally taken to mean a binding affection; in Developmental Psychology it is used more specifically with reference to the strong and reciprocal emotional tie between an infant and its primary caregiver(s) which causes the desire to maintain proximity.

 

Attachment Deprivation: the detrimental effect when separation from an attachment figure is lengthy enough for bond disruption to take place. (The separation does not necessarily have to be continuous; repeated short-term separations within a close time frame can also be damaging.)

In Developmental Psychology research into the effects of attachment deprivation has largely focused on the damage to infant attachment to the mother or primary caregiver. However, attachment deprivation can also occur (in different ways and with different effects) in all emotionally-significant relationships in all ages of life.

 

Attachment Figure:

 

Attachment Type: from working with Strange Situation procedures, Mary Ainsworth & S M Bell identified 3 ways in which infants attached to their mothers (or primary caregivers):-

• Type B - Secure: infants are confident to explore the world when mother is present, show distress in her absence and greet her warmly when she returns
• Type C - Anxious-Resistant: infants show signs of anxiety even in mother's presence, are considerably distressed in her absence and will be both clingy and angry when she returns
• Type A - Anxious-Avoidant: infants show little or no concern in the mother's absence or pleasure when she returns

Mary Main & Judith Solomon later identified a fourth type,

• Type D - Disorganised: infants - often those who have been abused or whose mothers are chronically depressed - show no set pattern of behaviour in mother's presence or absence.

The type of attachment formed can be seen as reflecting the health of the PURPLE vMEME. The famous 'Love Quiz' studies demonstrated the importance of attachment types influencing relationships in later life, particularly romantic/sexual ones.

 

Attention: the focusing of perception leading to heightened awareness of specific stimuli, resulting in further processing of the information.

In Richard Atkinson & Richard Schiffrin’s Multi-Store Model of Memory, attention is the means of transferring information from the sensory stores to short-term memory.

Attribution Theory: developed from the work of Fritz Heider, this approach is about the attribution of causality and whether it is dispositional (you are the maker of your own fortunes) or situational (you are at the mercy of external forces).
Building on Heider's work, Julian Rotter established that people do tend to attribute one way or the other in most things throughout their lives - though the degree of directional attribution will vary (as on a scale) from issue to issue. Rotter concluded that an individual's preference for dispositional or situational attribution may lie in innate tendencies, with contextual reward or punishment refining the degree of attribution.
Attribution Theory has influenced 'positive thinking gurus' from Dale Carnegie through to Stephen Covey and beyond.
However, just using a dispositional-situational approach is often too simplistic for many people in many situations. The finer attributional structure of the Cognitive Triad enables much deeper analysis of how vMEMES influence meta-stating patterns.

 

Auditory Cortex: the part of the cerebral cortex dedicated to hearing, located in the temporal lobes.

Authoritarian Personality: the type of person famously identified by Theodore Adorno as having rigid beliefs, being hostile towards other groups and non-conformists and likely to be highly submissive to the 'correct authority'.
Adorno was one of the many behavioural scientists in the post-World War II era investigating how supposedly 'ordinary, decent' Germans could have carried out large-scale barbarous and horrifically-cruel acts under the Nazis. His work led him to conclude that the answer lay in personality traits and that such people were authoritarian personalities.
In Integrated SocioPsychology terms, this kind of person would have a very high quotient of the BLUE vMEME in their thinking, probably dominating in a harmonic with PURPLE and quite possibly fuelled in extremes by Psychoticism.

 

Autism: a mental disorder characterised by 'self-orientation'.
The disorder becomes apparent in early childhood and typically involves avoidance of social contact. abnormal language and 'stereotypic' behaviours - eg: rocking or obsessive routines.
Most people with Autism have low IQ and often associated neurological problems such as epilepsy. However, those with Asperger's Syndrome, while displaying the characteristic symptoms of Autism, typically have higher than average IQ.

 

Autistic Savant: someone with Autism who demonstrates remarkable ability or skill in a particular area - eg: the ability to produce detailed drawings from memory.

 

Autokinetic Effect: a visual illusion where a small spot of light is viewed in darkened room and appears to be moving - though it is, in fact, stationary.
Famously used by Muzafer Sherif in his experiments to establish the principles of Informational Social Influence.

 

Autonomic Nervous System (ANS): this controls involuntary muscles, such as those of the stomach and the heart, and the endocrine system which produces and distributes hormones. There are two branches of the ANS which work antagonistically to maintain homeostasis:-

• Sympathetic - arouses
• Parasympathetic - relaxes

 

Aversion Therapy: based on Classical Conditioning, this therapy eliminates undesirable behaviour by associating the behaviour with something unpleasant - eg: giving alcoholics a drug that makes them vomit every time they consume alcohol.
While it is often highly effective, many people in Psychiatry and Psychology have serious ethical concerns about the use of Aversion Therapy.

 

Axon: a single nerve fibre that projects from the cell body of a neuron and transmits the action potential to another neuron or target organ.