Keith E Rice - Glossary

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Diagnostic Reliability: criteria can be said to have ‘high diagnostic reliability’ when 2 or more clinicians repeatedly diagnose the same condition based on application of those criteria.

Diathesis-Stress Model: the concept that someone has a predisposition (the 'Diathesis factor') to a psychiatric illness - such as Schizophrenia - which is triggered through environmental circumstances and/or certain behaviours (the 'Stress factor').

Such predispositions are usually innate and are often hereditary in that they are passed on through the genes in successive generations.
However, many people do develop psychological predispositions. For example, Aaron Beck has shown repeatedly that somebody who develops a habitual self-blaming/timeless/global attributional pattern in their execution of the Cognitive Triad will create a predisposition for Depression.
A key point of this model is that, while someone may have a biological or psychological predisposition to a psychiatric illness, that illness is unlikely to develop without the 'Stress factor'.

Dictatorship of the Proletariat: the form of government Karl Marx envisaged as emerging immediately after the revolutionary overthrow of Capitalism and before the establishment of Communism.

In the early days of Soviet Russia V I Lenin championed the notion of Dictatorship of the Proletariat via the Communist Party. However, use of the term has declined somewhat since as some Marxists feel it implies oppression.

Differentiation: the ability to retain one's identity within a family system while maintaining emotional connections with the other members.

Diffusion of Time:
Diffusion of Industry: see Identity Diffusion.

Diffusion of Responsibility: an explanation for the Bystander Effect in which individuals feel less responsibility for taking action in a crisis when there are others about because responsibility is perceived as shared and, therefore, spread out. The more bystanders there are, the less likely any individual is to act.

Dimensions of Temperament: the 3 axes of biologically-based innate temperament identified in the work of Hans J Eysenck (1967; with wife, Sybil, 1976). (Eysenck called them ‘Dimensions of Personality’ - but they are renamed in Integrated Sociopsychololgy due to ongoing dispute among psychologists as to the meaning of the term ‘personality’.)

The degrees of intersection of the Extraversion and Neuroticism axes will influence the formation of Choleric, Sanguine, Phlegmatic and Melancholic personality types. The third axis of Psychoticism considers the degree of impulsiveness and compulsiveness an individual is likely to exhibit in their behaviour.
As temperament is as, if not more, central to our core selves than our cognitive processes, it is vital to map our temperamental patterns and understand how they influence our thoughts and behaviours.

Dimorphism: two manifestations of the same species - eg: adult and juvenile; male and female.

Direct Perception Theory: James Gibson’s (1979) theory of perception based on bottom-up processing.

He argued that the sensory array is sufficiently rich in information for perception to take place without any additional cognitive input.

Gibson’s theory is in direct contrast to Richard Gregory’s (1974) view that perception requires expectation - ie: top down processing.

Direct Tuition: the explicit instruction of one person by another as to what the ‘tutor’ expects of the ‘tutee’.

Directional Hypothesis; see hypothesis.

DISC: the 4 types of behaviour mapped by William Moulton Marston (1928), with qualities such as:-

Dominance - impatient, assertive, forceful, egotistical, strong-willed, venturesome
Inducement - charismatic, optimistic, creative, expressive, emotional, outgoing
Submission - stable, predictable, loyal, dependable, traditional, resistant to change
Compliance - conservative, procedural, orderly, deliberate, concerned, perfectionistic

Marston did not distinguish between temperamental and motivational factors; thus his types largely describe what, in Integrated Sociopsychology, are called centres of gravity.and provide the means of looking at how Dimensions of Temperament influence the play of vMEMES in the selfplex. However, there is considerable fluidity in the relationship between Marston's behavioural types in an individual's psyche and this takes his model beyond being a mere personality typing system.
In the 1970s John Geier developed the DiSC assessment tool from Marston's work, to become one of the most popular psychometric tools used in industry & commerce.

Discourse Analysis: a method of research which involves the analysis of conversation between people.

The technique involves collecting data, coding it and then analysing. The communication can be verbal or recorded - eg: written or taped.

Discrimination: the acting out - in speech and/or behaviour - of prejudice.

Disinhibited Attachment: a pattern of attachment behaviour typical of children who spend time in an institution.

Such behaviour involves clingy, attention-seeking behaviour and indiscriminate social interaction with adults - ie: all adults.

Displacement: one of the ego defence mechanisms first put forward by Sigmund Freud and documented by his daughter, Anna (1936).

In Integrated SocioPsychology, ego defence mechanisms are reframed as selfplex defence mechanisms.

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID): a condition wherein the individual's sense of self becomes fragmented as they seem to be different personalities in different contexts. Unable to reconcile having such different thoughts, feelings and behaviours in different situations, they start to think of themselves as different people in different contexts. (They may or may not give themselves unique names and thereby assume different identities for the different situations.)
There is much contention as to whether DID is different to Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). Ralph Allison, one of the leading experts in the field, contends that DID is qualitatively different to MPD. According to Allison, if a child's sense of self (the selfplex) is cohesive before the traumatic event(s) which act as trigger (sooner, but often later) for the process of dissociation to begin, then the fractured identity of DID is as far it will go. If the trauma takes place before the selfplex is cohesive, then the multiple identities of MPD are more likely to result. Allison gives the age of 7 as the line between whether DID or MPD is likely to be the result. The age of 7 is generally accepted in the Western world as when a child's sense of self is likely to be more or less established. See Dissociative Identity Disorder or Multiple Personality Disorder.

Don Beck & Chris Cowan (1996) have put forward the view that dissociation is the effect of very different vMEMES strongly dominating in different circumstances so that the playing out of the motivations does indeed seem to be that of different personalities at times.

Distributed Function: the proposition that high level cognitive functions are distributed across large areas of the cerebral cortex.

Dizygotic: meaning from two eggs, the term is applied in research to non-identical twins who, like any pair of siblings other than identical (monozygotic) twins, share around 50% the same genes.

DNA: deoxyribonucleic acid is the genetic code.

Each DNA molecule consists of a group of chemicals combined in a variety of ways, thus making it an instruction code for the cell.

Dominant gene: see genes.

Dopamine: a neurotransmitter of the monoamine group which generally has an excitatory effect.

Double Blind: a research procedure in which neither the participants nor the researcher(s) administering the investigation know the its key details.

This is used to minimise investigator effects and so reduce the likelihood of demand characteristics.

Down’s Syndrome: a form of mental and physical impairment caused by chromosome abnormalities.

It is caused by an innate, but not inherited, genetic condition. It is also known as ‘Trisomy 21’ and is the result of a third chromosome on pair 21.

Dualism: a philosophical debate about the relationship between mind and body, in which mind and matter (body) are seen as 2 distinct things.

Although philosophers have puzzled over this since the time of Plato and Aristotle, René Descartes (1650) most eloquently laid down the basic foundations of modern Dualism. There have come to be a number of different variations developed from the concept. See the Mind-Body Problem.