Pa-Pr

Paradigm: in the broadest sense, a representative model or example of a theory or methodology. According to Thomas Kuhn (1962), it is a general theoretical orientation accepted by the majority of scientists in their particular field.

Paralinguistics: is the study of ‘paralanguage’ - the non-verbal elements of communication used to modify meaning and convey emotion. Paralanguage may be expressed consciously or unconsciously and it includes the pitch, volume, and, in some cases, intonation of speech. Sometimes the definition is restricted to vocally-produced sounds.

Paranoid Personality Disorder: a psychiatric diagnosis characterized by paranoia and a pervasive, long-standing suspiciousness and generalized mistrust of others.

Those with the condition are hypersensitive, are easily slighted, and habitually relate to the world by vigilant scanning of the environment for clues or suggestions to validate their prejudicial ideas or biases. Paranoid individuals are eager observers. They think they are in danger and look for signs and threats of that danger, disregarding any facts. They tend to be guarded and suspicious and have quite constricted emotional lives. Their incapacity for meaningful emotional involvement and the general pattern of isolated withdrawal often lend a quality of schizoid isolation to their life experience

Parapraxis: a parapraxis (aka: the ‘Freudian slip’) is an error in speech, memory, or physical action that is interpreted as occurring due to the interference of some unconscious wish, conflict, or train of thought. The concept was first introduced by Sigmund Freud (1901) is thus part of classical Psychoanalysis.

Slips of the tongue and the pen are the classical parapraxes, but Psychoanalytic Theory also embraces such phenomena as misreadings, mishearings, temporary forgettings, and the mislaying and losing of objects.

Passionate Love: a powerful emotional state involving many contrasting feelings: tenderness and sexual desire, joy and anxiety, excitement and deep despair.

Passionate love is distinguished from the more steady companionate love.

Parental Investment: Robert Trivers' (1972) concept is that any animal parent tries to balance the effort (time and resources) it puts into having and rearing an offspring successfully with the limitations that may impose on future reproductive success.
In mammals the female usually makes the greater parental investment via pregnancy and early child reading. If the male commits himself to support the female in having the child, that may limit his ability to have offspring with other females.
Although Trivers developed his concept from many and various animal studies, it effectively describes the human condition in this respect.

Perceptual Positions: developed by John Grinder & Judith DeLozier (1987) from earlier work by John Grinder & Richard Bandler (1975), the 4 positions are:-

• 1st Position: one's self
• 2nd Position: to be another - to dissociate from self and adopt another's views and values, so that you can see you as he/she sees you
• 3rd Position: to be an observer - to associate into a position where you can see the relationship between the 1st and 2nd Positions
• 4th Position: Meta-Position - to associate into a position where you can see everything from all angles

The 4th/Meta-Position was added later by Robert B Dilts, Tod Epstein & Robert W Dilts (1991). Dilts' Meta-Mirror is a powerful conflict resolution tool working the 4 positions.

Peripheral Nervous System: as distinguished from the central nervous system, which it connects to the outer (peripheral) parts of the body, the peripheral nervous system consists of the sensory pathways (composed of afferent neurons) and the motor pathways (composed of efferent neurons), the latter consisting of the somatic nervous system (under conscious control) and the autonomic nervous system (not under conscious control).

Periphery: in Dependency Theory, Andre Gunder Frank (1971) calls the developing world the ‘periphery’ or ‘satellites’ which are exploited by the ‘core’ or ‘metropolis’ of the Western Capitalist nations.

Immanuel Wallerstein (1979) also uses this concept in World Systems Theory - though he distinguishes between the true ‘periphery’ and the ‘semi-periphery’ of industrialising, low-wage economies, to which the Core has been increasingly outsourcing its services and manufacturing.

Personalisation: a cognitive bias in which is seen as focusing on you. Everything that happens is seen as being connected with you.

Eg: “I bet my partner is unhappy because I’m not good enough.”

PET Scan (Positive Emission Tomography): a method of detecting activity in living brain to determine the function of different regions.

Participants are asked to engage in an activity such as reading. They are given an injection of a mildly radioactive form of glucose and then put in a scanner. Active regions of the brain use the glucose and its radiocactivity is detected by the scanner and displayed on a computer screen.

Phenomenalism: the doctrine that statements about physical objects and the external world can be analysed in terms of possible or actual experiences, and that entities, such as physical objects, are only mental constructions out of phenomenal appearances.

Phenomenology: a philosophy or method of inquiry based on the premise that reality consists of objects and events as they are perceived or understood in human consciousness and not of anything independent of human consciousness.

A movement based on this originated about 1905 by Edmund Husserl. Husserl (1913) distinguishes between pure Phenomenology and empirical Psychology (and between transcendental and psychological subjectivity), saying that Phenomenology is a science of essences, while Psychology is a science of the facts of experience.

Phenotype: the observable characteristics of an individual resulting from interaction between the genes they possess and the environment. In other words, how the genotype develops in life. (For example someone has the genetic potential to develop an IQ of, say 105; but, because of learning experiences and opportunities, their IQ, when measured, is only 98.)

Philosophy: the academic study of knowledge, thought, and the meaning of life.

Phobia: an excessive fear of a specific object or situation which is irrational and disproportionate.

Phrenology: a pseudo-science developed by Franz Josef Gall in the early 19th Century, it was based on the assumptions that:-

• the more developed a mental function was, the larger the corresponding area of the brain was
• the skull shaped itself around the brain

On these bases, Gall 'read' mental capacity, emotions and personality from the bumps on a person's head. Although there are still practicing 'phrenologists', the concept has been completely discredited scientifically.

Physicalist Monism: the most common forms of Monism in Western Philosophy are Physicalist. Physicalistic Monism asserts that the only existing substance is physical, in some sense of that term  - to be clarified by our best science. However, a variety of formulations are possible. These include Behaviourism, Identity Theory, Functionalism and Emergentism.

Pineal Gland: a very small endocrine gland located in the brain which produces the hormone melatonin.

Pituitary Gland: the so-called 'master gland' of the endocrine system because it produces the largest number of different hormones and it controls the secretion of several other endocrine glands.

Polarisation: a cognitive bias in which experiences, self, other people and the future are seen as either wholly bad or wholly good.

People think in terms of rigid categories rather than in degrees of good or bad.

Political Economy: as Economics came to be recognised as a science in its own right in the late 19th Century, the previous term ‘political economy’ was largely superceded. However, recently some economists and sociologists have sought to revive its use, to emphasise how politically charged the subject of Economics often is. In this, they are following the lead of Karl Marx who recognised completely how intertwined Politics and Economics were.

Pons: a structure in the hindbrain containing the reticular formation and associated with arousal and sleep. It connects the midbrain and the medulla.

Positive Punishment:

Positive Reward: forms of Operant Conditioning in which punishment or reward is given to someone as a consequence of their behaviour.

Pragmatism: A philosophical movement consisting of varying but associated theories, originally developed by Charles S Peirce and William James and distinguished by the doctrine that the meaning of an idea or a proposition lies in its observable practical consequences.

Pre-Menstrual Syndrome: (aka PMS) the phase of a woman’s cycle just prior to menstruation when some individuals experience mood swings, increased aggression and other symptoms, both physiological and psychological.

Levels of the hormone progesterone are high at this time in the female cycle.

Predictive Validity: a means of assessing the validity of a psychological test.

It is the degree to which performance on the test predicts later performance on some other criterion. Eg: being able to predict the course of a mental illness and the outcome of treatment from the diagnosis.

Present State-Desired State Planning: an NLP concept which drew originally upon Carl Rogers' (1961) concept of perceived self and the ideal self. In its most basic form, it deals with identifying who and what you are now, who and what you would like to be and the changes needed to achieve the Desired State. At an organisational level, it can bring in standard planning processes but a key element is to balance off changes in the people with changes in the systems and resources (and vice versa).

Presupposition: something taken as true for a condition or state to exist. NLP has between 9 and 13 key presuppositions - depending on the 'guru' being referred to.

Progesterone: one of 2 hormones - the other being oestregen - which controls a woman’s cycle. Progesterone dominates during the latter 2 weeks of the cycle and is associated with decreased sexual desire and, in some women, the onset of Pre-Menstrual Syndrome.

Proletariat: from Latin proletarius, a citizen of the lowest class) a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a member of such a class is proletarian. Originally it was identified as those people who had no wealth other than their children.

In Marxist theory, the proletariat is the class of a Capitalist society that does not have ownership of the means of production and whose only means of subsistence is to sell their labour power

Prime Directive: Don Beck's  (2003) concept that there is an innate programme which, in a healthy person experiencing progressively more complex (but not abnormal) Life Conditions, causes vMEMES to emerge in the hierarchical order of Clare W Graves' 1970) Spiral. To some considerable extent the Prime Directive reflects the actualising tendency, the drive to Self-Actualisation Abraham Maslow (1956) and Carl Rogers (1959) propounded.

Procedural Knowledge: see declarative knowledge.

Property Dualism: like Materialism, it holds that there is only one type of substance: physical. Property Dualism denies the existence of immaterial minds that somehow interact with the physical world, animating unconscious bodies.

Where Property Dualism parts with materialism is that it does not attempt to reduce mental states to physical states. Mental states, according to the property dualist, are irreducible; there is no purely physical analysis of mind.

Property Dualism thus holds that although there is only one type of substance - physical - there are 2 types of property: physical and non-physical. Our bodies have physical properties such weight and height as well as as mental properties such as beliefs and desires.

This position is intended to combine the plausible aspects of both Dualism and Materialism while avoiding the problems of each.

Prosopagnosia: an inability to recognise the faces of other people or one's own features in a mirror.

It is thought to be caused by damage to the underside of both occipital lobes  When there is no evidence of unexplained defective visual acuity or  a loss of consciousness/alertness