GLOSSARY OF PSYCHIATRIC TERMS

Abreaction - An emotional release or discharge after recalling a painful experience that has been repressed because it was not consciously tolerable. Often the release is surprising to the individual experiencing it because of it's intensity and the circumstances surrounding its onset.  A therapeutic effect sometimes occurs through partial or repeated discharge of the painful affect.

Abulia -  A lack of will or motivation which is often expressed as inability to make decisions or set goals. Often, the reduction in impulse to action and thought is coupled with an indifference or lack of concern about the consequences of action.

 

Acalculia - The loss of a previously possessed ability to engage in arithmetic calculation.

 

Acculturation difficulty - A problem stemming from an inability to appropriately adapt to a different culture or environment. The problem is not based on any coexisting mental disorder.

Acetylcholine - A neurotransmitter in the brain, which helps to regulate memory, and in the peripheral nervous system, where it affects the actions of skeletal and smooth muscle.

Acting out -  This is the process of expressing unconscious emotional conflicts or feelings via actions rather than words. The person is not consciously aware of the meaning or etiology of such acts. Acting out may be harmful or, in controlled situations, therapeutic (e.g., children's play therapy).

Actualization -  The realization of one's full potential - intellectual, psychological, physical

Acute Schizophrenia (a-cute skiz-o-fre-ne-ah):
The height of symptoms of schizophrenia.

Adiadochokinesia -   The inability to perform rapid alternating movements of one or more of the extremities.  This task is sometimes requested by physicians of patients during physical examinations to determine if there exists neurological problems.

Affect - pattern of observable behaviours which is the expression of a subjectively experienced feeling state (emotion) and is variable over time in response to changing emotional states

Affective Disorder (ah-feck-tiv dis-or-der):
A mental disorder in which the main symptom is an abnormal mood; usually depression or mania.

Affective disorders -  A mental disorder which refers to disorders of mood.  Examples would include Major Depressive Disorder, Dysthymia, Depressive Disorder, Bipolar Disorder...

Affective Flattening:
Limited range and intensity of emotional expression. A "negative" symptom of schizophrenia.

Age-associated memory impairment (AAMI) -  The mild disturbance in memory function that occurs normally with aging; benign senescent forgetfulness.  Such lapses in memory are lately humorously referred to as representing "a senior moment".

Agitation -  Excessive motor activity that accompanies and is associated with a feeling of inner tension. The activity is usually non-productive and repetitious and consists of such behavior as pacing, fidgeting, wringing of the hands, pulling of clothes, and inability to sit still.

Agnosia -  Failure to recognize or identify objects despite intact sensory function; This may be seen in dementia of various types.  An example would be the failure of someone to recognize a paper clip placed in their hand while keeping their eyes closed.

Agnostic alexia - words can be seen but cannot be read.

Agonist medication -  A chemical entity that is not naturally occuring within the body which acts upon a receptor and is capable of producing the maximal effect that can be produced by stimulating that receptor. A partial agonist is capable only of producing less than the maximal effect even when given in a concentration sufficient to bind with all available receptors.

Agoraphobia - literally a fear of the market place. Generally high levels of anxiety and phobic symptoms. May include a fear of crowds, open and closed spaces and travelling by public transport

Agranulocytosis (ah-gran-yu-lo-si-to-sis):
A serious condition in which white blood cells decrease in number or disappear altogether. This can be a side-effect of an antipsychotic medication called clozapine (brand name Clozaril^®).

Agraphia -  The loss of a pre-existing ability to express one's self through the act of writing.

Akathisia - The medical word for extreme restlessness, one complaints of restlessness accompanied by movements such as fidgeting of the legs, rocking from foot to foot, pacing, or inability to sit or stand. Symptoms can develop within a few weeks of starting or raising the dose of traditional neuroleptic medications or of reducing the dose of medication used to treat extra pyramidal symptoms. Akathisia is a state of motor restlessness ranging from a feeling of inner disquiet to inability to sit still or lie quietly.

Akinesia - A state of motor inhibition or reduced voluntary movement.

Akinesia  Loss or impairment of voluntary activity.

Akinetic mutism -  A state of apparent alertness with following eye movements but no speech or voluntary motor responses.

Alexia -  Loss of a previously intact ability to grasp the meaning of written or printed words and sentences.

Alexithymia -  A disturbance in affective and cognitive function that can be present in an assortment of diagnostic entities. The chief manifestations are difficulty in describing or recognizing one's own emotions, a limited fantasy life, and general constriction in affective life.

Algophobia -  Fear of pain.

Alienation -  The estrangement felt in a setting one views as foreign, unpredictable, or unacceptable. For example, in depersonalization phenomena, feelings of unreality or strangeness produce a sense of alienation from one's self or environment.

Alogia -  An impoverishment in thinking that is inferred from observing speech and language behavior. There may be brief and concrete replies to questions and restriction in the amount of spontaneous speech (poverty of speech). Sometimes the speech is adequate in amount but conveys little information because it is overconcrete, overabstract, repetitive, or stereotyped (poverty of content). This is a “negative” symptom of schizophrenia.

Ambitendency - series or tentative, incomplete movements carried out when a voluntary action is anticipated.

Ambivalence -  The coexistence of contradictory emotions, attitudes, ideas, or desires with respect to a particular person, object, or situation. Ordinarily, the ambivalence is not fully conscious and suggests psychopathology only when present in an extreme form.

Amenorrhea (a-men-o-re-ah):
Absence of menstrual periods. This can be a side-effect of antipsychotic medications.

Amentia -  Subnormal development of the mind, with particular reference to intellectual capacities; a type of severe mental retardation.

Amimia -  A disorder of language characterized by an inability to make gestures or to understand the significance of gestures.

Amnesia -  Loss of memory. Types of amnesia include: anterograde Loss of memory of events that occur after the onset of the etiological condition or agent. retrograde Loss of memory of events that occurred before the onset of the etiological condition or agent.

Amnestic aphasia - Loss of the ability to name objects.

Amok - seen in South-East Asia. Outburst of aggressive behaviour in which the patient runs 'amok' during a depressive episode

Anaclitic -  In psychoanalytic terminology, dependence of the infant on the mother or mother substitute for a sense of well-being. This is considered normal behavior in childhood, but pathologic in later years.

Anal stage -  The period of pregenital psychosexual development, usually from 1 to 3 years, in which the child has particular interest and concern with the process of defecation and the sensations connected with the anus. The pleasurable part of the experience is termed anal eroticism. 

Anamnesis -  The developmental history of a patient and of his or her illness, especially recollections.

Anankastic personality -  Synonym for obsessive-compulsive personality.

Anhedonia -  Inability to experience pleasure from activities that usually produce pleasurable feelings. Contrast with hedonism.

Anima -  In Jungian psychology, a person's inner being as opposed to the character or persona presented to the world. Further, the anima may be the more feminine "soul" or inner self of a man, and the animus the more masculine soul of a woman.

Anomie -  Apathy, alienation, and personal distress resulting from the loss of goals previously valued. Emile Durkheim popularized this term when he listed it as a principal reason for suicide.

Anosognosia - lack of awareness of a disease

Antagonist:
Medication, hormone, or neurotransmitter that binds to a receptor and prevents a response.

Anticholinergic:
Blocking the action of acetylcholine, one of the chemicals the body makes to help nerve cells communicate with each other. This describes a group of the most common side-effects of psychotropic medications, including dry mouth, blurry vision, palpitations, and constipation.

Antidepressant:
Medication used to treat depression.

Antipsychotic:
Medication used to treat psychosis. (See psychosis.)

Anxiety: The apprehensive anticipation of future danger or misfortune accompanied by a feeling of dysphoria or somatic symptoms of tension. The focus of anticipated danger may be internal or external.  Anxiety is often distinguished from fear in that fear is a more appropriate word to use when there exists threat or danger in the real world.  Anxiety is reflective more of a threat that is not apparent or imminent in the real world, at least not to the experienced degree.

Anxiolytics:
Medications used to reduce serious anxiety, tension, and agitation. They used to be known as minor tranquilizers.

Apathy -  Lack of feeling, emotion, interest, or concern.

Aphasia An impairment in the understanding or transmission of ideas by language in any of its forms--reading, writing, or speaking--that is due to injury or disease of the brain centers involved in language.

Aphonia An inability to produce speech sounds that require the use of the larynx that is not due to a lesion in the central nervous system.

Apperception Perception as modified and enhanced by one's own emotions, memories, and biases.

Apraxia: Inability to carry out previously learned skilled motor activities despite intact comprehension and motor function; this may be seen in dementia.

Assimilation: A Piagetian term describing a person's ability to comprehend and integrate new experiences.

Astereognosis: Inability to recognize familiar objects by touch that cannot be explained by a defect of elementary tactile sensation.

Ataxia: Partial or complete loss of coordination of voluntary muscular movement.

Attention: The ability to focus in a sustained manner on a particular stimulus or activity. A disturbance in attention may be manifested by easy distractibility or difficulty in finishing tasks or in concentrating on work

Auditory hallucination: A hallucination involving the perception of sound, most commonly of voices. Some clinicians and investigators would not include those experiences perceived as coming from inside the head and would instead limit the concept of true auditory hallucinations to those sounds whose source is perceived as being external.

Aura: A premonitory, subjective brief sensation (e.g., a flash of light) that warns of an impending headache or convulsion. The nature of the sensation depends on the brain area in which the attack begins. Seen in migraine and epilepsy.

Autoeroticism: Sensual self-gratification. Characteristic of, but not limited to, an early stage of emotional development. Includes satisfactions derived from genital play, masturbation, fantasy, and oral, anal, and visual sources.

Automatism: Automatic and apparently undirected non-purposeful behaviour that is not consciously controlled. Seen in psychomotor epilepsy.

Autoscopy: phantom mirror image - hallucination in which one sees and recognizes oneself

Autotopagnosia: Inability to localize and name the parts of one's own body. finger agnosia would be autotopagnosia restricted to the fingers.

Avolition: An inability to initiate and persist in goal-directed activities. When severe enough to be considered pathological, avolition is pervasive and prevents the person from completing many different types of activities (e.g., work, intellectual pursuits, and self-care). A "negative" symptom of schizophrenia.

B

 

Beta-blocker - An agent that inhibits the action of beta-adrenergic receptors, which modulate cardiac functions, respiratory functions, and the dilation of blood vessels. Beta-blockers are of value in the treatment of hypertension, cardiac arrhythmias, and migraine. In psychiatry, they have been used in the treatment of aggression and violence, anxiety-related tremors and lithium-induced tremors, neuroleptic-induced akathisia, social phobias, panic states, and alcohol withdrawal.

Bizarre delusion - A delusion that involves a phenomenon that the person's culture would regard as totally implausible.

Blocking - A sudden obstruction or interruption in spontaneous flow of thinking or speaking, perceived as an absence or deprivation of thought.

Blunted affect - reduction in emotional expression

Body image - One's sense of the self and one's body.

Bipolar Disorder:
An affective disorder characterized by extreme changes in mood ranging from mania to depression. This mood disturbance is also known as manic depression.

Bradykinesia - Neurologic condition characterized by a generalized slowness of motor activity.

Broca's aphasia Loss of the ability to comprehend language coupled with production of inappropriate language.

Bruxism Grinding of the teeth, occurs unconsciously while awake or during stage 2 sleep. May be secondary to anxiety, tension, or dental problems.

C

Capgras' syndrome - a person who is familiar to the patient is believed to have been replaced by a double

Catalepsy Waxy flexibility--rigid maintenance of a body position over an extended period of time.

Cataplexy Episodes of sudden bilateral loss of muscle tone resulting in the individual collapsing, often in association with intense emotions such as laughter, anger, fear, or surprise.

Catatonic behaviour Marked motor abnormalities including motor immobility (i.e., catalepsy or stupor), certain types of excessive motor activity (apparently purposeless agitation not influenced by external stimuli), extreme negativism (apparent motiveless resistance to instructions or attempts to be moved) or mutism, posturing or stereotyped movements, and echolalia or echopraxia

Catatonic Schizophrenia (kat-a-ton-ik skiz-o-fre-ne-ah):
Schizophrenia characterized by marked disturbance which may involve stupor, negativism, rigidity, excitement, or posturing.

Catharsis The healthful (therapeutic) release of ideas through "talking out" conscious material accompanied by an appropriate emotional reaction. Also, the release into awareness of repressed ("forgotten") material from the unconscious. See also repression.

Cathexis Attachment, conscious or unconscious, of emotional feeling and significance to an idea, an object, or, most commonly, a person.

Causalgia A sensation of intense pain of either organic or psychological origin.

Central (syntactical) aphasia - difficult in arranging words in their correct sequence

Central Nervous System (CNS):
The brain and spinal cord. The CNS is responsible for coordinating the activities of all parts of the brain and spinal cord.

Cerea flexibilitas The "waxy flexibility" often present in catatonic schizophrenia in which the patient's arm or leg remains in the position in which it is placed.

Chronic Schizophrenia (kron-ik skiz-o-fre-ne-ah):
A disorder in which the symptoms of schizophrenia persist long-term.

Circumstantiality - slowed thinking incorporating unnecessary trivial details. Eventually the goal of the thought is reached

CT Scanning (Computerized Tomography) (to-mog-raf-ee):
A technique using x-rays or ultrasound waves to produce an image of interior parts of the body. For example, within the skull it can be used to view parts of the brain as an aid to diagnosis.

Clanging - speech in which words are chosen because of their sounds rather than their meanings. It includes rhyming and punning

Climacteric - Menopausal period in women. Sometimes used to refer to the corresponding age period in men. Also called involutional period.

Clouding of consciousness - the patient is drowsy and does not react completely to stimuli. there is disturbance of attention, concentration, memory, orientation and thinking.

Coenestopathic state - localized distortion of body awareness

Cognitive - Pertaining to thoughts or thinking. Cognitive disorders are disorders of thinking, for example, schizophrenia.

Comorbidity The simultaneous appearance of two or more illnesses, such as the co-occurrence of schizophrenia and substance abuse or of alcohol dependence and depression. The association may reflect a causal relationship between one disorder and another or an underlying vulnerability to both disorders. Also, the appearance of the illnesses may be unrelated to any common etiology or vulnerability.

Compensation A defense mechanism, operating unconsciously, by which one attempts to make up for real or fancied deficiencies. Also a conscious process in which one strives to make up for real or imagined defects of physique, performance skills, or psychological attributes. The two types frequently merge. See also overcompensation.

Compulsion Repetitive ritualistic behavior such as hand washing or ordering or a mental act such as praying or repeating words silently that aims to prevent or reduce distress or prevent some dreaded event or situation. The person feels driven to perform such actions in response to an obsession or according to rules that must be applied rigidly, even though the behaviors are recognized to be excessive or unreasonable.

Conative Pertains to one's basic strivings as expressed in behaviour and actions

Concrete thinking - lack of abstract thinking, normal in childhood, and occurring in adults with organic brain disease and schizophrenia

Condensation A psychological process, often present in dreams, in which two or more concepts are fused so that a single symbol represents the multiple components.

Confabulation - gaps in memory are unconsciously filled with false memories

Confrontation A communication that deliberately pressures or invites another to self-examine some aspect of behaviour in which there is a discrepancy between self-reported and observed behaviour.

Constricted affect Affect type that represents mild reduction in the range and intensity of emotional expression.

Constructional apraxia An acquired difficulty in drawing two-dimensional objects or forms, or in producing or copying three-dimensional arrangements of forms or shapes.

Contingency reinforcement In operant or instrumental conditioning, ensuring that desired behavior is followed by positive consequences and that undesired behavior is not rewarded.

Conversion A defense mechanism, operating unconsciously, by which intrapsychic conflicts that would otherwise give rise to anxiety are instead given symbolic external expression. The repressed ideas or impulses, and the psychological defenses against them, are converted into a variety of somatic symptoms. These may include such symptoms as paralysis, pain, or loss of sensory function.

Coping mechanisms Ways of adjusting to environmental stress without altering one's goals or purposes; includes both conscious and unconscious mechanisms.

Coprophagia: Eating of filth or faeces.

Cotard's syndrome - nihilistic delusional disorder in which, for example, patients believe that their money, friends or body parts do not exist

Counterphobia Deliberately seeking out and exposing onself to, rather than avoiding, the object or situation that is consciously or unconsciously feared.

Countertransference The therapist's emotional reactions to the patient that are based on the therapist's unconscious needs and conflicts, as distinguished from his or her conscious responses to the patient's behavior. Countertransference may interfere with the therapist's ability to understand the patient and may adversely affect the therapeutic technique. Currently, there is emphasis on the positive aspects of countertransference and its use as a guide to a more empathic understanding of the patient.

Cretinism A type of mental retardation and bodily malformation caused by severe, uncorrected thyroid deficiency in infancy and early childhood.

Cri du chat A type of mental retardation. The name is derived from a catlike cry emitted by children with this disorder, which is caused by partial deletion of chromosome 5.

Culture-specific syndromes Forms of disturbed behavior specific to certain cultural systems that do not conform to western nosologic entities. Some commonly cited syndromes are the following: amok; koro; latah; piblokto, and windigo.

D

Da Costa's syndrome Neurocirculatory asthenia; "soldier's heart"; a functional disorder of the circulatory system that is usually a part of an anxiety state or secondary to hyperventilation.

Decompensation The deterioration of existing defenses, leading to an exacerbation of pathological behavior.

Defense mechanism Automatic psychological process that protects the individual against anxiety and from awareness of internal or external stressors or dangers. Defense mechanisms mediate the individual's reaction to emotional conflicts and to external stressors. Some defense mechanisms (e.g., projection, splitting, and acting out) are almost invariably maladaptive. Others, such as suppression and denial, may be either maladaptive or adaptive, depending on their severity, their inflexibility, and the context in which they occur.

Déjà pensé - illusion of recognition of a new thought

Déjà vu - illusion or recognition of a situation

Delirium - disorder of consciousness in which the patient is bewildered, disoriented and restless. There may be associated fear and hallucinations

Delusion - false personal belief based on incorrect inference about external reality and firmly held despite evidence to the contrary. Not explicable on the grounds of the patients cultural or social background.

Delusion (illusion) of doubles ( l'illusion de soises)  - delusional belief that a person known to an individual has been replaced by a double. It is seen in Capgras' syndrome.

Delusional jealousy The delusion that one's sexual partner is unfaithful. erotomanic A delusion that another person, usually of higher status, is in love with the individual.

Delusional perception - new and delusional significance is attached to a familiar  real perception without any logical reason.

Delusions of infidelity - (pathological jealousy, delusional jealousy, Othello's syndrome) delusional belief that one's spouse or lover is being unfaithful.

Delusions of reference - the behaviour of others or objects and event (e.g. television broadcasts) believed to refer to oneself in particular. When similar thoughts are held with less than delusional intensity they are called ideas of reference.

Dementia - global organic impairment of intellectual functioning without impairment of consciousness.

Denial - defense mechanism in which the subject acts as if consciously unaware of a wish or reality.

Depersonalization An alteration in the perception or experience of the self so that one feels detached from, and as if one is an outside observer of, one's mental processes or body (e.g., feeling like one is in a dream).

Depressive retardation - lesser form of psychomotor retardation which occurs in depression.

Derailment ("loosening of associations") A pattern of speech in which a person's ideas slip off one track onto another that is completely unrelated or only obliquely related. In moving from one sentence or clause to another, the person shifts the topic idiosyncratically from one frame of reference to another and things may be said in juxtaposition that lack a meaningful relationship. This disturbance occurs between clauses, in contrast to incoherence, in which the disturbance is within clauses. An occasional change of topic without warning or obvious connection does not constitute derailment.

Derealization An alteration in the perception or experience of the external world so that it seems strange or unreal (e.g., people may seem unfamiliar or mechanical).

Dereistic Mental activity that is not in accordance with reality, logic, or experience.

Detachment A behavior pattern characterized by general aloofness in interpersonal contact; may include intellectualization, denial, and superficiality.

Diplopia Double vision due to paralysis of the ocular muscles; seen in inhalant intoxication and other conditions affecting the oculomotor nerve.

Disconnection syndrome Term coined by Norman Geschwind (1926-1984) to describe the interruption of information transferred from one brain region to another.

Disinhibition Freedom to act according to one's inner drives or feelings, with less regard for restraints imposed by cultural norms or one's superego; removal of an inhibitory, constraining, or limiting influence, as in the escape from higher cortical control in neurologic injury, or in uncontrolled firing of impulses, as when a drug interferes with the usual limiting or inhibiting action of GABA within the central nervous system.

Disorientation Confusion about the time of day, date, or season (time), where one is (place), or who one is (person).

Displacement A defense mechanism, operating unconsciously, in which emotions, ideas, or wishes are transferred from their original object to a more acceptable substitute; often used to allay anxiety.

Dissociative disorder - disorder in which there is a disturbance in the normal integration or awareness of identity, consciousness, memory and control of body movements.

Distractibility The inability to maintain attention, that is, the shifting from one area or topic to another with minimal provocation, or attention being drawn too frequently to unimportant or irrelevant external stimuli.

Double bind Interaction in which one person demands a response to a message containing mutually contradictory signals, while the other person is unable either to comment on the incongruity or to escape from the situation.

Drive Basic urge, instinct, motivation; a term used to avoid confusion with the more purely biological concept of instinct.

DSM-IV - fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical  Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association, Washington DC (1994). Multiaxial classification with 5 axes.

Dyad A two-person relationship, such as the therapeutic relationship between doctor and patient in individual psychotherapy.

Dysarthria Imperfect articulation of speech due to disturbances of muscular control or in coordination.

Dysgeusia Perversion of the sense of taste.

Dyskinesia Distortion of voluntary movements with involuntary muscular activity.

Dyslexia Inability or difficulty in reading, including word-blindness and a tendency to reverse letters and words in reading and writing.

Dysphoric mood An unpleasant mood, such as sadness, anxiety, or irritability.

Dyssomnia Primary disorders of sleep or wakefulness characterized by insomnia or hypersomnia as the major presenting symptom. Dyssomnias are disorders of the amount, quality, or timing of sleep.

Dystonia Disordered tonicity of muscles.

E

 

Echolalia - automatic imitation of another's speech.

Echopraxia Repetition by imitation of the movements of another. The action is not a willed or voluntary one and has a semiautomatic and uncontrollable quality.

Ecstasy - feeling of intense rapture.

Ego - part of the mental apparatus that is present at the interface of the perceptual and internal demand systems. It controls voluntary thoughts and actions, and, at an unconscious level, defense mechanisms.

Ego ideal The part of the personality that comprises the aims and goals for the self; usually refers to the conscious or unconscious emulation of significant figures with whom one has identified. The ego ideal emphasizes what one should be or do in contrast to what one should not be or not do.

Ego-dystonic Referring to aspects of a person's behavior, thoughts, and attitudes that are viewed by the self as repugnant or inconsistent with the total personality.

Egomania - pathological preoccupation with oneself.

Eidetic image - vivid and detailed reproduction of a previous perception e.g. a photographic memory.

Elaboration An unconscious process consisting of expansion and embellishment of detail, especially with reference to a symbol or representation in a dream.

Elevated mood An exaggerated feeling of well-being, or euphoria or elation. A person with elevated mood may describe feeling "high," "ecstatic," "on top of the world," or "up in the clouds."

Engram A memory trace; a neurophysiological process that accounts for persistence of memory

Erotomania  (de Clérambault's syndrome) - patient holds the delusional belief that someone else, usually of a higher social or professional status, is in love with them.

Ethnology A science that concerns itself with the division of human beings into races and their origin, distribution, relations, and characteristics.

Euphoric mood - exaggerated feeling of well-being. It is pathological.

Euthymic Mood in the "normal" range, which implies the absence of depressed or elevated mood.

Expansive mood Lack of restraint in expressing one's feelings, frequently with an overvaluation of one's significance or importance. irritable Easily annoyed and provoked to anger.

Expressive (motor) aphasia - difficulty in expressing thoughts in words whilst comprehension remains.

Extinction The weakening of a reinforced operant response as a result of ceasing reinforcement. See also operant conditioning. Also, the elimination of a conditioned response by repeated presentations of a conditioned stimulus without the unconditioned stimulus. See also respondent conditioning.

Extracampine hallucination - hallucination occurring outside one's sensory field.

Extraversion A state in which attention and energies are largely directed outward from the self as opposed to inward toward the self, as in introversion.

F

Fantasy An imagined sequence of events or mental images (e.g., daydreams) that serves to express unconscious conflicts, to gratify unconscious wishes, or to prepare for anticipated future events.

Flashback A recurrence of a memory, feeling, or perceptual experience from the past.

Flat affect - almost no emotional expression at all -the patient typically has an immobile face and  monotonous voice.

Flight of ideas - speech consists of a stream of accelerated thoughts with abrupt changes from topic to topic and no central direction. the connections between the thoughts may be based on chance relationships, verbal associations (e.g. alliteration and assonance), clang associations and distracting stimuli.

Flooding (implosion) A behavior therapy procedure for phobias and other problems involving maladaptive anxiety, in which anxiety producers are presented in intense forms, either in imagination or in real life. The presentations, which act as desensitizers, are continued until the stimuli no longer produce disabling anxiety.

Folie à deux A shared psychotic disorder between 2 people, usually people who are mutually dependent upon each other.

Formal thought disorder An inexact term referring to a disturbance in the form of thinking rather than to abnormality of content. See blocking; loosening of associations; poverty of speech.

Formication The tactile hallucination or illusion that insects are crawling on the body or under the skin.

Fragmentation Separation into different parts, or preventing their integration, or detaching one or more parts from the rest. A fear of fragmentation of the personality, also known as disintegration anxiety, is often observed in patients whenever they are exposed to repetitions of earlier experiences that interfered with development of the self. This fear may be expressed as feelings of falling apart, as a loss of identity, or as a fear of impending loss of one's vitality and of psychological depletion.

Free association In psychoanalytic therapy, spontaneous, uncensored verbalization by the patient of whatever comes to mind.

Free-floating anxiety - pervasive and unfocused anxiety.

Fregoli's syndrome - patient believes that a familiar person, who is often believed to be the person's persecutor, has taken on different appearances.

Freudian slips (parapraxes) - unconscious thoughts slipping through when one is off guard.

Frotteurism One of the paraphilias, consisting of recurrent, intense sexual urges involving touching and rubbing against a nonconsenting person; common sites in which such activities take place are crowded trains, buses, and elevators. Fondling the victim may be part of the condition and is called toucherism.

Fugue - the individual wanders away from usual surroundings and has loss of memory.

Functional hallucination - the stimulus causing the hallucination is heard in addition to the hallucination. e.g. someone hears 

Fusion The union and integration of the instincts and drives so that they complement each other and help the organism to deal effectively with both internal needs and external demands.

G

Galactorrhea (ga-lak-to-re-ah):
An excessive flow of breast milk in men or women. This is sometimes a side-effect of antipsychotic medications.

Gegenhalten "Active" resistance to passive movement of the extremities that does not appear to be under voluntary control.

Gender dysphoria A persistent aversion toward some or all of those physical characteristics or social roles that connote one's own biological sex.

Gender identity A person's inner conviction of being male or female.

Gender role Attitudes, patterns of behavior, and personality attributes defined by the culture in which the person lives as stereotypically "masculine" or "feminine" social roles.

Global aphasia - both receptive and expressive aphasia present at the same time.

Globus hystericus The disturbing sensation of a lump in the throat.

Glossolalia Gibberish-like speech or "speaking in tongues."

Gradual-Onset Schizophrenia:
Symptoms develop so slowly that it often takes a long period of time before the illness is obvious to the individual, his/her family, or his/her friends.

Grandiosity An inflated appraisal of one's worth, power, knowledge, importance, or identity. When extreme, grandiosity may be of delusional proportions.

Grossly Disorganized Behavior:
Unusual behavior in which the individual acts any number of ways from silly and childlike to angry and aggressive. A "positive" symptom of schizophrenia.

Gustatory hallucination A hallucination involving the perception of taste (usually unpleasant).