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Ronald J. Comer's 'Fundamentals Of Psychology'

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Chapter 1 Reading Comprehension
After reading chapter 1 of Ronald J. Comer’s book, Fundamentals of Psychology, I now have a clear understanding of what clinical psychologists and psychologists, in general, deal with on a daily basis when faced with people who have psychological problems. These psychological problems all have some common features to these abnormalities. These four common features are deviance, distress, dysfunction and danger. To start off, deviance can be described as actions, behaviors, thoughts and emotions that are mostly different than those people who are within the cultural norm. People who break these cultural norms are considered to be deviant, but it is based off of what people consider to be “normal.” These …show more content…

Other practices such as that of a shaman were exorcisms and other operations. In the time of the Romans and Greeks, they viewed abnormalities as a natural cause. One man in particular known as Hippocrates believed this and he began expanding his idea that these abnormalities were caused by a brain pathology that linked with a natural cause illness that developed the abnormality. Treatment would then call for a better and healthier diet and lifestyle. In the middle ages, views of abnormalities came back to the idea of the belief in demons. This was because the church had come to a rise and controlled most of the education system of the people. Like the ancient views of abnormalities the middle age brought back the idea of demonology and performing exorcisms. After the Middle Ages started to wind down, the Renaissance period began to rise and demonology was slowly decreasing. It was believed in this period that the mind was likely to obtain a sickness as much as the body was. Something was influencing the mind and body to become sick and ill, causing these abnormalities. This time period also had shrines that would welcome and care for people who …show more content…

The first method is a case study, which focuses mainly about a person’s day-to-day life and the type of psychological issues they endure. The details it includes are that person’s past and present problems and symptoms. This may help lead to discover what their problem is and how to treat it. The advantages of this method are that it can help create other views and new ideas about the behavior of people. These studies can also serve as a preliminary support for upcoming theories that are discovered and they can also reverse a theory by disputing assumptions made from that theory. Lastly, these case studies can serve by finding new therapeutic techniques by observing patients and taking notes on them. This will also give case studies a chance to help discover possible new abnormalities in people. The disadvantages for the case study method is that they can be biased at times, depending on the way the therapist may set up his treatment to the client. Will it be beneficial for the therapist or the client? The therapist chooses wisely for the sake of their treatment to the client. Secondly, case studies can also be trusted on subjective evidence, which is disadvantageous for both the client and the therapist because neither would know what is responsible for the problem that the client has. Lastly, case studies can provide a sense of general

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