The most famous of all PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUES, beloved of cartoonists and comedians. It consists often standardised inkblots developed by Herman Rorschach, a Swiss PSYCHIATRIST. The subject’s FREE ASSOCIATION to the inkblots is examined by the tester in the light of certain categories of response which have been standardised over the years. No diagnosis of a person’s difficulties would ever be made solely on the basis of a Rorschach test but many CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGISTS regard it as a useful first step.

Physical and psychological strain, usually lasting for a period of time which threatens the ability of a person (or an animal) to go on coping with a given situation.

If we receive conflicting stimuli from different sensory MODALITIES, vision is usually the dominant one.

A group of cases or individuals studied as representatives of the population from which they are drawn. See also BIASED SAMPLE and RANDOM SAMPLE.

The first stage of the MEMORY process, lasting less than a second, during which information is recorded by the sense organs. See SHORT-TERM MEMORY and LONG-TERM MEMORY.

Any enduring characteristic of a person.

A sociological way of approaching SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY. It emphasises the part played by language, gestures and other symbols of social interaction in our CONSCIOUS attempts to form ourselves and our world and it regards our human qualities as the products of that social interaction.

In PSYCHOANALYSIS, an infant’s fear of losing his mother. The result of actually losing a mother, or a mother’s love, has received widespread attention beyond that of psychoanalysis. See also MATERNAL DEPRIVATION.

In PSYCHOANALYSIS, a DEFENCE MECHANISM where a person engages in some (usually ritual) activity which he hopes will magically undo an earlier act of his that is disturbing him. This is seen as the mechanism behind OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE NEUROSIS, the classic example of which is Lady Macbeth’s guilty’ hand washing.

A fear of strangers (or. more particularly, of unfamiliar faces) that appears in infants at about 8 months of age.