See PARALLEL DISTRIBUTED PROCESSING.

A PSYCHOSIS characterised by DELUSIONS, especially delusions of grandeur and delusions persecution. Apart from such delusions, which may be vigorously and even plausibly defended, a paranoiaccan often behave quite normally.

Mathematically, a constant in an equation that defines the form of the curve; in PSYCHOLOGY, it is a constant that defines the curve of a psychological function, like learning. The term is sometimes used loosely, and wrongly, as if it was ‘perimeter’.

The sum total of all the factors that make an individual human being both individual and human: the thinking, feeling and behaving that all human beings have in common, and the particular characteristic pattern of these elements that makes every human being unique. Theorists in this field often stress the integrated and dynamic nature of an individual’s personality and the important role of UNCONSCIOUS processes that may be hidden from the individual but are at least partly perceptible to other people.

The branch of PSYCHOLOGY that deals with the physiological processes underlying BEHAVIOUR.

In HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY a rare moment of great emotional power in which a person feels something akin to ecstasy, where he is at one with himself and with the world. A moment of SELF-ACTUALISATION.

Apparent mistakes of BEHAVIOUR like FORGETTING familiar names or slips of the tongue; known as FREUDIAN SLIPS in PSYCHOANALYTIC thought.

A technique of learning in which the material is broken down into smaller parts to be learned separately and then re- combined. Compare with WHOLE METHOD.

Treating adults like children by withholding from them the power to make decisions affecting their own lives.

From the Latin word for a theatrical mask; Jung’s term for those CONSCIOUS, surface aspects of PERSONALITY which people employ in their everyday social dealings.