The biological transmission of characteristics from parents to offspring.

If something can go wrong it will.

The most common category of PSYCHOSIS and one which covers a wide variety of symptoms and BEHAVIOUR. The term schizophrenia comes from the Greek words schizo (split) and phrenia (mind) and this is the source of an almost universal popular misconception. Split mind (or SPLIT PERSONALITY) is the popular term for MULTIPLE PERSONALITY, in which the split occurs between what appear to be different personalities within the same person. The split in schizophrenia however is between the processes of thinking and feeling within the same person, so that the harmony normally found between a person’s thought, feelings and actions is disrupted. A schizophrenic may smile or show no EMOTION at all when discussing a tragic event, for instance. Difficulties in communication with others. DELUSIONS and HALLUCINATIONS are also common symptoms of schizophrenia.

In PSYCHOANALYSIS, a DEFENCE MECHANISM and a crucial concept in Freudian theory. The essence of repression is the blotting out from CONSCIOUS awareness of disturbing feelings and impulses arising from the ID. They are submerged in the UNCONSCIOUS where they invariably get up to mischief.

Repression is at the root of many NEUROSES including, most strikingly. AMNESIA. Indeed FREUD considered repression the price we pay for civilisation, and psychoanalysis, by making the unconscious conscious, the only way to come to terms with this dilemma. Contrast with INHIBITION.

In STATISTICS it is a MEASURE OF CENTRAL TENDENCY: the most frequently occurring value in a group of numbers.

Strengthening the likelihood that a given BEHAVIOUR will recur by rewarding it. This is the basis of all CONDITIONING. See POSITIVE, NEGATIVE and INTERMITTENT REINFORCEMENT.

The AWARENESS of having violated a SOCIAL NORM of BEHAVIOUR one identifies with, and feeling regret as a result. In PSYCHOANALYSIS, guilt is the result of UNCONSCIOUS conflict where the SUPEREGO predominates and produces symptoms of NEUROSIS if the conflict is unresolved.

A person who fails to meet the level of achievement expected of her. Sometimes used in the field of education to describe someone who doesn’t try hard enough. i.e. a person whose abilities could take her beyond her ambitions. Contrast with OVERACHIEVER.

A technique for learning in which the material is learned as a whole on each practice or repetition. Compare with PART METHOD.

Repeating an EXPERIMENT over again in exactly the same way (though perhaps in a different place with different subjects): a practice that receives a great deal of lip service in PSYCHOLOGY but which is in fact so rare that special journals have been produced solely for the replication of experimental findings. None of them has survived. There’s not much academic mileage in replication.