Category: R

The process of overcoming a particular life problem, such as gambling, codependency, mental illness, or childhood abuse, through inner change and personal growth, usually through a self-help program or psychotherapy. The process of returning to health after being ill or injured. Freedom from codependency; it often entails a long process of counseling and of reestablishing…

In behavior therapy, the hypothesis that if anxiety-provoking stimuli occur simultaneously with the inhibition of anxiety (e.g., relaxation), the bond between those stimuli and the anxiety will be weakened. The reflex relaxation of the antagonist muscle in response to the contraction of the agonist. The arrangement by which excitation of some neural system is accompanied…

The process of bringing a memory into consciousness. Recall is often used to refer to the recollection of facts, events, and feelings that occurred in the immediate past. A task in which some item must be produced from memory recognition. The act of remembering something from the past. The act of bringing back to mind…

The ability to evaluate the external world objectively and to differentiate adequately between it and the internal world. Falsification of reality, as with massive denial or projection, indicates a severe disturbance of ego functioning and/or of the perceptual and memory processes on which it is partly based. Behavior aimed at testing or exploring the nature…

In psychoanalytic theory, the concept that the pleasure principle, which represents the claims of instinctual wishes, is modified by the demands and requirements of the external world. The reality principle reflects compromises and allows for the postponement of gratification to a more appropriate time. The reality principle usually becomes more prominent in the course of…

One of the learning disorders, characterized by impaired reading accuracy or comprehension that interferes significantly with academic performance or activities of living that require reading skills. Reading achievement is substantially below that expected, given the individual’s age, measured intelligence, and ageappropriate education. A condition that interferes with or prevents comprehension of written or printed material;…

A disorder of infancy or early childhood, with onset before the child is 5 years old, characterized by markedly disturbed and developmentally inappropriate social relatedness. In the inhibited type of reactive attachment disorder, failure to respond predominates, and responses are hypervigilant, avoidant, or highly ambivalent and contradictory. In the disinhibited type, indiscriminate sociability is characteristic,…

In psychiatry, often used synonymously with exogenous to denote symptoms that arise in response to external circumstances or events. Contrast with endogenous. Taking place as a reaction to something else. Describing mental illnesses that are precipitated by events in the psychological environment. For example, reactive depression is distinguished in this way from endogenous depression. Capable…

A defense mechanism, operating unconsciously, in which a person adopts affects, ideas, and behaviors that are the opposites of impulses harbored either consciously or unconsciously. For example, excessive moral zeal may be a reaction to strong but repressed asocial impulses. In psychiatry, defense mechanism in which a person unconsciously develops attitudes and behavior that are…