Science / Psychiatry Glossary

Learned Helplessness: A condition in which a person attempts to establish and maintain contact with another by adopting a helpless, powerless stance.

Learning Disability: IQ 70 or less

Lethologica: Temporary inability to remember a proper noun or name.

Libido: The psychic drive or energy usually associated with the sexual instinct. (Sexual is used here in the broad sense to include pleasure and love-object seeking.)

Logoclonia: last syllable of the word is repeated

Logorrhoea: fluent and rambling speech using many words

Long-Term Memory: The final phase of memory in which information storage may last from hours to a lifetime.

Loosening Of Associations: A disturbance of thinking shown by speech in which ideas shift from one subject to another that is unrelated or minimally related to the first. Statements that lack a meaningful relationship . . . View Full Definition

Macropsia: The visual perception that objects are larger than they actually are.

Made Actions: delusional belief that ones free will has been removed and an external agency is controlling ones actions

Made Feelings: delusional belief that ones free will has been removed and an external agency is controlling ones feelings

Magical Thinking: The erroneous belief that ones thoughts, words, or actions will cause or prevent a specific outcome in some way that defies commonly understood laws of cause and effect. Magical thinking may . . . View Full Definition

Major Depressive Disorder: A severe mental illness characterized by feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and worthlessness; often accompanied by suicidal thoughts and feeling of an inability to move.

Mania: (mane-e-ah) An emotional disorder characterized by euphoria or irritability, rapid speech, fleeting thoughts, insomnia, poor attention span, grandiosity, and poor judgment; usually occurs in . . . View Full Definition

Manifest Content: The remembered content of a dream or fantasy, as contrasted with latent content, which is concealed and distorted.

Masochism: Pleasure derived from physical or psychological pain inflicted on oneself either by oneself or by others. It is called sexual masochism and classified as a paraphilia when it is consciously . . . View Full Definition

Memory Consolidation: The physical and psychological changes that take place as the brain organizes and restructures information that may become a permanent part of memory.

Mens Rea: guilty state of mind at the time of a criminal act

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