Science / Psychiatry Glossary

Compensation: A defense mechanism, operating unconsciously, by which one attempts to make up for real or fancied deficiencies. Also a conscious process in which one strives to make up for real or imagined . . . View Full Definition

Compulsion: Repetitive ritualistic behavior such as hand washing or ordering or a mental act such as praying or repeating words silently that aims to prevent or reduce distress or prevent some dreaded e . . . View Full Definition

Conative: Pertains to ones basic strivings as expressed in behaviour and actions

Concrete Thinking: lack of abstract thinking, normal in childhood, and occurring in adults with organic brain disease and schizophrenia

Condensation: A psychological process, often present in dreams, in which two or more concepts are fused so that a single symbol represents the multiple components.

Confabulation: gaps in memory are unconsciously filled with false memories

Confrontation: A communication that deliberately pressures or invites another to self-examine some aspect of behaviour in which there is a discrepancy between self-reported and observed behaviour.

Constricted Affect: Affect type that represents mild reduction in the range and intensity of emotional expression.

Constructional Apraxia: An acquired difficulty in drawing two-dimensional objects or forms, or in producing or copying three-dimensional arrangements of forms or shapes.

Contingency Reinforcement: In operant or instrumental conditioning, ensuring that desired behavior is followed by positive consequences and that undesired behavior is not rewarded.

Conversion: A defense mechanism, operating unconsciously, by which intrapsychic conflicts that would otherwise give rise to anxiety are instead given symbolic external expression. The repressed ideas or . . . View Full Definition

Coping Mechanisms: Ways of adjusting to environmental stress without altering ones goals or purposes; includes both conscious and unconscious mechanisms.

Coprophagia: Eating of filth or faeces.

Cotards Syndrome: nihilistic delusional disorder in which, for example, patients believe that their money, friends or body parts do not exist

Counterphobia: Deliberately seeking out and exposing onself to, rather than avoiding, the object or situation that is consciously or unconsciously feared.

Countertransference: The therapists emotional reactions to the patient that are based on the therapists unconscious needs and conflicts, as distinguished from his or her conscious responses to the patients behav . . . View Full Definition

Cretinism: A type of mental retardation and bodily malformation caused by severe, uncorrected thyroid deficiency in infancy and early childhood.

Cri Du Chat: A type of mental retardation. The name is derived from a catlike cry emitted by children with this disorder, which is caused by partial deletion of chromosome 5.

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