Recently, science has ceased to have strict distinctions, today the names "biochemistry" and "biophysics" will not surprise anyone, but it turns out that the process of erasing the framework began a long time ago. In the 30 years of the last century, a new scientific discipline - pathopsychology - formed at the junction of psychology and psychiatry. What is in the sphere of interests of this science, we also have to learn.
How did the science of pathopsychology?
As a science, pathopsychology began its development in the 1930s, during the Second World War and the post-war period when many people with military trauma appeared whose psychic functions needed to be restored. But the rapid development of science reaches by the 1970s. It was then that the foundations of Russian pathopsychology were set forth in the works of the first practical psychologists of our country. Finally, disputes about the tasks, the subject and the place of pathopsychology were completed by the 1980s. Today there is a process of dividing science into separate directions, for example, today the direction of judicial pathopsychology has taken shape.
Subject and object of pathopsychology
Pathopsychology studies the disorders of mental processes and states with the help of psychological methods. In this case, the pathological changes are analyzed on the basis of a comparison with the course and nature of the formation of mental processes and states in individuals whose psychic indices correspond to the norm. Proceeding from the definition, it can be said that pathopsychology is a practical branch of medical psychology, the subject of which is the study of the patterns of the formation of psychopathologies, and the object is considered anomalies and mental disorders of different manifestations, but similar in small severity, that is, bordering on normal ( healthy) states.
Syndromes of pathopsychology
A syndrome is a combination of symptoms of personality disorder or cognition processes that occurs with a certain pattern. In psychopathology, the following syndromes are considered:
- schizophrenic;
- oligophrenic;
- affective-endogenous;
- exogenously organic;
- personality-abnormal;
- endogenous-organic;
- psychogenic-neurotic;
- psychogenic-psychotic.
Principles of pathopsychology
There are different approaches to carrying out pathopsychological studies. Domestic experience of such studies allows us to single out the following principles:
- Psychological experiment. Allows you to investigate mental disorders as an activity disorder. It aims at a qualitative analysis of the forms of mental disorders, the disclosure of the mechanisms of such activities and the ways of its restoration.
- Principle of qualitative analysis. Identifies the features of the course of human mental processes through an analysis of errors that have arisen in him when performing experimental tasks.
- Identical psychopathological symptoms can be caused by different mechanisms and evidence of different states. Therefore, each symptom should be evaluated in conjunction with a full-fledged study.
- The research is carried out with the help of such tasks that actualize the mental operations used by man in his activity. Moreover, actualization should concern the person's personal attitude to his work, its results and himself.
- A pathological experiment must not only discover the structure of altered forms of mental activity, but also preserve them. This is necessary to restore the disturbed functions.
- The experiment should take into account the relationship of a person to experience. Often people with impaired mentality refuse to perform tasks and then the researcher must look for workarounds for the experiment.
- Pathological studies use a large number of techniques. This is because the process of disintegration of the psyche is not a one-level process, and different methods are required to identify all mechanisms.
Problems of pathopsychology affect psychologists of any specializations and specialties, since none of them excludes professional communication with mentally unhealthy people.