Abnormal Psychology

Abnormal psychology is the subdiscipline of psychology concerned with aberrant behavior—its clinical description, etiology, developmental course, assessment, and treatment. Throughout history there have been different approaches to managing abnormal behavior, which itself has been variously conceived. Historically, supernatural explanations of mental illness predominated, but today they have been supplanted by biological and psychological paradigms. Abnormal behavior is most often understood by invoking multiple theoretical perspectives, recognizing that behavior is influenced by...

Abnormal psychology is the subdiscipline of psychology concerned with aberrant behavior—its clinical description, etiology, developmental course, assessment, and treatment. Throughout history there have been different approaches to managing abnormal behavior, which itself has been variously conceived. Historically, supernatural explanations of mental illness predominated, but today they have been supplanted by biological and psychological paradigms. Abnormal behavior is most often understood by invoking multiple theoretical perspectives, recognizing that behavior is influenced by numerous factors and cannot readily be reduced to a single level of analysis. This bibliography contains a section on the History of Understanding and Treatment of Mental Illness, which is followed by a section on Modern Conceptions of Mental Illness. The remaining sections address general Reference Works, Textbooks, Scientific Journals, Research Methods, and issues of assessment and diagnosis (in the section Assessment, Classification and Diagnosis).