Psychohistory is an amalgam of psychology, history, and related social sciences and the humanities. Its proponents claim to examine the "why" of history, especially the difference between stated intention and actual behavior. It works to combine the insights of psychology, especially psychoanalysis, with the research methodology of the social sciences and humanities to understand the emotional origin of the behavior of individuals, groups and nations, past and present. Work in the field has been done in the areas of childhood, creativity, dreams, family dynamics, overcoming adversity, personality, political and presidential psychobiography. There are major psychohistorical studies of anthropology, art, ethnology, history, politics and political science, and much else.
Dissociative identity disorder (DID), previously known as multiple personality disorder, is one of multiple dissociative disorders in the DSM-5, DSM-5-TR, ICD-10, ICD-11, and Merck Manual. It has a history of extreme controversy.
A first-person narrative is a mode of storytelling in which a storyteller recounts events from that storyteller's own personal point of view, using first-person grammar such as "I", "me", "my", and "myself". It must be narrated by a first-person character, such as a protagonist, re-teller, witness, or peripheral character. Alternatively, in a visual storytelling medium, the first-person perspective is a graphical perspective rendered through a character's visual field, so the camera is "seeing" out of a character's eyes.
Sexual fetishism or erotic fetishism is a sexual fixation on a nonliving object or body part. The object of interest is called the fetish; the person who has a fetish for that object is a fetishist. A sexual fetish may be regarded as a mental disorder if it causes significant psychosocial distress for the person or has detrimental effects on important areas of their life. Sexual arousal from a particular body part can be further classified as partialism.
Sexual behaviors in children are common, and may range from normal and developmentally appropriate to abusive. These behaviors may include self-stimulation, interest in sex, curiosity about their own or other genders, exhibitionism, voyeurism, gender role behaviors, and engagement in interpersonal sexual acts.
David James Pelzer is an American author of several autobiographical and self-help books. His 1995 memoir of childhood abuse, A Child Called "It": One Child's Courage to Survive, was listed on The New York Times Best Seller list for several years, and in 5 years had sold at least 1.6 million copies. The book brought Pelzer fame, and has also been a source of controversy, with accusations of several events being fabricated coming from both family members and journalists.
In some schools of popular psychology and analytical psychology, the inner child is an individual's childlike aspect. It includes what a person learned as a child before puberty. The inner child is often conceived as a semi-independent subpersonality subordinate to the waking conscious mind. The term has therapeutic applications in counseling and health settings. The concept became known to a broader audience through books by John Bradshaw and others.
A dysfunctional family is a family in which conflict, misbehavior and often child neglect or abuse on the part of individual parents occur continuously and regularly. Children that grow up in such families may think such a situation is normal. Dysfunctional families are primarily a result of two adults, one typically overtly abusive and the other codependent, and may also be affected by substance abuse or other forms of addiction, or sometimes by an untreated mental illness. Parents having grown up in a dysfunctional family may over-correct or emulate their own parents. In some cases, the dominant parent will abuse or neglect their children and the other parent will not object, misleading a child to assume blame.
Betrayal is the breaking or violation of a presumptive contract, trust, or confidence that produces moral and psychological conflict within a relationship amongst individuals, between organizations or between individuals and organizations. Often betrayal is the act of supporting a rival group, or it is a complete break from previously decided upon or presumed norms by one party from the others. Someone who betrays others is commonly known as a traitor or betrayer.
The "lost in the mall" technique or experiment is a memory implantation technique used to demonstrate that confabulations about events that never took place – such as having been lost in a shopping mall as a child – can be created through suggestions made to experimental subjects that their older relative was present at the time. It was first developed by Elizabeth Loftus and her undergraduate student Jim Coan, as support for the thesis that it is possible to implant entirely false memories in people. The technique was developed in the context of the debate about the existence of repressed memories and false memory syndrome.
The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse is a self-help book by poet Ellen Bass and Laura Davis that focuses on recovery from child sexual abuse and has been called "controversial and polarizing".
Complex post-traumatic stress disorder is a stress-related mental disorder generally occurring in response to complex traumas, i.e., commonly prolonged or repetitive exposures to a series of traumatic events, within which individuals perceive little or no chance to escape.
Sexual abuse or sex abuse is abusive sexual behavior by one person upon another. It is often perpetrated using physical force, or by taking advantage of another. Sexual abuse is a term used for a persistent pattern of sexual assaults. The offender is referred to as a sexual abuser. Live streaming sexual abuse involves trafficking and coerced sexual acts, and/or rape, in real time on webcam.
Freud's seduction theory was a hypothesis posited in the mid-1890s by Sigmund Freud that he believed provided the solution to the problem of the origins of hysteria and obsessional neurosis. According to the theory, a repressed memory of child sexual abuse in early childhood or a molestation experience was the essential precondition for hysterical or obsessional symptoms, with the addition of an active sexual experience up to the age of eight for the latter.
Psychoanalytic criminology is a method of studying crime and criminal behaviour that draws from Freudian psychoanalysis. This school of thought examines personality and the psyche for motive in crime. Other areas of interest are the fear of crime and the act of punishment.
Child sexual abuse (CSA), also called child molestation, is a form of child abuse in which an adult or older adolescent uses a child for sexual stimulation. Forms of child sexual abuse include engaging in sexual activities with a child, indecent exposure, child grooming, and child sexual exploitation, such as using a child to produce child pornography.
The relationship between the environment and sexual orientation is a subject of research. In the study of sexual orientation, some researchers distinguish environmental influences from hormonal influences, while other researchers include biological influences such as prenatal hormones as part of environmental influences.
Cry the Darkness: One Woman's Triumph over the Tragedy of Incest is an autobiographical account by Donna L. Friess that details her father's sexual abuse of her and her niece, and how Friess has dealt with it. The book was published in 1993 by Health Communications.
Freshwater is a 2018 autobiographical fiction novel by Nigerian writer Akwaeke Emezi. Emezi's debut novel, it tells the story of Ada, a girl with multiple ogbanje dwelling inside her. A TV series based on the novel is under development by FX.
The influence of childhood trauma on the development of psychopathy in adulthood remains an active research question. According to Hervey M. Cleckley, a psychopathic person is someone who is able to imitate a normal functioning person, while masking or concealing their lack of internal personality structure. This results in an internal disorder with recurrent deliberate and detrimental conduct. Despite presenting themselves as serious, bright, and charming, psychopathic people are unable to experience true emotions. Robert Hare's two factor model and Christopher Patrick's triarchic model have both been developed to better understand psychopathy; however, whether the root cause is primarily environmental or primarily genetic is still in question.
