Abnormal psychology is the scientific study of abnormal behaviour in a bid to express, envisage, clarify and modify irregular patterns of functioning. Abnormal psychology, within clinical psychology, examines the nature of psychopathology, its causes and its management. Evidently the definition of what constitutes abnormal has varied across time and civilizations.
Furthermore individuals differ in what they look upon as normal or abnormal behaviour. In general abnormal psychology can be portrayed as an area of psychology that studies people who are constantly incapable of adjusting and functioning effectively in an array of circumstances. The four main contributing factors to how well an individual is capable to adapt consist of their genetic makeup, physical state, education and reasoning skills and socialisation.
There are four main definitions of abnormality these are statistical infrequency, deviation from the social norm, deviation from ideal mental health and a failure to function normally. For the purpose of this paper the author shall describe and evaluate each definition in turn.
Statistical infrequency can be defined, as any form of behaviour that is statistically infrequent is looked upon as abnormal. It is perceived that the majority of the population do not stray from what is classed as normal behaviour. For example, physically we can look at a person's foot size and how the shoe industries produce shoes. When assessing the quantity of how many shoes in each size are required the manufacturers would take into account that over a cross section of the female population their feet fall into a range between size three to size nine. Therefore the manufacturers would produce very few shoes falling out side this range creating the need for those requ ...