Lecture 4 - Anxiety Disorders

Defining Fear and Anxiety:

Why is it so prevalent in pathology?

Anxiety Disorders: Symptoms of Anxiety or Fear

• Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Chronic Anxiety
• Panic Disorder: Acute Anxiety
• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Obsessions &/or Compulsions (more next week - comparison with Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder)

• Post-traumatic Stress Disorder: Reexperiencing past trauma
• Acute Stress Disorder: PTSD < 1 month after trauma
• Phobia: Irrational Fear ("Persistent, unreasonable fear and avoidance of a specific object, activity, or situation)
  • Social Phobia
  • Agoraphobia
  • Specific Phobia

**

Case Studies:

Pioneers of Psychoanalytic and Behavioral Txs

• Little Hans (Freud): Phobia due to defense mechanisms of Displacement and Projection.
  • Modern Revisions: Contemporary Psychoanalytic Theory
  • "Play" as child therapy: Where the Wild Things Are
• Little Albert (Watson): Phobia due to classical conditioning.
  • Modern Revision: "Prepared" Conditioning, an evolutionary approach to psychopathology

**

Overlap of the Theories:

Phobic Object as a Substitute for another Feared Stimulus

• Psychoanalytic: Substitution motivated by defense mechanisms
• Behavioral: Substitution by accidental association

• Back to the Psychology 370 Home Page