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Separation anxiety disorder
Separation anxiety disorder A disorder with onset before the age of 18 consisting of inappropriate anxiety concerning separation from home or from persons to whom the child is attached. Among the symptoms that may be seen are unrealistic concern about harm befalling or loss of major attachment figures; refusal to go to school (school phobia) in order to stay at home and maintain contact with this figure; refusal to go to sleep unless close to this person; clinging; nightmares about the theme of separation; and development of physical symptoms or mood changes (apathy, depression) when separation occurs or is anticipated.
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Anxiety
A psychological and/or biological response to stress. Feelings of anxiety involve discomforting apprehension or concern, which may include symptoms such as cognitive difficulties, hypersensitivity, dizziness, muscular weakness, breathing difficulties, irregular heart beat, sweating, and sensations of fear. Typically, anxiety is a natural and healthy response to life experiences. However, exaggerated or chronic anxiety often indicates an anxiety disorder. Anxiety can be produced by external stress (exogenous anxiety) or internal stress (endogenous anxiety).
Development
The process of growth and differentiation.
Mood
A pervasive and sustained emotion that colors the perception of the world. Common examples of mood include depression, elation, anger, and anxiety. In contrast to affect, which refers to more fluctuating changes in emotional "weather," mood refers to a more pervasive and sustained emotional "climate." Types of mood include: dysphoric, elevated, euthymic, expansive, irritable.
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Separation anxiety
When an infant or toddler is anxious about being away from her primary caregiver. Infants can have this as early as 7 months, but separation anxiety usually peaks between a year and 18 months.
Separation-individuation
Psychological awareness of one's separateness, described by Margaret Mahler as a phase in the mother-child relationship that follows the symbiotic stage. In the separation-individuation stage, the child begins to perceive himself or herself as distinct from the mother and develops a sense of individual identity and an image of the self as object. Mahler described four subphases of the process: differentiation, practicing, rapprochement (i.e., active approach toward the mother, replacing the relative obliviousness to her that prevailed during the practicing period), and separation-individuation proper (i.e., awareness of discrete identity, separateness, and individuality).
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Suppurative
Containing pus.
Screen memory
A consciously tolerable memory that serves as a cover for an associated memory that would be emotionally painful if recalled.
Secondary gain
The external gain derived from any illness, such as personal attention and service, monetary gains, disability benefits, and release from unpleasant responsibilities. See also primary gain.
Secondary process
In psychoanalytic theory, mental activity and thinking characteristic of the ego and influenced by the demands of the environment. Characterized by organization, systematization, intellectualization, and similar processes leading to logical thought and action in adult life. See also primary process; reality principle.
Sensory extinction
Failure to report sensory stimuli from one region if another region is stimulated simultaneously, even though when the region in question is stimulated by itself, the stimulus is correctly reported.
Separation anxiety disorder
Separation-individuation
Psychological awareness of one's separateness, described by Margaret Mahler as a phase in the mother-child relationship that follows the symbiotic stage. In the separation-individuation stage, the child begins to perceive himself or herself as distinct from the mother and develops a sense of individual identity and an image of the self as object. Mahler described four subphases of the process: differentiation, practicing, rapprochement (i.e., active approach toward the mother, replacing the relative obliviousness to her that prevailed during the practicing period), and separation-individuation proper (i.e., awareness of discrete identity, separateness, and individuality).
Sign
An objective manifestation of a pathological condition. Signs are observed by the examiner rather than reported by the affected individual.
Shaping
Reinforcement of responses in the patient's repertoire that increasingly approximate sought-after behavior.
Sick role
An identity adopted by an individual as a "patient" that specifies a set of expected behaviors, usually dependent.
Signal anxiety
An ego mechanism that results in activation of defensive operations to protect the ego from being overwhelmed by an excess of excitement. The anxiety reaction that was originally experienced in a traumatic situation is reproduced in an attenuated form, allowing defenses to be mobilized before the current threat does, in fact, become overwhelming.
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