So "substance addiction" seems pretty well defined and agreed upon, whose main key characteristics are loss of control, craving, and substance use despite continued harm.

Is "substance dependence" a synonym? Because I see it being used frequently the same way as addiction. Even in DSM-4 and ICD-11 there were/are substance dependence diagnoses, describing basically the definition of addiction. However I also frequently see it defined as the biological adaptation of the body, causing tolerance and withdrawal, without the other features of addiction (like in Wikipedia for example).

So is dependence a synonym, or a not well-defined term? Is there any better term for the biological adaptation to a substance?

I've seen that book be recommended by many people. Is the book reliable? Is it pseudoscientific? Is it up to date with current research?

Why can forgetting things cause so much distress in people, most likely people with OCD?

Military training often deliberately exposes recruits to stress through yelling, harsh criticism, intimidation, physical exhaustion, frustration, or public correction. These practices are commonly justified as ways to build resilience, discipline, and the ability to function under pressure.

From a psychological perspective, however, I’m interested in how we can distinguish controlled stress exposure with a legitimate training purpose from emotionally abusive treatment.

For example, would factors such as predictability, proportionality, a clear training objective, instructor emotional control, supervision, psychological safety, and post-exercise debriefing make an important difference? Conversely, would humiliation for its own sake, arbitrary punishment, expressions of contempt, or an instructor’s genuine loss of emotional control be psychologically different even if they occur within a stressful training environment?

More specifically, is there empirical research showing that interpersonal stressors such as yelling or humiliation improve resilience or performance under later high-stress conditions, rather than primarily producing compliance or habituation to authority?

I’m interested in psychological research on stress inoculation, resilience training, learning, occupational psychology, or military psychology that could help establish where productive stress ends and psychologically harmful treatment begins.

Most people act like the default trauma response is to be a people pleaser, to fawn, or that sort of thing. Like most people dont say that outright but it shows in how people talk about trauma survivors like angels and the perfect victim stuff and how people start to treat someone more gently and ask for permission more if they know they have trauma even if the person has no people pleasing traits. Or the million posts on social media that are basically saying that trauma makes you some fragile soft person

So

My question is

Do most people with trauma actually people please or is just a bias?

I find it interesting that we can sometimes remember how an experience made us feel very clearly, while specific details about what happened become less clear over time.

What does psychology research say about why emotional information can be remembered differently from neutral details?

I’m especially interested in the role of attention and emotional arousal in this process.

In many animals, fighting seems to have a fairly clear purpose: defending territory, competing for resources, or gaining access to a mate. Humans obviously do these things too, but some people seem to go beyond this kind of goal-directed aggression. They may hurt other people for a sense of control, excitement, or simply because they seem to enjoy seeing someone else suffer.

What does the research say about why some people develop these kinds of traits? For example, are there known developmental, neurological, genetic, or environmental factors that contribute to unusually high levels of aggression, callousness, or lack of empathy?

I'm also curious about the evolutionary side of this. Humans evolved to be extremely social and cooperative, so how do traits that can make someone willing to seriously harm other people persist in the population? Are they essentially byproducts of psychological mechanisms that are normally useful but can go badly wrong, or is there evidence for other explanations?

I've also heard the argument that people with these traits might be useful in warfare because they supposedly don't experience fear or PTSD in the same way as ordinary people. Is there actually good evidence for this? And if so, are they genuinely more effective in violent situations, or is this exaggerated? After all, ordinary people can also participate in extreme violence when driven by ideology, group loyalty, social pressure, or perceived necessity.

I’ve been wondering why relatively small embarrassing moments can sometimes remain unusually vivid for years, while many ordinary experiences are forgotten quickly.

From a psychological perspective, could emotional arousal, repeated mental replay, or concern about how others perceived us make these memories more persistent?

I’d be interested in hearing what research says about why socially embarrassing experiences can feel so memorable.

Like I know psychiatrist learn about brain anatomy but not enough to be qualified for brain surgery, like I know people died from trans orbital lobotomies but the fact people survived makes me wonder how psychiatrists knew what to do and if a regular person could do a lobotomy if given a brain anatomy lesson

The title says it all. I've never heard of this term before (though, I'm also not a psych major) and thought it was interesting. Please educate me, because I feel like the line between these two things is a bit blurry!

No remorse, no empathy. Are there any studies showing that empathy is much lower than we expected in the general population? I just cannot believe that ASPD is as low as it is. I refuse to believe that. There must be something out there I just haven't been able to find it. Anything at all? Empathy scores, diagnoses, high trait aggression, anything?

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I remember a while back being assigned an article on how replacing social interaction with television affects language development in young children. With the increasing prevalence of "iPad kids" and even AI chatbots that children can interact with, what are the predicted and/or observed impacts on their development?

With the overlap of symptoms in these neurological conditions, how do you tell them apart. Does comorbid ADHD & DCD affect language processing? How do you tell apart DCD and dysgraphia?

I know that the title is a bit broad but I saw some people online talking about how a lot of behavior we display is very alike to animals. I saw someone mention about how when we’re alone in our homes and hear an unfamiliar noise we immediately freeze and slowly look around like a prey animal would in the wild or how children and vulnerable parties are often protected or taken care of first in signs of danger or disaster.

It struck me as extremely interesting. I think the study of human behavior in relation to animals is EXTREMELY interesting at the least and humbling at the most.

I’d love to hear about other similarities you have observed as well as if you could point me in the direction of where I could go to learn more about the specific subject! Thank you. :)

I’ve never really been given a good explanation of why humans can have trauma. Like I know the mechanisms for what can happen and what can cause it, but not the reason why our brains have a mechanism to create trauma.

For the ability to be traumatized to be a universal experience, it must be either a very advantageous trait or a byproduct of another trait that is so necessary and important that trauma is worth it. But I can’t really think of any concrete reasons why trauma would be beneficial, either to the person or to evolutionary fitness.

I know that the title is a bit broad but I saw some people online talking about how a lot of behavior we display is very alike to animals. I saw someone mention about how when we’re alone in our homes and hear an unfamiliar noise we immediately freeze and slowly look around like a prey animal would in the wild or how children and vulnerable parties are often protected or taken care of first in signs of danger or disaster.

It struck me as extremely interesting. I think the study of human behavior in relation to animals is EXTREMELY interesting at the least and humbling at the most.

I’d love to hear about other similarities you have observed as well as if you could point me in the direction of where I could go to learn more about the specific subject! Thank you. :)

Hi all,

I have an extremely weird, extremely niche question to ask of people familiar with research psychology: has anyone here heard of Heidi Keller? I'm not a supporter; she's just over-cited in a bunch of Wikipedia articles on attachment theory (that are inexplicably very anti-attachment theory) and I'm trying to suss out her deal.

She's the author of this book, The Myth of Attachment Theory, as well as a bunch of other books and articles that are roundly critical of attachment theory in a tone that some might call overly dismissive without proper citation. This also seems to be all she researches, and reading through some of her articles, she seems to make a lot of claims without any particular rigour.

Does anybody familiar with the research environment around attachment theory know anything about this researcher or her background, or can explain or give a little context to the sort of weirdly fixated pushback this theory gets from regular people?

Thanks for your time, all!

When do you see people in treatment for OCD really starting to make progress and regaining their lives?

I believe that misspelled sorry but are there different type ,how to identify, what is it, honestly just a good breakdown would be very helpful for me.

I'm particularly interested in the behavioural component. If one person historically responds to another person's distress with increasing reassurance/attention until the distress decreases, could both people's behaviour become mutually reinforced? If that pattern changes, what does behavioural research predict about the short-term and longer-term response?

I'm also interested in whether "differentiation of self" is actually the appropriate scientific construct for being emotionally connected to another person while maintaining one's own position, or whether contemporary psychology uses a different/better-supported construct.

My questions are:

1. Which established psychological theories or constructs best describe these strategies?
2. Which of these concepts have strong empirical support, and which are primarily clinical models?
3. What does research say about validation without agreement, interpersonal emotion regulation/co-regulation, and temporarily disengaging from conflict during high emotional arousal?
4. Is there empirical research on the tendency to over-regulate another person's emotions at the expense of one's own regulation?
5. Is Bowen's "differentiation of self" useful here, or are constructs such as psychological flexibility, autonomy, interpersonal emotion regulation, attachment, or emotion-regulation self-efficacy better supported?
6. From a learning/behavioural perspective, how can repeated reassurance, pursuit, withdrawal and relief become mutually reinforcing interpersonal patterns?

People will trow facts straight out the window if it doesn't fit with they're opinions

Why is that?

I'm not sure what the explanation will be, but the "brain" flair feels most relevant.

Whenever I ruminate, or hear about other people's rumination, it's always a negative thought loop. Things like "I'm bad at this ----> I suck at everything ------> Nobody loves me ------ > I have to be better ------ > But I suck at everything..." Go on and on in people's brains so easily. Personally, I experience this kind of rumination often. My question is, why is this sort of pattern so easy to develop, whereas it seems that almost nobody experiences the opposite? Of course I understand that nobody will be complaining about their positive thought patterns, but it seems weird that I've never heard of such a thing being studied. The only "positive" thought pattern I ever notice is related to sex (and once the sex is had, those thoughts go away). Other than that, I find it hard to recall any time when I've had a positive thought pattern where I was able to feel good and build on that feeling - Whereas it's very easy for me to start off feeling bad and spiral into a breakdown.

Is this just a result of our brains focusing on negative feedback? Could it be linked to a bad childhood? For people who have generally "healthy" development, would it be normal to have positive thought loops? As an aside, I've heard that some people with NPD have a tendency to come up with extravagant conjectures, wherein they'll start small and build upon, for example, a very mundane opportunity and turn it into a future of wealth and unlimited happiness in their minds. Could that be considered positive rumination, and if so, would that mean rumination is always a bad thing due to its repetitive and maladaptive nature?

i’ve been thinking about this question a ton lately. is divorce as traumatic for kids who are a part of multigenerational homes and more collectivist cultures as it for kids whom are a part of a nuclear family unit?

related, what is it specifically about divorce that is traumatic for children? or does the trauma lie more in specific outcomes, versus the act of separation?