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The Classification of Abnormal Behavior

An Overview

  • Chapter
Comprehensive Handbook of Psychopathology

Abstract

From the beginnings of life, as organisms attempt to understand their environment, they seek to organize a vast array of incoming stimuli. The recognition of similarities and the ordering of objects into sets on the basis of their relationships are primordial classificatory abilities that begin at a crude level but grow ever more discriminating as the organism matures. Even before the advent of Homo sapiens, classification ability must have been a component of fitness in biological evolution (Sokal, 1974). The acquiring of language by humans is clearly the most sophisticated example of this classificatory phenomenon in nature, for it is through learning words that we are able to select, evaluate, and categorize much of the information that bombards us in everyday life. In short, for human beings, words are classification; a sound or combination of sounds (or its representation in print) communicates a specific meaning (Davies, 1970). Because we possess this type of communication, we are able to discriminate a multitude of stimuli into categories that allow us to process, store, and act on additional information at a level no other organism can approach.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, 30602, USA

    Henry E. Adams

  2. Department of Psychology, San Diego Naval Hospital, San Diego, California, 92130, USA

    John F. Cassidy

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  1. Henry E. Adams
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Tulane University School of Medicine, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

    Patricia B. Sutker

  2. University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA

    Henry E. Adams

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Adams, H.E., Cassidy, J.F. (1993). The Classification of Abnormal Behavior. In: Sutker, P.B., Adams, H.E. (eds) Comprehensive Handbook of Psychopathology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-3008-4_1

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