Glossary
292 terms of art from across the atlas, each defined as the tradition that uses it understands it, with links to the guides.
abhisheka (empowerment, wang)
In Tibetan Buddhism, a ritual empowerment given by a qualified teacher that authorises a student to take up a particular practice. The tradition treats the teacher–student bond it creates as itself a vehicle of change.
abreaction (cathartic method)
In Breuer and Freud's early cathartic method, the emotional discharge of affect held to be 'strangulated' with a forgotten memory. Later hypnotic and drug-assisted abreactive methods used the same idea.
abstinence violation effect (AVE)
In relapse-prevention theory, the self-blame and loss of perceived control that can follow a single lapse and turn it into a full relapse. The model separates a lapse from a relapse so the first need not become the second.
acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)
A third-wave behavioural therapy that aims to change a person's relationship to thoughts and feelings rather than their content. It works through acceptance, defusion, present-moment contact, self-as-context, values and committed action, together called psychological flexibility.
active imagination (aktive Imagination)
In Jungian analysis, a waking dialogue with images arising from the unconscious, engaged with rather than interpreted from outside. It is held to support the transcendent function and the meeting of conscious and unconscious attitudes.
actualising tendency (actualizing tendency, self-actualisation)
In Rogers's person-centred theory, the inborn directional tendency of an organism to maintain and enhance itself. Distress is read as this tendency being blocked by incongruence, and growth resumes in a facilitative relationship.
adaptive survival styles (NARM survival styles)
In the NeuroAffective Relational Model, five patterns (connection, attunement, trust, autonomy, love-sexuality) that a child is held to form in response to early relational trauma. Clinical work explores how these once-protective styles shape present identity.
affect phobia (affect-phobia model)
In McCullough's short-term dynamic model, the idea that defences and symptoms arise from a learned fear of one's own feelings. Treatment is framed as graded desensitisation to the avoided affect within a psychodynamic frame.
ahwal (ahwāl, hal, states)
In Sufi teaching, passing spiritual states held to be given by God rather than gained by effort, as distinct from the stations (maqamat) that are reached through discipline.
alpha function (container–contained, reverie)
In Bion's psychoanalysis, the mental capacity that turns raw sense impressions and emotions into thinkable elements usable for dreams and thought. The analyst's reverie is held to lend this function to the patient until it can be internalised.
amae (甘え)
In Doi's Japanese psychoanalytic psychology, the wish to depend on and be indulged by another's benevolence. Doi treats it as a basic motive whose forms shape relationships and the transference.
amplification
In Jungian analysis, the enrichment of a dream or image by setting it beside parallel motifs from myth, religion, folklore and art. It is distinguished from reductive association back to personal history.
anapanasati (ānāpānasati, mindfulness of breathing)
In Buddhist practice, mindfulness of breathing, used in the tradition both to settle the mind and as a ground for insight into impermanence.
ancestors (ancestor veneration, ancestral spirits)
In many African, Asian, Indigenous and religious traditions, the dead of a lineage are held to remain in relationship with the living, able to call, protect or afflict them. Rites of remembrance and offering maintain that relationship.
angakkuq (angakkut, angakok)
In Inuit tradition, a spiritual specialist who was held to diagnose illness, recover lost souls and mediate with spirits. Confession of broken taboos was part of the healing process.
anima mundi (world soul)
A Platonic and Renaissance idea of a soul animating the whole cosmos, taken up by archetypal psychology and dream tending to extend psyche beyond the individual into the world.
animal magnetism (mesmerism, magnetic somnambulism)
Mesmer's eighteenth-century theory of a universal magnetic fluid whose imbalance caused illness and which the healer could redirect with passes. Puységur's induced somnambulism in this tradition is an ancestor of hypnosis.
armour (character armour, muscular armour, armor)
In Reich's theory, chronic muscular and characterological holding patterns that are held to bind emotion and block the flow of energy. Reichian and neo-Reichian therapies aim to soften this armour through breath, movement and expression.
ashramas (āśrama, four stages of life)
In Hindu tradition, the four life stages of student, householder, forest-dweller and renunciant (sannyasa), each with its own duties.
askesis (ascesis, spiritual exercises)
In ancient philosophy, and especially in Cynic and Stoic schools, repeated training of habits and judgements intended to change how one lives and not only what one believes. Hadot read it as a 'spiritual exercise'.
atman (ātman, Self)
In Upanishadic and Advaita Vedanta teaching, the true Self as pure witnessing awareness, held to be identical with Brahman and distinct from body and mind.
attention restoration theory (ART (Kaplan))
The Kaplans' environmental-psychology theory that natural settings engage effortless 'soft fascination', letting depleted directed attention recover. Nature-based programmes often cite it as their mechanism.
attunement (affect attunement, Reiki attunement)
In developmental and arts therapies, attunement means sensing and matching another's rhythm and affect, as in the Kestenberg system. In Reiki and related energy practices the same word names a rite held to pass on the capacity to channel energy.
aura (auric field)
In energy-healing and esoteric traditions, a luminous field said to surround and interpenetrate the body, sometimes in layers. Practitioners describe reading, cleansing or rebalancing it.
autogenic training (Autogenes Training, AT)
Schultz's method of self-induced relaxation using short formulas about heaviness, warmth and calm. It was later combined with biofeedback in the Menninger tradition.
aversion therapy (aversive conditioning)
A behavioural procedure that pairs an unwanted behaviour or desire with an unpleasant stimulus to suppress it. The atlas records its use in conversion practices as a harm account.
awareness–excitement–contact cycle (Gestalt cycle of experience, contact cycle)
In the Cleveland Gestalt model, the sequence through which a need emerges into awareness, mobilises energy, reaches contact and withdraws. Interruptions at any point are treated as the focus of the work.
ayahuasca (yagé, hoasca, Daime)
A psychoactive Amazonian brew used in vegetalista ceremonies and by ayahuasca churches, and now studied in research settings. In the healing traditions it is held to give diagnostic and visionary knowledge within ritual and song.
Ayurveda (Āyurveda)
The classical medical system of India, which describes health as a balance of three doshas and illness as their disturbance, addressed through diet, regimen, herbs and cleansing therapies.
basic goodness (brilliant sanity, original goodness)
In Shambhala and Naropa contemplative teaching, the view that a person's fundamental nature is sane, awake and good beneath confusion. Contemplative psychotherapy treats clients from this premise.
behavioural activation (BA, behavioral activation)
A behavioural treatment for depression that schedules valued and rewarding activities to reverse withdrawal and avoidance. It is also built into low-intensity programmes such as Problem Management Plus.
behavioural experiment (behavioral experiment)
In cognitive therapy, a planned real-world test of a specific prediction or belief, often by dropping a safety behaviour, so that the result can confirm or disconfirm it.
bhakti (bhakti yoga, devotion)
In Hindu traditions, the path of loving devotion to a personal deity, expressed in worship, song, service and remembrance of the divine name.
bilateral stimulation (BLS, dual attention stimulus)
In EMDR, alternating left–right eye movements, taps or tones given while the client holds a memory in mind. Proposed explanations for its role differ within the field.
biofield (human energy field)
In Therapeutic Touch, Healing Touch and related practices, a subtle energy field said to surround and permeate the body, which illness congests and the practitioner rebalances. Introductions in the atlas mark this mechanism as attributed, not established.
biopsychosocial model (Engel's model)
Engel's proposal that illness be understood through interacting biological, psychological and social levels rather than biology alone. Uexküll's psychosomatic medicine develops a related rejection of mind–body dualism.
bodymind (body-mind, psychophysical unity)
In body psychotherapy and somatic education, the premise that experience, emotion and character are laid down in posture, tissue and breath, so body and mind form one system.
bottom-up processing (bottom-up)
In somatic trauma therapies, work that begins with sensation, movement and arousal rather than narrative or insight ('top-down'). Its premise is that change in the body can lead change in meaning.
budō (budo, martial ways)
The Japanese 'martial ways', such as judo, kendō, karate-dō and aikido, understood by their traditions as paths of moral and spiritual self-cultivation as well as fighting arts.
catharsis (katharsis)
From Aristotle's account of tragedy, a purging of emotion, read medically by Bernays and then by Breuer and Freud. Primal and expressive therapies treat discharge of stored feeling as healing, and trauma models later set it against containment.
chakra (cakra, chakras)
In tantric and yogic traditions, a centre of the subtle body along the central channel. Western chakra psychology reads seven chakras as a developmental map, and energy-healing practices describe balancing them.
channelling (channeling)
In New Age and Spiritualist currents, the practice of conveying messages said to come from spirits, ascended masters or other non-human intelligences. Some energy-healing practices also describe the healer as a channel for a higher source.
character structure (character types)
In bioenergetic and Bodynamic theory, enduring patterns of body, defence and personality that are held to form around early developmental needs and ages.
chavruta (havruta, chevruta)
In Jewish tradition, the study of sacred texts in pairs through argument and dialogue, valued as devotion and as moral formation.
cheshbon ha-nefesh (accounting of the soul)
In Mussar teaching, a nightly moral self-accounting in which one reviews conduct against chosen character traits.
circular questioning (circular questions, interventive interviewing)
In Milan and later systemic therapy, questions that ask family members about relationships and differences among one another. The questioning itself is held to introduce new information into the system.
co-regulation (coregulation)
In polyvagal-informed and attachment-based models, the settling of one nervous system through contact with another's calm presence. It is described as the developmental basis of later self-regulation.
cognitive defusion (defusion)
In ACT, a process of stepping back from thoughts so they are experienced as passing words and images rather than literal truths ('fusion').
cognitive restructuring (Socratic questioning)
In cognitive therapy, the identification, examination and revision of unhelpful thoughts and beliefs, usually through guided questioning and evidence-gathering.
common factors (contextual model)
The view, traced to Jerome Frank, that therapies share active features such as alliance, expectation, a healing setting and a credible rationale. It holds that these account for much of outcome across brands.
communitas
In Victor Turner's anthropology of ritual, the intense, egalitarian bond among people who pass together through a liminal phase. Rite-of-passage and ceremony programmes use the term for the solidarity of a cohort in transition.
community as method
In concept-based therapeutic communities, the principle that the peer community itself, with its roles, norms and feedback, is the main agent of change.
compensation (compensatory function)
In Jungian psychology, the psyche's self-regulating tendency to balance a one-sided conscious attitude, often expressed through dreams.
complex (feeling-toned complex)
In Jung's early Zurich work, an emotionally charged cluster of associations that behaves like a partly autonomous sub-personality. It was first studied through the word-association test.
conditions of worth
In Rogers's theory, the internalised conditions under which a person feels worthy of regard. They are held to set up incongruence between self-concept and experience.
congruence (genuineness)
In person-centred therapy, the therapist's genuineness: inner experience and outward expression match. It is one of Rogers's core conditions, alongside empathy and unconditional positive regard.
constellations (family constellations, systemic constellations)
Group methods in which representatives stand in for members of a family or system, and their spatial arrangement and reported sensations are read as showing hidden dynamics. Hellinger's family-constellation version claims trans-generational entanglements.
contact (contact boundary)
In Gestalt therapy, the meeting of organism and environment at the contact boundary through which need is met and growth occurs. Interruptions of contact are the main focus of the work.
containment (container–contained, holding)
In psychoanalytic usage after Bion, the capacity of the therapist, setting or medium to receive and hold feelings the client cannot yet bear and return them in a more manageable form. Arts and body therapies extend it to the image and to regulated arousal.
continuing bonds
The view in grief studies that mourners keep a changed, ongoing relationship with the dead rather than fully detaching. Ancestor rites and grief counselling both draw on it.
corrective emotional experience
Alexander and French's term for the patient re-living an old conflict in a new relationship that responds differently, so that the earlier pattern can change.
correspondence (as above, so below, microcosm and macrocosm, sympathy)
In Hermetic and Renaissance occult philosophy, the doctrine that the human microcosm mirrors the cosmic macrocosm, so planets, organs, colours and sounds are linked by sympathy. Swedenborg developed his own theology of correspondences.
countershape
In Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor, the precise response from role figures that meets the shape of a client's unmet developmental need, offered symbolically in a structured scene.
countertransference (Gegenübertragung)
In psychoanalysis, the analyst's emotional responses to the patient. Contemporary schools treat it not as interference but as data about the patient's inner world and the relationship.
Country
In Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander usage, the land, waters, sky, kin, law and ancestral beings to which a person belongs and has responsibilities. Wellbeing is understood as inseparable from connection to Country.
Cultural Formulation Interview (CFI)
A DSM-5-TR semi-structured interview about the person's own understanding of their problem, cultural identity, supports and expectations of help. Across the atlas it is the clinician's main tool for working alongside a tradition.
curanderismo (curandero, curandera)
Mexican and Mexican-American folk healing combining Indigenous, Catholic and Spanish elements. Curanderos address bodily, emotional and spiritual afflictions through prayer, cleansings (limpias) and herbs.
dadirri
A Ngan'gikurunggurr and Ngen'giwumirri word, made widely known by Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann, for deep, quiet, respectful listening and inner stillness.
Dasein (being-in-the-world)
Heidegger's term for human existence as being-in-the-world, taken up by Daseinsanalysis to describe a person by the openness of their world rather than by a mental apparatus.
decentring (decentering)
In mindfulness-based and acceptance therapies, the capacity to observe thoughts and feelings as passing mental events rather than as facts about the self.
deep democracy
In Mindell's process work, the attitude that all voices, roles and states, including marginal and unconscious ones, are needed to understand a person, group or conflict.
definitional ceremony (outsider witness)
In narrative therapy, after Barbara Myerhoff, a structured retelling in which invited outsider witnesses respond to a person's preferred story and so help make it more solid.
deintegration (deintegration–reintegration)
In Fordham's developmental Jungian model, the rhythm by which the infant's primary self opens out to meet the world and then reintegrates the experience.
deity yoga (generation stage, completion stage)
In Vajrayana Buddhism, contemplative identification with an enlightened deity, held to purify habitual tendencies. The atlas gives only its public outline.
depatterning (psychic driving)
Ewen Cameron's mid-twentieth-century programme that sought to erase a patient's existing mental patterns and then rebuild them with repeated recorded messages. The atlas documents it as a harm account.
dhikr (zikr, remembrance)
In Islamic and especially Sufi practice, remembrance of God through repeated divine names or formulas, done aloud or silently. The tradition holds that it polishes the heart.
differentiation of self
In Bowen family systems theory, the capacity to stay emotionally connected to the family while thinking and acting from one's own centre rather than reacting to its anxiety.
diksha (dīkṣā, initiation)
In Hindu and related traditions, initiation by a guru that begins a formal teacher–disciple relationship and is held to transmit spiritual power or a mantra.
discernment of spirits (discernment of thoughts, diakrisis)
In Christian spiritual tradition, from Evagrius to Ignatius, the practice of distinguishing inner movements and thoughts that lead towards God from those that lead away.
disidentification
In Assagioli's psychosynthesis, the recognition that one is not one's sensations, feelings or thoughts, which reveals a centre of awareness and will behind them.
divination
The reading of signs such as cards, lots, verses or patterns to gain guidance. Ifá and sikidy hold it as sacred diagnosis, while clinical guides often treat tarot or I Ching as reflective material.
doshas (tridosha, vata, pitta, kapha)
In Ayurveda, the three dynamic principles vata, pitta and kapha, whose balance is held to constitute health and whose disturbance underlies illness.
dual process model (DPM)
Stroebe and Schut's model of grieving as oscillation between loss-oriented and restoration-oriented coping, rather than passage through fixed stages.
Dynamic Ground
In Washburn's spiral-dynamic model, the deep source of psychic energy and spirit from which the ego emerges in development and with which it later reintegrates.
Dzogchen (rigpa, Great Perfection)
In Nyingma and Bon traditions, the teaching that the mind's nature is naturally present awareness (rigpa). The tradition calls realisation a recognition of what already is, not self-improvement.
early recollections (ERs)
In Adlerian lifestyle assessment, a person's earliest specific memories, read as expressions of present convictions and goals rather than as historical record.
ecological self
In Naess's deep ecology, a widened self that includes identification with other beings and the living world, beyond the narrow ego.
ecopsychology
A field associated with Roszak that holds human well-being and the health of the Earth to be bound together. It posits an 'ecological unconscious' that modern life represses.
ego dissolution (ego death)
In psychedelic and contemplative accounts, a temporary loss of the felt boundary between self and world. Some frameworks treat it as transformative and others as a risk to be prepared for.
ego states (ego-state therapy)
In Watkins's ego-state therapy, semi-separate patterns of behaviour and experience within one personality, worked with to improve communication and integration. Transactional analysis uses the term differently for Parent, Adult and Child states.
ego strengthening
In clinical hypnosis, suggestions and imagery aimed at building confidence, coping and a sense of inner resource before or alongside other work.
emotion-focused therapy (EFT, emotionally focused therapy)
Experiential therapies that treat emotion as the main route to change. In Greenberg's form maladaptive emotion is transformed by accessing an adaptive one; in Johnson's couple form attachment bonds are repaired.
emotional processing theory
Foa and Kozak's account that fear reduces when a fear structure is activated and new, incompatible information is taken in. It underlies prolonged exposure.
empty chair (two-chair work, chair work)
A technique from psychodrama and Gestalt in which the client speaks to an imagined person or part of the self placed in a chair, and may switch seats to respond.
enactment
In relational psychoanalysis, an unwitting joint acting-out of a pattern by patient and therapist that becomes useful once recognised. In structural family therapy the word names a deliberately prompted live interaction in the room.
energy psychology (tapping)
A family of methods, including EFT and TFT, that pair recalling a distressing memory with tapping on acupoints. Proponents describe neutralising the emotional charge; the atlas marks the meridian explanation as attributed, not established.
Enneagram
A nine-point typology of personality with roots in Gurdjieff, Ichazo and Naranjo, used in spiritual and coaching settings, with its own 'levels of development'.
entrainment (rhythmic entrainment)
The synchronisation of a bodily rhythm, such as movement or brain activity, to an external rhythm. It is used in neurologic music therapy and is also claimed by some audio-visual and sound devices.
epistemic trust
In mentalizing theory, trust in others as reliable sources of personally relevant knowledge. Its restoration is held to reopen a person to learning from relationships.
evenly suspended attention (free-floating attention)
Freud's recommended analytic stance of attending to everything without fixing on any particular element, the counterpart of the patient's free association.
evil eye (nazar, malocchio, mal de ojo)
A belief across Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, South Asian and Latin American cultures that an envious or admiring gaze can cause illness or misfortune. Folk specialists remove it with prayers, charms or lead pouring.
Examen (Ignatian Examen, examination of conscience)
In Ignatian spirituality, a daily prayerful review of the day for signs of God's presence and of one's responses.
existential givens (ultimate concerns)
In Yalom's existential psychotherapy, death, freedom, isolation and meaninglessness, which every person must face and which are held to shape anxiety and defence.
existential vacuum
In Frankl's logotherapy, a pervasive sense of emptiness and meaninglessness that arises when the will to meaning is frustrated.
expectancy violation (prediction error)
In the inhibitory-learning account of exposure, the mismatch between what a person expects to happen and what does happen. It is held to drive new learning.
experiential avoidance
In ACT and acceptance-based therapies, efforts to avoid or control unwanted inner experiences, held to narrow a life and keep distress going.
explanatory model (explanatory models of illness)
Kleinman's term for a person's own account of what their illness is, what caused it, and what will help. The clinician elicits it rather than assumes it.
exposure (in vivo, imaginal, interoceptive exposure)
In behavioural therapy, planned, repeated contact with feared situations, memories or bodily sensations without avoidance. Theories differ on whether it works by habituation, extinction or new inhibitory learning.
externalisation (externalizing conversations)
In narrative therapy, speaking of a problem as separate from the person ('the problem is the problem'), so identity and problem can be pulled apart.
extinction (fear extinction)
In learning theory, the weakening of a conditioned response when the cue occurs without its consequence. Inhibitory-learning theory holds that the old association is overlaid by new learning rather than erased.
facilitated communication (FC, supported typing)
A method in which a facilitator physically supports a disabled person's hand or arm to type. Its claim to unlock hidden expression is recorded in the atlas as a harm account.
fascia (myofascia)
Connective tissue that wraps and links muscles and organs. Structural-integration and fascial schools treat it as the main medium of posture and as a store of held tension.
felt sense
In Gendlin's focusing, a bodily, at first unclear sense of a whole situation that can be attended to until words or images fit it.
felt shift (carrying forward)
In focusing, the bodily release and change that follow when a symbol fits the felt sense; Gendlin called this a 'carrying forward' of experiencing.
field theory (life space)
Lewin's view, taken into Gestalt therapy, that behaviour is a function of the whole situation, or 'life space', in which a person is known only within their total field.
five phases (wuxing, five elements)
In Chinese medicine and cosmology, wood, fire, earth, metal and water, linked to organs, emotions, seasons and tones and held to generate and restrain one another.
flooding (implosive therapy)
A form of exposure that confronts a person with intense, prolonged fear cues at once rather than in graded steps. Two-factor theory gives its rationale.
free association (fundamental rule)
Freud's 'fundamental rule' that the patient say whatever comes to mind without censorship, so unconscious connections can emerge.
functional analysis (ABC analysis, SORKC)
In behaviour analysis, the identification of the antecedents and consequences that maintain a behaviour, used to plan an intervention.
genogram (family diagram)
A diagram of a family across at least three generations showing relationships, events and patterns. It is central to Bowen-informed assessment.
gnosis
In Hermetic, Gnostic and Manichaean currents, a saving knowledge of the soul's divine origin and return, held to liberate. Chaos magic reuses the word for an altered state.
grace (Other Power, divine gift)
In many religious traditions, change received as a gift of the divine rather than produced by effort. Examples include Pure Land Other Power, Pushti Marg and Centering Prayer as consent, and the twelve-step 'Higher Power'.
grounding
In bioenergetic analysis, the felt connection of the body to the ground through the legs and feet, held to support presence and energy. In trauma work the word names ways of anchoring attention in the present.
GROW model (GROW)
A coaching conversation structure moving through Goal, Reality, Options and Will (or Way forward), associated with Whitmore.
habituation
The decline of a response with repeated exposure to the same stimulus. Older exposure accounts and vestibular rehabilitation cite it as their mechanism.
hara (tanden, dantian)
In Japanese tradition, the lower belly as the body's centre of gravity, vitality and composure, important in shiatsu and martial arts. Brennan Healing Science adds a 'hara line' among its energy dimensions.
healing circle (talking circle)
In many Indigenous traditions, a gathering in which participants speak in turn, often holding a talking piece, to share, grieve and restore relationships. It also appears in restorative justice.
hesychasm (hesychia, prayer of the heart)
In Eastern Orthodox tradition, a contemplative path of inner stillness and watchfulness centred on the Jesus Prayer and directed towards union with God.
Higher Power
In twelve-step fellowships, a power greater than oneself, understood as each member chooses. Surrender to it is central to the steps.
holotropic breathwork
Stanislav and Christina Grof's method combining accelerated breathing, evocative music and bodywork to induce a non-ordinary state, held to bring unconscious material to the surface and integrate it.
hormesis
The idea that a mild, sub-injurious stressor such as cold, heat or low oxygen triggers adaptive protective responses. Cold-immersion and hypoxia practices invoke it as their mechanism.
Housing First
A service model that provides permanent housing as a right without preconditions such as sobriety or treatment, with support offered alongside.
humours (humoral theory, akhlat)
In Hippocratic–Galenic, Unani and Persian medicine, the four bodily fluids whose balance is held to determine health and temperament. Historical treatment sought to restore it by regimen or evacuation.
I-Thou (Ich-Du, healing through meeting)
Buber's term for a relationship of full mutual presence, in contrast to the objectifying 'I-It'. Dialogical psychotherapy names 'healing through meeting' as its mechanism.
icaros (ikaros)
In Amazonian vegetalismo and Shipibo healing, sung or whistled healing songs held to come from plant spirits and to guide the ceremony.
Ifá (Ifa, orisha)
The Yoruba divination system, whose priests (babalawo) consult a large body of verses to diagnose problems and prescribe offerings within the worship of the orisha.
imagery rescripting (ImRs)
A technique in which a client recalls a distressing memory image and changes its course in imagination to meet unmet needs. It is held to alter the memory's meaning.
incubation (dream incubation, enkoimesis)
In ancient Greek Asclepian temples, sleeping in the sanctuary after purification in the hope that the god would appear in a dream to heal or advise.
individuation
In Jung's psychology, the lifelong process by which a person becomes a whole and distinct individual, integrating unconscious contents around the Self.
inhibition (primary control)
In the Alexander Technique, the deliberate withholding of a habitual reaction so that a new, better-coordinated response can be chosen.
inhibitory learning (inhibitory-learning model)
Craske's account of exposure in which new learning that a feared outcome does not occur competes with, rather than erases, the old fear association. Fear tolerance and violated expectancies mark success, not fear reduction.
inner child
In popular and humanistic recovery work, an image of the vulnerable childhood self within the adult, addressed and re-parented in imagination.
integration (psychedelic integration)
In psychedelic and altered-state work, the process after a session of making sense of the experience and carrying it into daily life. Most protocols place it last in a preparation–session–integration arc.
intermediary object (médium malléable, objeto intermediario)
In music and arts therapies, an instrument, mask or material placed between client and therapist to carry communication. Roussillon's 'malleable medium' is a related psychoanalytic idea.
Internal Family Systems (IFS, parts work)
Schwartz's model of the mind as a system of parts (managers, firefighters and exiles) and an undamaged core Self, whose qualities lead the healing of burdened parts.
internal working model
In Bowlby's attachment theory, the mental representations of self and others built from early care that guide later expectations of relationships.
interoception (interoceptive awareness)
The sensing of the body's internal state, such as heartbeat, breath and visceral feeling. Body-oriented therapies train awareness of it as a basis for regulation.
iso principle
In music therapy, matching music to the client's present mood or tempo and then gradually shifting it towards a desired state.
japa (nama-japa)
In Hindu practice, repetition of a divine name or mantra, often counted on a mala. The tradition holds that it purifies the mind and turns it towards God.
Jesus Prayer (prayer of the heart)
In Eastern Orthodox practice, the repeated invocation 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me', central to hesychast prayer.
jhana (jhāna, dhyana)
In Theravada Buddhism, a series of absorbed meditative states of deepening concentration, which the tradition then uses as a basis for insight.
jing–qi–shen (three treasures)
In Daoist internal alchemy, essence, vital energy and spirit, the 'three treasures' that the practitioner is said to conserve and refine in stages.
karma (kamma)
In Indian religions, the moral law by which intentional action shapes future experience and rebirth. In Jain teaching it is a subtle matter binding the soul, loosened through discipline.
kinaesthetic metaphor (kinesthetic metaphor)
In adventure and farm-based therapy, the idea that a physical activity mirrors a client's patterns, so changes made in the activity can carry over into life.
koshas (pancha kosha, five sheaths)
In Vedantic and yoga-therapy teaching, five layers or sheaths of the person, from the physical body through breath, mind and wisdom to bliss.
kundalini (kuṇḍalinī)
In tantric yoga, a latent energy said to lie at the base of the spine and rise through the chakras towards awakening. Transpersonal clinicians address difficult 'kundalini awakening' experiences as possible spiritual emergencies.
lamrim (graded path)
In Tibetan Buddhism, the 'stages of the path', a graded sequence of analytical meditations from the preciousness of human life to the awakened mind (bodhicitta) and emptiness.
large group awareness training (LGAT)
Intensive multi-day group courses, such as est and the Landmark Forum, that aim at a cognitive-emotional 'breakthrough' in which participants take authorship of their experience. The atlas notes they are not a therapy.
lata'if (laṭāʾif, subtle centres)
In Sufi, especially Naqshbandi, teaching, subtle centres of spiritual perception located in the chest and head, awakened in turn through remembrance.
law of attraction (manifestation)
A New Thought belief, popularised by The Secret, that thoughts and feelings draw matching events into a person's life.
lectio divina
In monastic Christian tradition, slow prayerful reading of scripture through Guigo II's four rungs of reading, meditation, prayer and contemplation.
liminality (liminal phase)
In van Gennep's and Turner's analysis of rites of passage, the threshold phase between separation and reincorporation, when a person is no longer in the old status and not yet in the new. It is cited in adventure therapy and in veterans' 'permanent liminality'.
limited reparenting
In schema therapy, the therapist meeting a client's unmet childhood needs within professional limits, to heal early maladaptive schemas.
logotherapy
Frankl's meaning-centred therapy, based on the will to meaning and using methods such as paradoxical intention and dereflection.
lomilomi (hoʻoponopono, lāʻau lapaʻau)
Hawaiian therapeutic massage, held alongside hoʻoponopono family reconciliation and herbal medicine within a Native Hawaiian healing tradition led by kahuna.
mana
In Polynesian and Māori thought, spiritual power, authority and prestige carried by people, places and objects. Huna and other Western currents borrowed the word for a vital force.
mandala
A circular sacred diagram in Hindu and Buddhist practice. Jung treated spontaneously drawn circles as images of the self, and art therapies use mandala-making.
mantra
A sacred syllable, word or phrase repeated in Hindu, Buddhist and other practice, held to purify and focus the mind. Secular programmes adapt the repetition of a chosen word.
maqamat (maqāmāt, maqam, stations)
In Sufi teaching, the stations of the path, such as repentance, patience and trust, that are reached through discipline and effort, as distinct from the states (ahwal) that God gives.
matrescence
Dana Raphael's term, developed by Aurélie Athan, for the transition of becoming a mother, compared with adolescence as a developmental passage.
medicine wheel
In many Plains and Anishinaabe teachings, a circle of four directions that links the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of a person with stages of life and the natural world.
mediumship (spirit possession, trance mediumship)
In possession traditions and Spiritualism, a person serving as a vessel through whom deities, spirits or the dead are held to speak or act.
memory reconsolidation (reconsolidation)
The finding that a reactivated memory briefly becomes changeable before it is stored again. Coherence therapy, rewind techniques and others claim it as their mechanism.
mentalising (mentalization, mentalizing, reflective function)
In Fonagy and Bateman's model, the capacity to understand one's own and others' behaviour in terms of mental states. MBT aims to restore it when it collapses under arousal.
meridian (jingluo, channels)
In Chinese medicine, the channels through which qi is held to circulate, with acupoints along them. Energy psychology borrows them for tapping.
metacognition (metacognitive mode)
Thinking about thinking. In Wells's metacognitive therapy, beliefs about worry and rumination, not their content, keep disorder going, so treatment shifts the person's relationship to thought.
miasm (miasms)
In Hahnemann's homeopathy, a deep, inherited disease tendency held to underlie chronic illness.
mind-cure (New Thought, mental healing)
The nineteenth-century American current from Quimby to New Thought and Christian Science holding that illness follows mistaken belief and that correct thought or affirmative prayer heals.
miracle question
In solution-focused brief therapy, a question inviting the client to describe how life would be different if the problem were solved overnight, used to build a picture of a preferred future.
moksha (mokṣa, kaivalya, liberation)
In Hindu traditions, liberation from the cycle of rebirth. Samkhya and Patanjali's yoga call it kaivalya, the isolation of pure consciousness from nature.
moral treatment (traitement moral)
Pinel, Pussin and Tuke's late eighteenth-century reform of asylum care through kindness, routine, occupation and a calm environment instead of chains.
Morita therapy (arugamama)
Morita's Japanese therapy, which treats anxiety as a natural feeling to be accepted 'as it is' (arugamama) while one acts on purpose. Its classic inpatient form has four periods.
motivational interviewing (MI)
Miller and Rollnick's collaborative style of conversation that draws out a person's own reasons for change and resolves ambivalence.
muhasaba (muḥāsaba, self-accounting)
In Islamic and Sufi practice, examination of one's deeds and intentions as preparation for repentance and reform.
muscle testing (applied kinesiology)
In applied kinesiology and its offshoots, a manual test of muscle strength said to reveal imbalances or the subconscious's answers. The atlas marks this claim as attributed, not established.
Mussar (Musar)
A Jewish ethical-devotional movement associated with Salanter that works on character traits (middot) through study, self-accounting and peer groups (va'ad).
nadis (nāḍī, channels)
In yogic and tantric anatomy, subtle channels through which prana is said to flow, the main three running along the spine.
nafs (self, ego-soul)
In Islamic and Sufi psychology, the lower self or ego with its appetites, which the path refines (tazkiya) in stages towards a soul at peace.
Naikan
Yoshimoto's Japanese method of structured reflection on three questions about a significant person: what I received, what I gave, and what trouble I caused.
ndëpp (ndeup, ndöp)
A Lebou and Wolof ceremony of Senegal in which a possessed person and the afflicting ancestral spirit (rab) are brought back into right relation through drumming, dance and sacrifice before the community.
nepsis (watchfulness)
In Orthodox ascetic teaching, sober watchfulness over thoughts so that passions do not take hold, central to the Philokalia.
neti neti (not this, not this)
In Upanishadic and Advaita teaching, the method of negating every object of experience as 'not this' until only the witnessing Self remains.
neurasthenia (nervous exhaustion)
A nineteenth-century diagnosis of depleted 'nerve force' blamed on modern life. It was treated with the rest cure for women and the West cure for men.
neuroception
In Porges's polyvagal theory, the nervous system's detection of safety, danger or threat to life below awareness, which shifts autonomic state.
ngondro (preliminaries)
In Tibetan Buddhism, the foundational preliminary practices, including prostrations, Vajrasattva purification, mandala offering and guru yoga, done before advanced practice.
nianfo (nembutsu)
In Pure Land Buddhism, recitation of the name of Amitabha Buddha, understood in Jodo Shinshu as an expression of gratitude for Other Power rather than a means of self-effort.
Nibbana (Nirvana, nirvāṇa)
In Buddhism, the cessation of craving and suffering and release from rebirth, the goal of insight practice.
not-self (anatta, anātman)
The Buddhist teaching that no permanent self is found in body or mind, which are seen as conditioned processes arising and passing.
nouthetic counselling (biblical counselling)
Jay Adams's form of Christian counselling, which uses scripture to admonish and guide towards sanctification and rejects secular psychology.
NTU
An Africentric psychotherapy whose name comes from a Bantu word for a unifying vital force or essence, emphasising harmony, balance and interconnectedness.
nyasa (nyāsa)
In tantric ritual, placing deities or mantra syllables on parts of the body by touch and intention, held to divinise the practitioner.
object relations (internal objects)
In psychoanalytic theory, the view that the mind is built from internalised relationships, so that representations of self and others linked by affect shape later relating.
Open Dialogue
A Finnish network-based approach to crisis in which the person and their social network meet with clinicians at once and decisions are made openly in dialogue.
orgone (orgone energy)
Reich's proposed universal life energy, held by medical orgonomy to flow through the body and to be blocked by armour. Most later body psychotherapies treat 'life force' as theory rather than physical fact.
Other Power (tariki)
In Pure Land and especially Jodo Shinshu Buddhism, reliance on Amida Buddha's saving vow rather than one's own effort (jiriki).
paradoxical intention (prescribing the symptom)
In Frankl's logotherapy and in Adlerian and strategic work, inviting a person to intend or exaggerate the feared symptom, so that anxious effort is removed.
paradoxical theory of change
Beisser's Gestalt principle that change occurs when a person fully becomes what they are, not when they strain to be what they are not.
Parent–Adult–Child (PAC, ego states (TA))
In Berne's transactional analysis, three ego states (Parent, Adult and Child) used to analyse transactions, games and life scripts.
passe (passes)
In Kardecist Spiritism, the transmission of healing 'fluid' by a medium's hand passes near the body, often given at Spiritist centres.
pathogenic belief
In Weiss and Sampson's control-mastery theory, a grim, unconscious belief formed in childhood that the patient tests on the therapist in the hope of seeing it disconfirmed.
peak experience (mystical experience)
Maslow's term for moments of intense joy, unity and meaning. Psychedelic research describes related 'mystical' experiences that some models treat as a route to change.
pendulation
In Somatic Experiencing, the natural swing of attention and arousal between distress and resource, used to build capacity without overwhelm.
personal recovery (recovery model)
In the recovery movement, living a satisfying, hopeful and contributing life with or without symptoms, as distinct from clinical recovery.
phase-oriented treatment (tri-phasic model, stabilisation first)
The trauma-treatment sequence traced to Janet and Herman: safety and stabilisation, then processing of memory, then integration and reconnection.
polyvagal theory
Porges's theory of a hierarchy of autonomic states (social engagement, mobilisation, shutdown) linked to branches of the vagus nerve. It is widely used as a clinical frame for safety and regulation.
positive disintegration
Dąbrowski's theory that inner conflict and breakdown can be developmental, loosening lower psychic structures so higher multilevel ones can form.
potentisation (potentization, dynamisation)
In homeopathy, the serial dilution and succussion of a substance, held by the tradition to increase its curative power.
prana (prāṇa, life force)
In yogic and Ayurvedic thought, the vital breath or life energy flowing through the nadis, which pranayama is said to regulate.
primal pain (primal therapy)
In Janov's primal therapy, the stored pain of early unmet need, held to drive neurosis and to be resolved by re-experiencing it fully.
private logic (fictional final goal, lifestyle)
In Adlerian psychology, the personal, often unconscious reasoning that serves a person's fictional final goal, in contrast to the 'common sense' of social interest.
projective identification
In Kleinian theory, an unconscious phantasy of putting split-off parts of the self into another person, who may then feel and act on them.
psychodrama (sociodrama, sociometry)
Moreno's group method in which a protagonist enacts scenes from life or imagination with others in roles, moving through warm-up, action and sharing.
purusha (puruṣa)
In Samkhya and classical yoga, pure consciousness, the inactive witness distinct from prakriti (nature). Discriminating the two is held to bring liberation.
qalb (heart)
In Islamic and Sufi psychology, the spiritual heart, the organ of faith and knowledge of God, which remembrance is said to polish.
qi (chi, ki)
In Chinese medicine and Daoist cultivation, the vital energy held to flow through the meridians. Health is described as its balanced, unobstructed movement, and qigong and acupuncture aim to regulate it.
RAIN
An acronym from Buddhist-influenced psychotherapy for Recognise, Allow, Investigate and Nurture, a brief practice of mindful self-compassion.
rapprochement
In Mahler's separation–individuation theory, the toddler subphase in which growing separateness brings renewed need for closeness and ambivalence.
reciprocal inhibition
Wolpe's principle that anxiety is weakened when an incompatible response such as relaxation is evoked in its presence. Sherrington's earlier term names a muscle reflex used in muscle energy technique.
recovered memory (recovered-memory therapy)
Therapies that sought to uncover supposedly repressed memories of abuse through suggestion, imagery or hypnosis. The atlas records the risk of false memories as a harm account.
reflecting team
Andersen's practice in which a team of clinicians talks openly about a family's conversation while the family listens, then the family responds.
reframing (reframe)
In strategic and systemic therapy, offering a new frame of meaning for the same facts so that different responses become possible.
relapse prevention
Marlatt and Gordon's cognitive-behavioural model of change as a process, identifying high-risk situations and coping skills and separating a lapse from a relapse.
relational depth
Mearns and Cooper's term for moments of profound contact and engagement between therapist and client, which they treat as central to change.
religious or spiritual problem (V62.89, Z65.8)
A DSM category that lets clinicians record religious or spiritual distress without implying mental disorder, introduced partly through Lukoff's work.
resistance (Widerstand)
In psychoanalysis, the forces in the patient that oppose the emergence of unconscious material. Their analysis is a main task of treatment.
resonance breathing (coherent breathing, resonance frequency)
Slow breathing at the rate at which heart-rate oscillations are largest. Lehrer and Vaschillo describe it as exercising the baroreflex.
reverie
In Bion's thought, the receptive, dreamlike state in which a mother or analyst takes in and transforms another's unprocessed emotion.
rites of passage (rite de passage)
In van Gennep's analysis, ceremonies that mark a change of status through separation, transition (liminality) and incorporation. Ceremony design and wilderness rites adapt the pattern for modern life transitions.
rongoā (rongoā Māori)
Traditional Māori healing, including plant medicine, mirimiri (bodywork) and karakia (prayer), practised within tikanga by tohunga and healers.
rupture and repair (alliance rupture)
Safran and Muran's model in which strains in the therapeutic alliance are noticed and talked through (metacommunication), making the repair itself therapeutic.
safety behaviours (safety behaviors)
In cognitive models of anxiety, actions taken to prevent a feared outcome that also prevent the person learning the fear is unfounded.
sama (samāʿ, sema)
In Sufism, devotional listening to music and poetry, sometimes with movement such as the Mevlevi whirling sema, held to stir what is in the heart.
samadhi (samādhi, concentration)
In Hindu and Buddhist practice, deep meditative concentration or absorption. Patanjali names it as the eighth limb of yoga, and Buddhist manuals develop it before insight.
sandplay (sandtray)
Kalff's Jungian method in which a client builds scenes with miniatures in a tray of sand within a 'free and protected space'. Other sandtray approaches use the method without Jungian theory.
satsang
In Indian traditions, 'company of the true': a gathering with a teacher for teaching, chanting and questions. Neo-Advaita teachers use the same format.
schema (early maladaptive schema, core belief)
In cognitive and schema therapy, an enduring pattern of beliefs, memories and emotions about self and others, formed early and activated by present events.
Self (Jungian) (the Self)
In Jung's psychology, the totality and organising centre of the psyche, conscious and unconscious, often represented by circles and mandalas.
self-as-context (observing self)
In ACT, the sense of oneself as the perspective from which experiences are noticed, rather than as their content.
self-efficacy
Bandura's term for a person's belief in their ability to carry out a behaviour. Modelling and mastery experiences are held to raise it.
selfobject (self-object)
In Kohut's self psychology, another person experienced as part of the self who provides mirroring, idealisation or twinship needed for cohesion throughout life.
separation–individuation
Mahler's account of the infant's 'psychological birth' through subphases from symbiosis to differentiation, practising and rapprochement.
set and setting
In psychedelic work, the mindset and expectations of the person and the physical and social environment, which are held to shape the experience.
shaktipat (śaktipāta)
In Shaiva and Siddha Yoga traditions, the transmission of spiritual energy from guru to disciple, held to awaken kundalini.
shaping (successive approximation)
In operant conditioning, reinforcing successive approximations of a target behaviour until it is achieved.
sinbyeong (shinbyeong, spirit sickness)
In Korean shamanism, an affliction understood as a sign of being called by spirits. It is held to resolve through initiation as a mudang.
social interest (Gemeinschaftsgefühl, community feeling)
In Adler's individual psychology, a feeling of belonging and concern for the community, held to be the measure of mental health.
Socratic dialogue (Socratic questioning)
Questioning that helps a person examine their beliefs and reach their own conclusions. It is used in cognitive therapy, Adlerian work and the Nelson–Heckmann philosophical group method.
soul loss (soul retrieval)
In many shamanic traditions, illness that follows part of the soul leaving the body after fright or harm, and that a specialist addresses by calling it back. Harner's core shamanism adapted the idea.
soul wound
Eduardo Duran's term for historical and intergenerational trauma among Indigenous peoples caused by colonisation, understood as wounding the soul.
spiritual emergency (spiritual emergence)
The Grofs' term for a crisis of transformation, such as a kundalini or mystical crisis. If understood and supported, it is held to resolve into better functioning.
stages of change (transtheoretical model)
Prochaska and DiClemente's model of readiness moving through precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action and maintenance, with interventions matched to stage.
structural dissociation (ANP, EP)
Van der Hart, Nijenhuis and Steele's theory that trauma divides the personality into 'apparently normal' parts that carry daily life and 'emotional' parts fixed in defence.
subpersonalities (voice dialogue, selves)
In psychosynthesis and voice dialogue, semi-autonomous patterns of the personality, each with its own needs and voice, which a centre of awareness can recognise and coordinate.
surplus reality
In Moreno's psychodrama, the enactment of scenes that never happened or could not happen, such as meeting the dead, to give expression to inner reality.
systematic desensitisation (systematic desensitization)
Wolpe's procedure of pairing relaxation with a graded hierarchy of imagined feared situations, based on reciprocal inhibition.
tapas (austerity, ascetic heat)
In Indian religions, ascetic discipline whose 'heat' is held to burn away impurity and generate spiritual power. Comparable austerities appear in Buddhist dhutanga and Tendai kaihogyo.
Te Whare Tapa Whā
Mason Durie's Māori model of health as a house with four walls: taha tinana (physical), taha hinengaro (mental), taha whānau (family) and taha wairua (spiritual).
tele
In Moreno's sociometry, the two-way flow of feeling, attraction or rejection between people, held to shape group choices and roles.
therapeutic alliance (working alliance)
The collaborative bond between client and therapist, including agreement on goals and tasks. It is one of the most widely named common factors.
therapeutic community (TC)
A residential or day setting in which the community's life, relationships and shared responsibility are the main means of treatment.
titration
In somatic trauma therapies, approaching distressing material in small, manageable doses so arousal can settle in between, rather than through cathartic flooding.
token economy
An operant programme in which desired behaviours earn tokens that can be exchanged for privileges, used historically on wards, in classrooms and in institutions.
tovil (thovil)
A Sri Lankan night-long exorcistic ritual of masked dance, drumming and offerings that addresses afflicting demons (yakku) before the community.
transcendent function
In Jung's psychology, the capacity that unites conscious and unconscious opposites into a new 'third' attitude, often reached through active imagination or art.
transference (Übertragung)
In psychoanalysis, the redirection of feelings and patterns from earlier relationships onto the analyst. Its interpretation is central to many dynamic therapies.
Twelve Steps (12 steps)
The programme of Alcoholics Anonymous, adapted by many fellowships, moving from admitting powerlessness through moral inventory and amends to service, with a sponsor and Higher Power.
two-factor theory (Mowrer's two-factor theory)
Mowrer's account that fear is acquired by classical conditioning and maintained by avoidance through operant reinforcement.
Ubuntu
A Southern African philosophy summarised as 'a person is a person through other people', centring personhood on community and mutual care.
ukuthwasa (intwaso, thwasa)
In Southern African healing traditions, the calling by ancestors, often marked by illness, and the apprenticeship through which a person becomes a sangoma.
unconditional positive regard (UPR, acceptance)
In person-centred therapy, the therapist's warm acceptance of the client without conditions. It is one of Rogers's core conditions.
utilisation (utilization)
In Ericksonian therapy, using whatever the client brings, including symptoms, beliefs and resistance, as the vehicle for change.
vegetotherapy (character-analytic vegetotherapy)
Reich's method of working on the body's 'vegetative' (autonomic) currents through breath and the loosening of armour segment by segment.
vipassana (vipassanā, insight meditation)
In Theravada Buddhism, insight meditation that observes the arising and passing of body and mind to see impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and not-self. It is a source of modern mindfulness programmes.
vision quest (hanbleceya)
In many Native American traditions, a ceremonial period of solitude and fasting in nature to seek vision and guidance. Wilderness rites-of-passage programmes adapt it.
vital force (Lebenskraft, vis medicatrix naturae)
In homeopathy and other vitalist systems, the life principle held to sustain the organism and drive its self-healing, which remedies are said to stimulate.
will to meaning
In Frankl's logotherapy, the primary human motive of finding meaning, which is held to sustain people through suffering.
window of tolerance
Siegel's term, central to Ogden's sensorimotor psychotherapy, for the zone of arousal in which a person can process experience without becoming overwhelmed or shut down. Working within it recurs across psychotherapy, bodywork and contemplative guides.
working through (Durcharbeiten)
In psychoanalysis, the repeated and gradual process by which an insight is extended across contexts and resistances until change becomes lasting.
yarning circle (yarning)
An Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander practice of relaxed, respectful conversation in a circle, used to share stories, knowledge and support.
yin and yang (yin–yang)
In Chinese thought, complementary and mutually transforming opposites. Chinese medicine reads health as their dynamic balance.
zar (zār)
A spirit-possession complex of the Horn of Africa, Egypt and neighbouring regions. The afflicting spirit is usually not expelled but accommodated through a lasting relationship, ceremony and gatherings of fellow adepts.
zuowang (sitting and forgetting)
In Daoist contemplation, 'sitting in forgetfulness', a practice of letting go of the senses and discursive thought to merge with the Dao, described in graded stages.