emotional incest

a form of child sexual abuse consisting of nonphysical sexualized interactions between a parent figure and a child. Emotional incest may involve the caregiver commenting on the child’s sexual attractiveness, drawing attention to the caregiver’s own arousal to the child or the size or shape of the child’s secondary sexual characteristics (e.g., breasts, pubic hair), or implying that the child is sexually active (e.g., calling the child a slut). Also called covert incest.

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Psychology term of the day

July 27th 2024

script

1. a cognitive schematic structure—a mental road map—containing the basic actions (and their temporal and causal relations) that comprise a complex action. Also called script schema.

2. a structured representation consisting of a sequence of conceptual dependencies grouped together to capture the semantic relationships implicit in everyday human situations. It was designed for the purpose of computer-based story understanding. [created in 1966 by U.S. cognitive and computer scientist Roger C. Schank (1946– ) and U.S. psychologist Robert P. Abelson (1928–2005)]

3. see prescription drug.

4. see script analysis.