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mediate experience

conscious awareness and interpretation of external events and stimuli. Mediate experience provides meaning and additional information not contained in the event or stimulus itself. It is contrasted with immediate experience, the elements or characteristics of the event or stimuli as perceived directly and without interpretation. Introspection makes use of immediate experience in analyzing the contents of mediate experience. [defined by Wilhelm Wundt]

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Psychology term of the day

November 21st 2024

paraphilia

paraphilia

n. in DSM–IV–TR, any of a group of disorders in which unusual or bizarre fantasies or behavior are necessary for sexual excitement. The fantasies or acts persist over a period of at least 6 months and may take several forms: preference for a nonhuman object, such as animals or clothes of the opposite sex; repetitive sexual activity involving real or simulated suffering or humiliation, as in whipping or bondage; or repetitive sexual activity with nonconsenting partners. Paraphilias include such specific types as fetishism, frotteurism, pedophilia, exhibitionism, voyeurism, sexual masochism, sexual sadism, and necrophilia. In DSM–5, a paraphilia is considered a paraphilic disorder only if it causes distress or impairment to the individual or if its practice has harmed or risked harming others. —paraphiliac adj.