New Age therapy

any of a number of popular treatments that lack a sound scientific basis and are generally not accepted by health professionals as valid, effective therapeutic practice. Support for such therapies does not come from independent scientific studies but typically is derived primarily from the “insights” and observations of their founders or from participant feedback. An example of a New Age therapy is rebirthing.

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Psychology term of the day

November 21st 2024

self-evaluation maintenance model

a conceptual analysis, related to social comparison theory, in which an individual is assumed to maintain a positive self-evaluation by (a) associating with high-achieving individuals who excel in areas with low relevance to his or her sense of self-worth and (b) avoiding association with high-achieving individuals who excel in areas that are personally important to him or her. [developed by U.S. social psychologists Abraham Tesser (1941– ), Jennifer D. Campbell (1944– ), and their colleagues]