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phoneme

n. in linguistics, a speech sound that plays a meaningful role in a language and cannot be analyzed into smaller meaningful sounds, conventionally indicated by slash symbols: /b/. A speech sound is held to be meaningful in a given language if its contrast with other sounds is used to mark distinctions of meaning. In English, for example, /p/ and /b/ are phonemes because they distinguish between [pan] and [ban] and other such pairs (see minimal pair). —phonemic adj.

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Psychology term of the day

February 24th 2025

psychodynamic psychotherapy

psychodynamic psychotherapy

those forms of psychotherapy, falling within or deriving from the psychoanalytic tradition, that view individuals as reacting to unconscious forces (e.g., motivation, drive), that focus on processes of change and development, and that place a premium on self-understanding and making meaning of what is unconscious. Most psychodynamic therapies share certain features, such as emphasis on dealing with the unconscious in treatment and on analyzing transference. Also called dynamic psychotherapy.