Before we can understand the present state of the psychology of religion – with its frequent emphasis on empirical data – it can be helpful to understand the field’s history. The prominent theoreticians that we explore in this chapter – James, Freud, Jung, Maslow, Fromm, Allport, Becker, Frankl, and others – remain influential in the twenty-first century, but they are also controversial. William James’ biography and writings show that debates about religion were never purely intellectual matters for the great scientist and philosopher. Freud’s theorizing on religion is discussed in detail, including his ideas on the origin and meaning of mystical religious experiences, the roots of theistic belief in wish-fulfillment, the notion of religion as a universal obsessional neurosis, and the assessment of the historical importance of religion for civilization. This discussion of Freud is followed by consideration of Carl Jung’s more sympathetic outlook on aspects of religion. The chapter concludes with a comprehensive discussion of the many ways humanistic and existential thinkers have studied religion and spirituality.

Intersymbol interference (ISI) occurs for linear dispersive channels (i.e., channels where the transfer function is not flat within the transmission band). Hence, an obvious strategy to avoid ISI is to divide the transmission band into a large number of subbands, which are used individually in parallel. If these bands are small enough, such fluctuations of the channel transfer function can be ignored and no linear distortions occur that would have to be equalized. In this chapter, we study this idea in the particular form of orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM). It is shown that even starting from the frequency-division multiplexing idea, the key principle behind OFDM is blockwise transmission and the use of suitable transformations at transmitter and receiver. We analyze OFDM in detail and show how the resulting parallel data transmission can be used in an optimum way. OFDM is compared with the equalization schemes discussed in the previous chapter, and incorporated in the unified description framework.

This chapter presents a discussion of the nature of psychological tests, how they are constructed, and how clinical psychologists use them. It shows that most psychological tests can be categorized as measuring (a) intellectual abilities; (b) attitudes, interests, and values; or (c) aspects of personality, including psychopathology. Tests can also be categorized according to the kinds of responses requested – some ask for brief, easily scored responses (such as true or false), whereas others require longer, more difficult-to-score responses (such as stories or drawings). The chapter presents descriptions of the tests that are most commonly used by clinicians. It also provides information about the tests’ psychometric properties, including how their designers seek to avoid bias when the instruments are used with diverse client populations. It also discusses these tests’ clinical utility. The chapter concludes with a summary of recent developments in psychological testing.

This chapter argues that throughout history many religions have proved themselves capable of sparking and fueling hostility toward outsiders and even toward people in the same faith who are viewed as unacceptable for one reason or another. We examine recent manifestations of extremism in Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam, explaining that analysts often disagree about the extent to which religious beliefs and institutions are causally important. Key terms such as religious extremism, fundamentalism, radicalization, and terrorism are defined, noting the crucial importance of maintaining a distinction between the religious extremist and the extremely religious. Though we suggest researchers face many methodological challenges, we explore a broad range of empirical studies on related topics. The chapter also reviews theory and research on why and how people become religious extremists. We further draw on the psychology of radicalization, arguing that nowadays most scholars believe that there are cognitive and behavioral processes at work. Some people may move directly to carrying out terrorist deeds without acquiring much group ideology or religious belief.

This chapter describes basic principles of neuropsychology, patterns of neuropsychological dysfunction, methods of neuropsychological assessment, and neuropsychological approaches to psychopathology. It presents a history of clinical neuropsychology and illustrates the ways in which clinical neuropsychologists perform assessments and help design interventions for patients who experience neurological, cognitive, and/or psychological dysfunction related to conditions stemming from developmental, medical, degenerative, or other kinds of problems. It also highlights their research on both normal and abnormal brain functioning, pointing out that this research has helped shed light on psychological disorders such as depression and schizophrenia, and on neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease or the effects of a concussion. The chapter portrays clinical neuropsychology as a rapidly growing field for which specialized training is required. Its practitioners must understand brain–behavior relationships and develop competence with a variety of assessment and intervention techniques that are unique to the field.

This chapter presents an overview of methods used in clinical assessment, classification, and diagnosis. After outlining the range of assessment options available to clinicians, it describes the typical goals of assessment, including diagnosis, description, treatment planning, and prediction. It also introduces some of the most important variables that affect a clinician’s choices about how to conduct an assessment, including its purpose, the clinician’s theoretical views, the psychometric properties of available assessment instruments, and other contextual factors. The chapter discusses the strengths and weaknesses of human clinical judgment when compared to AI and other actuarial procedures, focusing especially on the errors that clinicians tend to make but strive to avoid. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how the results of clinical assessments are communicated to clients and third parties, and the factors and formats associated with assessment reports.

Java is one of the world’s most popular programming languages. Widely used in enterprise software development, Java’s strengths lie in its combination of performance and portability, as well as its large, robust library of built-in features, which allow developers to create complex applications entirely within the language. Java was developed in the early 1990s by a team from Sun Microsystems led by James Gosling. Initially called Oak (after a tree outside Gosling’s office), the new language was intended to be a development environment for interactive TV, but pivoted to the emerging World Wide Web after its public release in 1995. Since then, Java has expanded into almost every area of software development. It is the default programming language for Android mobile devices, the Hadoop large-scale data processing system, and Minecraft. Java is one of the most well-known object-oriented programming languages.

This chapter surveys the core elements of Java programming, assuming some familiarity with programming in any language. If you already have Java experience, it will be a refresher on important points. If your experience is with Python, JavaScript, or other languages, this chapter will help you understand how Java does things differently.

After the linear data structures and hash tables, we’re now ready to introduce the third major kind of structure: trees, which represent hierarchical data. Computer science, like nature, delights in trees: There are a huge number of tree-based structures customized for different problems. In particular, trees are used to construct map data structures that provide useful alternatives to hash tables.

This chapter describes approaches to psychotherapy that grew from learning theory and cognitive psychology, as well as acceptance-based approaches that have a long history in Eastern faiths and philosophies. They are frequently combined in practice and share a strong record of empirical support for their efficacy. The chapter describes behavior therapists’ use of learning-based techniques designed to identify and change maladaptive behavior, and cognitive therapists’ efforts to change clients’ unhelpful thinking patterns about events and themselves that serve to maintain many disorders. The chapter also explains that because behavioral and cognitive approaches are compatible, they are often combined into various forms of cognitive behavior therapy, which is one of today’s most popular approaches to psychological treatment. The chapter also describes acceptance-based approaches, which are central to acceptance and commitment therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, and mindfulness treatments, all of which emphasize the value of accepting thoughts, feelings, and experiences (even negative ones) and learning how to observe reactions without judging them.

In carrier-modulated (digital) communication, the transmit signal has spectral components in a band around a so-called carrier frequency. Here, a baseband transmit signal is upconverted to obtain the radio-frequency (RF) transmit signal and the RF receive signal is downconverted to obtain the baseband receive signal. The processing of transmit and receive signals is done as far as possible in the baseband domain. The aim of the chapter is to develop a mathematically precise compact representation of real-valued RF signals independent of the actual center frequency (or carrier frequency) by equivalent complex baseband (ECB) signals. In addition, transforms of corresponding systems and stochastic processes into the ECB domain and back are covered in detail. Conditions for wide-sense stationary and cyclic-stationary stochastic processes in the EBC domain are discussed.