Some terms tend to be useful both in the technical sciences and in the humanities, and sometimes also in everyday life. Among them there is a word with an amazingly simple and understandable meaning - aberration. What is this term and what is its true meaning? We will try to understand this, and also consider its meaning in the framework of some disciplines.
General concept
So, the word "aberration" in itself is simply a "mistake." Depending on the scope of use of this term, it can be synonymous with the words "self-deception", "false", "distortion", "false refraction" and even "astigmatism". It would be logical to ask why instead of a specific scientific term that clearly corresponds to a certain field of knowledge, or instead of a simple word "error", this complex term should be used.
There is no need, just this word has Latin roots, where the first part ab is translated as "from", and the second - errare - as "wander" or "evade." The term, so to speak, is international and generally accepted, it will be understood by a representative of any field of activity. Of course, in everyday life we ​​don’t tell our children: “You made an aberration by skipping school today”, but in sociology, psychology, management and other sciences related to human life, the term is very common.
Astronomy
Most often, it is in science that studies distant stars that the concept of aberration is used. What is it in astronomy and how to correctly understand the meaning of the word? This is an apparent, not actually taking place displacement of one or another celestial body. Such an illusion arises due to the motion of the Earth and due to the finiteness of the speed of light. The beam can be refracted at a different angle if the point from which the observer makes his inspection of the sky moves, as a result of which the spectrum is distorted, and we see that the star supposedly shifted. To compensate for this defect is very simple: the telescope is installed at an angle of no more than 20 degrees.
An interesting fact: they found out that this is an aberration back in 1729, and it was possible to fix this phenomenon precisely thanks to the distortion of the ray of light. Since then, there has been no doubt that the Earth is round and rotates around its axis and the Sun.
Psychology
Well, in the framework of this science, the aberration of consciousness is more than widely considered. The term is incredibly widely used both in everyday psychological practice and in psychiatry. Most often, he describes certain deviations from the norm of perception of the surrounding world. A phobia, a state of constant anxiety, stress, various mania can be called aberration. In a more serious sense of the word, these “errors” of consciousness are mental disorders of various kinds, schizophrenia, neurasthenia, as well as apathy or melancholy brought to the limit.
Management
Another area of ​​knowledge within which there is the concept of "aberration of consciousness." Its essence is that a person, climbing the career ladder, loses a sense of reality. Especially if his takeoff is connected only with his personal achievements, his talents, knowledge, experience, skills, etc. (that is, there was no outside help), a distortion of the perception of the labor process is quite real. This can be manifested as tyranny in relation to employees, as excessive control or as the absence of any activity against the background of the fact that "now I am the main one, and everyone will work for me."
In order to avoid such an aberration in the worldview, it is worth memorizing as “Our Father” a simple truth: stability of success will be maintained only under the condition of hard work, and management is the same profession as any other, but with different powers.
At the mental level
There is such a thing as "memory aberration", which is very interesting in its definition. It is assumed that a person, for one reason or another, remembers a specific event not in the form in which it actually was. As a result, all of his subsequent thoughts, impressions, and other memories associated with this original are also distorted. Aberration of memory is considered not only from the point of view of psychology, but also on an esoteric or hypnotic level. It is believed that it is hypnosis that can allow you to return true memories.
Conclusion
We figured out that this is aberration. The term is very capacious, it does not have a clear framework and does not belong to any particular industry or science. Nevertheless, it is useful to know it - this will allow you to broaden your horizons and think about whether there have ever been aberrations of such a plan in your life or work.