Chapter 16 Flashcards
Psychotherapy
treatment involving psychological techniques; consists of interactions between a trained therapist and someone seeking to overcome psychological difficulties or achieve personal growth.
Biomedical Therapy
prescribed medications or procedures that act directly on the person’s physiology.
Eclectic Approach
an approach to psychotherapy that uses techniques from various forms of therapy.
Psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud’s therapeutic technique. Freud believed the patient’s free associations, resistances, dreams, and transferences—and the analyst’s interpretations of them—released previously repressed feelings, allowing the patient to gain self-insight.
Resistance
in psychoanalysis, the blocking from conscious memory of anxiety-laden material.
Interpretation
in psychoanalysis, the analyst notes supposed dream meanings, resistances, and other significant behaviors and events to promote insight.
Transference
in psychoanalysis, the patient’s transfer to the analyst of motions linked with other relationships (such as love or hatred for a parent).
Psychodynamic Therapy
therapy deriving from the psychoanalytic tradition; views individuals as responding to unconscious forces and childhood experiences and seeks to enhance self-insight.
Insight Therapies
therapies that aim to improve psychological functioning by increasing a person’s awareness of underlying motives and defenses.
Person-Centered Therapy
a humanistic therapy, developed by Carl Rogers, in which the therapist uses techniques such as active listening within an accepting, genuine, empathetic environment to facilitate clients’ growth (also called client-centered therapy).
Active Listening
empathetic listening in which the listener echoes, restates, and seeks clarification. A feature of Roger’s person-centered therapy.
Unconditional Positive Regard
a caring, accepting, nonjudgmental attitude, which Carl Rogers believed would help clients develop self-awareness and self-acceptance.
Behavior Therapy
therapy that applies learning principles to the elimination of unwanted behaviors.
Counterconditioning
behavior therapy procedures that use classical conditioning evoke new responses to stimuli that are triggering unwanted behaviors; includes exposure therapies and aversive conditioning.
Exposure Therapies
behavioral techniques, such as systematic desensitization and virtual reality exposure therapy, that treat anxieties by exposing people (in imaginary or actual situations) to the things they fear or avoid.
Systematic Desensitization
a type of exposure therapy that associates a pleasant relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli. Commonly used to treat specific phobias.
Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy
a counterconditioning technique that treats anxiety through creative electronic simulations in which people can safely face their greatest fears, such as flying in airplanes, spiders, or public speaking.
Aversive Conditioning
associates an unpleasant state (such as nausea) with an unwanted behavior (such as drinking alcohol)
Token Economy
an operant conditioning procedure in which people earn a token for exhibiting a desired behavior and can later exchange tokens for privileges or treats.
Cognitive Therapy
therapy that teaches people new, more adaptive ways of thinking; based on the assumption that thoughts intervene between events and our emotional reactions.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
a popular integrative therapy that combines cognitive therapy (changing self-defeating thinking) with behavior therapy (changing behavior).
Group Therapy
therapy conducted with groups rather than individuals, providing benefits from group interaction.
Family Therapy
therapy that treats people in the context of their family system. Views and individual’s unwanted behaviors as influenced by, or directed at, other family members.
Confirmation Bias
a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence. Therapists may do this.
