Chapter 16 Flashcards
What is psychotherapy?
A psychological intervention designed to help people resolve emotional, behavioral, and interpersonal problems and improve the quality of their lives
Who practices psychotherapy?
Clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, and social workers are the bulk of the mental health field;
Paraprofessionals vs professinals
Little to no difference in effectiveness between experienced and novice therapists
Still advantages to seeking a professional therapist:
*Some measure of quality control
*Use empirically backed treatments
*More training in ethics
*Breadth and depth of treatment expertise
Qualities of effective therapists
Warm and direct
Establish a positive working relationship
Tend not to contradict clients
Select important topics to focus on in session
Match treatments to needs of clients
What are insight therapies?
Psychotherapies where the goal is to expand awareness or insight (example: psychodynamic and humanistic therapies)
What is psychodynamic therapy?
- Believe that abnormal behaviors stem from adverse childhood experiences
- Analyze avoided thoughts and feelings; wishes and fantasies; significant past events; and the therapeutic relationship
- Believe that symptoms will vanish when clients gain insight into unconscious material
What is psychoanalysis?
Made by freud
- Goal is to decrease guilt and frustration and make the unconscious conscious
- Tries to bring to awareness previously repressed impulses, conflicts, and memories
Techniques of psychoanalysis?
Free association: Interpretation: Dream analysis: Resistance: Transference: Working through:
What is neo-freudian school of thought?
- analyzed the conscious aspects of functioning
- Emphasize the impact of cultural and interpersonal influences on behavior
- More optimistic; emphasize needs for power, love, and status (not just sex and aggression)
Evaluation of psychodynamic therapies
- Research shows that insight is not necessary to relieve distress.
- Many claims difficult to falsify.
- Research shows no evidence for repressing hurtful memories.
- not effective for all disorders
- better than no therapy, less effective than cognitive-behavioral therapy
Humanistic Therapies
- insight therapy
- Development of human potential
- Belief that human nature is basically positive
- Importance of taking responsibility for our lives and living in the present
Person-Centered
Non-directive form of therapy by Carl Rogers that encourages clients to direct the course of their therapy to increase awareness and heightened self-acceptance
*To ensure positive outcome, therapist must:
Be authentic and genuine
Express unconditional positive regard
Show emphatic understanding
What are the desired outcomes of person-centered therapy
Think more realistically
Become more tolerant of others
Engage in more adaptive behaviors
Gestalt Therapy
Aims to integrate differing and sometimes opposing aspects of clients’ personalities into a unified sense of self
Recognizes the importance of awareness, acceptance, and expression of feelings
*2 chair technique - talk to an imaginary person in another chair
Humanistic therapy evaluated
- Core concepts are generally difficult to falsify.
- BUT Rogers was pretty on-the-mark about the importance of the therapeutic relationship (sometimes even more important than the actual therapy)
- more effective and no treatment, mixed compared to other
Group Therapies
Range from 3-20 people; can be efficient, time-saving, and less costly than individual
Effective for a wide range of problems and about as helpful as individual treatments
Alcoholics Anonymous
- Range from 3-20 people; can be efficient, time-saving, and less costly than individual
- Effective for a wide range of problems and about as helpful as individual treatments
Alternatives to AA
*Controlled drinking programs encourage people to set limits and drink moderately.
*Can be effective for many people
*Relapse prevention treatment assumes people will “slip up” and plans accordingly.
Lapse does not equal relapse.
Family Therapies
- See most psychological problems as rooted in a dysfunctional family system
- The “patient” is the whole family system, not one individual.
- Focus on interactions among family members
Family Therapies
- Structural family therapy has the therapist immerse herself in the family to remove barrier to communication
- Group and Family are more effective than no treatment and at least as effective as individual therapy
Cognitive-Behavioral Approaches
*Behavioral therapists focus on specific problem behaviors and the variables that maintain them.
*Assume that behavior change results from the application of basic principles of learning
*Use a wide variety of behavioral assessment techniques
Observation, pencil/paper, etc.
Exposure Therapies
- Confronts clients with what they fear with the goal of reducing the fear
- Earliest was systematic desensitization
- > gradually exposes clients to anxiety producing situations through the use of imagined scenes.
Systematic Desensitization
- Based on principle of reciprocal inhibition - we can’t be anxious and relaxed at the same time
- Uses counterconditioning by repeatedly pairing an incompatible relaxation response with anxiety
- Can use imagined and actual exposure to the fear situations listed on a hierarchy created at the start of therapy
Systematic Desensitization Evaluated
- Dismantling research showed that no single component was essential.
- Led to development of exposure with response prevention and flooding
- Very effective for many anxiety disorders, like phobias, OCD, and PTSD