Chapter 16 Flashcards
Psychotherapy
Treatment in which a trained professional – a therapist – uses psychological techniques to help a person overcome psychological difficulties and disorders, resolve problems in living, or bring about personal growth.
Biomedical therapy
Therapy that relies on drugs and other medical procedures to improve psychological functioning.
Psychodynamic therapy
Therapy that seeks to bring unresolved past conflicts and unacceptable impulses from the unconscious into the conscious, where patients may deal with the problems more effectively.
Psychoanalysis
Freud’s psychotherapy in which the goal is to release hidden thoughts and feelings from the unconscious part of our minds in order to reduce their power in controlling behavior.
Transference
The transfer of feelings to a psychoanalyst of love or anger that has been originally directed to a patient’s parents or other authority figures.
Behavioral treatment approaches
Treatment approaches that make use of the basic processes of learning, such as reinforcement and extinction, to reduce or eliminate maladaptive behavior.
Aversive conditioning
A form of therapy that reduces the frequency of undesired behavior by pairing and aversive, unpleasant stimulus with undesired behavior.
Systematic desensitization
A behavioral technique based on classical conditioning in which exposure to an anxiety producing stimulus is paired with deep relaxation to extinguish the response of anxiety.
Flooding
A behavioral treatment for anxiety in which people are suddenly confronted with a stimulus that they fear.
Cognitive treatment approaches
Treatment approaches that teach people to think in more adaptive ways by changing their dysfunctional cognitions about the world and themselves.
Cognitive-behavioral approach
A treatment approach that incorporates basic principles of learning to change the way people think.
Rational-emotive behavior therapy
A form of therapy that attempts to re-structure a person’s belief system into a more realistic, rational, and logical set of views by challenging dysfunctional beliefs that maintain irrational behavior.
Humanistic therapy
Therapy in which the underlying rationale is that people have control of their behavior, can make choices about their lives, and are essentially responsible for solving their own problems.
Person centered therapy
Therapy in which the goal is to reach one’s potential for self actualization.
Interpersonal therapy (IPT)
Short-term therapy that focuses on the context of current social relationships, helping patients to control their moods and emotions.
