Chapter 16: Therapies Flashcards
Biological Therapies
Treatment to reduce or eliminate the symptoms of psychological disorders by altering the way an individual’s body functions.
Anti-Anxiety Drugs
Commonly know as tranquilizers, they reduce anxiety by making people calmer and less excitable.
Anti-Depressant Drugs
Drugs that regulate mood
Anti-Psychotic Drugs
Drugs that diminish agitated behavior, reduce tension, decrease hallucinations, improve social behavior, and produce better sleep patterns in people who have a severe psychological disorder, such as schizophrenia.
Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)
Commonly called shock therapy, this treatment is used for severely depressed individuals; it causes a seizure to occur in the brain.
Psychosurgery
A biological therapy that involves removal or destruction of brain tissue to improve an individual’s adjustment.
Psychotherapy
The process used by mental health professional to help individuals recognize, define, and overcome their psychological and interpersonal difficulties.
Insight Therapy
Encourages insight and self-awareness; includes the psychodynamic and humanistic therapies.
Psychodynamic Therapies
Stress the importance of the unconscious mind, extensive interpretation by the therapist, and the role of experiences in the early childhood years. The goal of the psychodynamic therapies is to help individuals recognize their maladaptive ways of coping and the sources of their unconscious conflicts.
Psychoanalysis
Freud’s psychotherapeutic technique for analyzing an individual’s unconscious thoughts. Freud believed that clients’ current problems could be traced to childhood experiences, involving conflicts about sexuality.
Free Association
The psychoanalytic technique of having individuals say what ever comes into their minds.
Catharsis
The release of anger or aggressive energy by directly or vicariously engaging in anger or aggression; the catharsis hypothesis states that behaving angrily or watching other behave angrily reduces subsequent anger.
Dream Analysis
The psychotherapeutic technique used by psychoanalysts to interpret a person’s dream. Psychoanalysts believe dreams contain information about the individual’s unconscious thought and conflicts.
Transference
The psychoanalytic term for the person’s relating to the analyst in ways that reproduce or relive important relationships in the individual’s life.
Interpretation
The therapist searches for symbolic, hidden meanings in what the individual says and does, and suggest possible meanings of the person’s statements and behavior.
Resistance
The psychoanalytic terms for the person’s unconscious defense strategies that prevent the analyst from understanding the person’s problems.
Humanistic Therapies
Encourages people to understand themselves and to grow personally. The humanistic therapies are unique in their emphasis on self-healing capacities.
Client Centered Therapy
Roger’s humanistic therapy in which the therapist provides a warm, supportive atmosphere to improve the client’s self-concept and encourage the client to gain insight about problems.
Gestalt Therapy
Perls’ humanistic therapy in which the therapist challenges clients to help them become more aware of their feelings and face their problems.
Behavior Therapy
Uses principles of learning to reduce or eliminate maladaptive behavior emphasis on self-healing capacities
Systematic Desensitization
A method of behavior therapy based on classical conditioning that treats anxiety by getting the person to associate deep relaxation with increasingly intense anxiety producing situations.
Aversive Conditioning
A classical conditioning treatment which consists of repeated pairings of the undesirable behavior with aversive stimuli to decrease the behavior’s rewards.
Behavior Modification
The application of operant conditioning principles to change human behavior; especially to replace unacceptable, maladaptive behaviors with acceptable, adaptive behaviors.
Cognitive Therapies
Emphasize that individuals’ cognitions or thought are the main source of abnormal behavior and psychological problems.
Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)
Based on Albert Ellis’ assertion that individuals develop a psychological disorder because of their beliefs, especially those that are irrational and self-defeating.
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy
A combination of cognitive therapy and behavior therapy.
