Chapter 17: Therapy Flashcards
Psychotherapy
an emotionally charged, confiding interaction between a trained therapist and someone who suffers from psychological difficulties.
Eclectic Approach
an approach to psychotherapy that, depending on the client’s problems, uses techniques from various forms of therapy.
Resistance
in psychoanalysis, the blocking from consciousness of anxiety-laden material.
Transference
in psychoanalysis, the patient’s transfer to the analyst of emotions linked with other relationships.
Active listening
empathic listening in which the listener echoes, restates, and clarifies. A feature of Rogers’ client-centered therapy.
Behavior Therapy
therapy that applies learning principles to the elimination of unwanted behaviors.
Exposure Therapies
behavioral techniques, such as systematic desensitization, that treat anxieties by exposing people (in imagination or actuality) to the things they fear and avoid.
Token Economy
an operant conditioning procedure in which people earn a token of some sort for exhibiting a desired behavior and can later exchange the tokens for various privileges or treats.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
a popular integrated therapy that combines cognitive therapy (changing self defeating thinking) with behavior therapy (changing behavior).
Family Therapy
therapy that treats the family as a system. views an individual’s unwanted behaviors as influenced by or directed at other family members; attempts to guide family members toward positive relationships and improved communication.
Meta-Analysis
a procedure for statistically combining the results of many different research studies.
Lithium
in psychopharmacology, this is used to control bipolar symptoms.
Psychosurgery
surgery that removes or destroys brain tissue in an effort to change behavior.
Aversive Conditioning
a type of counterconditioning that associates an unpleasant state (such as nausea) with an unwanted behavior (such as drinking alcohol).
Interpretation
in psychoanalysis, the analyst’s noting supposed dream meanings, resistances, and other significant behaviors in order to promote insight.
Client-Centered Therapy
A humanistic therapy based on Carl Roger’s beliefs that an individual has an unlimited capacity for psychological growth and will continue to grow unless barriers are placed in the way.
Counterconditioning
a behavior therapy procedure that conditions new responses to stimuli that trigger unwanted behaviors; based on classical conditioning.
Systematic Desensitization
A type of counterconditioning that associates a pleasant relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli. Commonly used to treat phobias.
Cognitive Therapy
therapy that teaches people new, more adaptive ways of thinking and acting; based on the assumption that thoughts intervene between events and our emotional reactions.
Rational Emotive Therapy (RET)
A Cognitive Therapy based on Albert Ellis’ theory that cognitions control our emotions and behaviors; therefore, changing the way we think about things will affect the way we feel and the way we behave.
Regression Towards the Mean
the tendency for extremes of unusual scores to fall back (regress) toward their average.
Psychopharmacology
the study of the effects of drugs on mind and behavior.
Electroconvulsive Therapy
a biomedical therapy for severely depressed patients in which a brief electric current is sent through the brain of an anesthetized patient.
Lobotomy
a now-rare psychosurgical procedure once used to calm uncontrollably emotional or violent patients. The procedure cut the nerves that connect the frontal lobes to the emotion-controlling centers of the inner brain.
Tardive Dyskinesia
involuntary movements of the facial muscles, tongue, and limbs; a possible neurotoxic side effect of long-term use of antipsychotic drugs that target D2 dopamine receptors.
Gestalt Therapy
existential/experiential form of psychotherapy that emphasizes personal responsibility, and that focuses upon the individual’s experience in the present moment, the therapist-client relationship, the environmental and social contexts of a person’s life, and the self-regulating adjustments people make as a result of their overall situation.
