Chapter Sixteen 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 therapist’s interpretations of them—released previously repressed feelings, allowing the patient to gain self-insight.
resistance
in psychoanalysis, the blocking from consciousness of anxiety-laden material.
interpretation
in psychoanalysis, the analyst’s noting supposed dream meanings, resistances, and other significant behaviors and events in order to promote insight.
transference
in psychoanalysis, the patient’s transfer to the analyst of emotions linked with other relationships (such as love or hatred for a parent).
In psychoanalysis, when patients experience strong feelings for their therapist, this is called ___________. Patients are said to demonstrate anxiety when they put up mental blocks around sensitive memories, indicating ___________. The therapist will attempt to provide insight into the underlying anxiety by offering a(n) ___________ of the mental blocks.
transference; resistance; interpretation
insight therapies
therapies that aim to improve psychological functioning by increasing a person’s awareness of underlying motives and defenses.
client-centered therapy
a humanistic therapy, developed by Carl Rogers, in which the therapist uses techniques such as active listening within an accepting, genuine, empathic environment to facilitate clients’ growth. (Also called person-centered therapy.)
active listening
empathic listening in which the listener echoes, restates, and clarifies. A feature of Rogers’ client-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 to evoke new responses to stimuli that are triggering unwanted behaviors; include exposure therapies and aversive conditioning.
What might a psychodynamic therapist say about Mowrer’s therapy for bed-wetting? How might a behavior therapist defend it?
A psychodynamic therapist might be more interested in helping the child develop insight about the underlying problems that have caused the bed-wetting response. A behavior therapist would be more likely to agree with Mowrer that the bed-wetting symptom is the problem, and that counterconditioning the unwanted behavior would indeed bring emotional relief.
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 and avoid.
systematic desensitization
a type of exposure therapy that associates a pleasant relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli. Commonly used to treat 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 airplane flying, 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 the tokens for privileges or treats.
What are the insight therapies, and how do they differ from behavior therapies?
The insight therapies—psychodynamic and humanistic therapies—seek to relieve problems by providing an understanding of their origins. Behavior therapies assume the problem behavior is the problem and treat it directly, paying less attention to its origins.
