Clinical Psychology Flashcards
Freudian Personality Theory
Defense mechanisms are used by the ego to ward off anxiety resulting from conflicts between id impulses and the demands of the superego or reality. Defense mechanisms lead to maladaptive behavior when they become the habitual way of dealing with conflict.
Reaction Formation - Freudian Psychoanalysis
Involves transforming an id impulse into its opposite
Sublimation - Freudian Psychoanalysis
Involves channeling an id impulse into a more acceptable artistic or intellectual activity
What is the goal of Freudian Psychoanalysis?
To reduce maladaptive behavior by bringing unconscious material into conscious awareness
What are the four processes of Freudian Psychoanalysis?
- Clarification - Restating a client’s remarks in clearer terms
- Confrontation - making statements or asking questions that help the client see their behavior in a new way
- Interpretation - Bringing a client’s unconscious material into conscious awareness
- Working Through - preceded by catharsis and insight, involving assimilation of new insights into the personality
Jung’s Personality Theory
Personality is the result of both conscious and unconscious processes. Mid and late adulthood involve increasing individuation in which the ego becomes more focused on self
What are the two components of the unconscious in Jung’s Personality Theory?
- Personal Unconscious - personal experiences that are not currently available to conscious awareness.
- Collective Unconscious - archetypes (collective experiences of the human race)
What is the primary goal of Jung’s Analytic Psychology?
To bridge the gap between the conscious and the personal and collective unconscious
What techniques are promoted by Jung’s Analytic Psychology?
Interpretation of transferences, dreams, and other phenomena that help the client become more aware of their inner world
Object Relations Personality Theory
People have an innate need for satisfying relationships with objects (other people) and personality and behavior are largely determined by early internalized representations of the self and objects (introjects)
What did Mahler emphasize in Object Relations Approaches?
The importance of the separation-individuation process in which the outcome is the achievement of a separate identity. Problems in this process may lead to maladaptive behavior in adulthood.
What does the feminist revision of the object relations theory propose?
Gender differences can be traced to difference in mother-son and mother-daughter parenting practices. As a result of these differences, male identity is defined in terms of separation and female identity is based on relations with others.
What are four commonalities among Humanistic Psychotherapies?
- Each person is unique.
- Recognize the influence of the past, but focus on the present.
- People have an innate capacity for growth or self-actualization.
- Reject traditional assessment techniques and diagnostic labels
Person Centered Therapy Personality Theory
People have an innate self-actualization tendency that serves as a source of motivation. Self-concept is described as part of the person’s experience.
According to person-centered personality theory, when does the self-concept become disorganized?
The self-concept becomes disorganized when the person experiences incongruence between self and experience as the result of conditional positive regard. Incongruence causes anxiety that the individual may attempt to alleviate through distortion or denial of the self or experience.
In person-centered therapy, how does the clinician help the client achieve congruence between self and experience?
- Using unconditional positive regard
- Using genuineness
- Using accurate empathic understanding (showing empathy by communicating that they see the world as their client does)
Gestalt Personality Theory
People have the capacity to self-regulate, or assume responsibility for fulfilling their own physical and psychological needs. It considers the primary motivator of human behavior to be an innate striving for
equilibrium (homeostasis).
Contact Boundary
The point of contact between a person and the environment in Gestalt Theory.
According to Gestalt Theory, when does maladaptive behavior occur?
When there is a growth-disturbance. It develops when a boundary disturbance interferes with the ability to maintain a state of equilibrium.
Introjection
In Gestalt Theory, it is the tendency to passively accept the values, attitudes, and beliefs of others
without truly understanding them
Retroflection
In Gestalt Theory, it involves directing feelings toward others inward.
Confluence
In Gestalt Theory, it is a complete absence of a boundary between self and others that results in an inability to perceive oneself as a separate person.
What is the primary goal of Gestalt therapy?
To help the client restore his/her ability to self-regulate. Various strategies are used to increase the client’s awareness of how he/she functions in the environment and help the client integrate his/her thoughts, feelings, and actions.
What techniques are used in Gestalt therapy?
Empty chair technique - helps clients stay in the present so they can understand their feelings more fully.
Dream work - the “royal road to integration” with aspects of a dream representing unacknowledged or disowned parts of the past.
Interpersonal Therapy
Focuses on aspects of the client’s interpersonal relationships that have contributed to current symptoms. It is based on a medical model that regards depression and other symptoms as signs of a medical illness.
What four interpersonal issues does interpersonal therapy target?
- Role disputes
- Role transitions
- Unresolved grief
- Interpersonal Deficits
What are the primary goals of interpersonal therapy and how are they achieved?
The primary goal is symptom reduction and improved interpersonal functioning. They achieve this through education, instillation of hope, and pharmacotherapy.
Solution-Focused Therapy
Solution-Focused therapy focuses on solutions to problems. The client is viewed as the expert and the therapist acts as a consultant or collaborator.
How is therapy structured in solution-focused therapy?
In the initial session, the client identifies specific therapy goals, responds to the miracle question (what it would be like if their problems were removed and issues addressed), identifies exceptions, and rates his/her current status with regard to the problem. In subsequent sessions begin with the question, “What’s better since the last time we met” and the strategies of the initial session are repeated.
Transtheoretical Model
It is based on the assumption that the focus of therapy should be on change and proposes that the change process is essentially the same regardless of the target behavior. It asserts that, to be effective, an intervention must match the client’s current stage of change. It considers the goal of any intervention to be to help the client move to the next stage of change.
What are the 6 steps of change in the transtheoretical model?
- Precontemplation - no intention of changing in the next six months
- Contemplation - planning to start making changes in the next six months, but may be ambivalent about doing so
- Preparation - intends to take action in the next month
- Action - made some changes in the past six months
- Maintenance - working to prevent relapse
- Termination - maintained behavioral changes for 5 years
Motivational Interviewing
The primary goal is to increase the client’s intrinsic motivation to change by overcoming his/her resistance and ambivalence. It combines the transtheoretical model with client-centered therapy and the notion of self-efficacy.
What are the 3 therapy techniques used in group therapy?
- Reduce premature termination by pre-screening potential members and providing pre-therapy orientation
- The therapist acts as technical expert and participant-model
- The concurrent group and individual therapies should be provided only in certain circumstances (e.g., when a group member is experiencing a crisis)
What are the 3 formative stages of group therapy?
- Initial Stage (orientation, hesitant participation, search for meaning, and dependency) - group members engage in limited communication that’s restricted primarily to seeking and giving advice
- Transition stage (conflict, dominance, and rebellion) - advice giving is replaced by criticism and other negative comments
- Working stage (development of cohesiveness) -characterized by a high degree of trust and cohesion among group members
Cybernetics
Were originally described by a mathematician and then applied to family communication processes. The key concept is the feedback loop. A negative feedback loop reduces deviation and maintains the stats quo. A positive feedback loop amplifies deviation and disrupts the status quo.
What are symmetrical interactions in family therapy?
When two people mirror each other’s behavior
What is complimentary interaction in family therapy?
When one person’s behavior complements another person’s behavior
What is double-bind communication?
A psychological predicament in which a person receives from a single source conflicting messages that allow no appropriate response to be made.
What techniques are used in family therapy?
Focusing on the present, adopting a problem-solving approach, and using a combination of direct and paradoxical techniques.
