Clinical psychology

Question 1

What is Howard’s (1993) phase model of psychotherapy?

Answer 1

(1) Remoralization - focuses on the client’s subjectiver well-being and occurs durig the first few sessions
(2) Remediation - focuses on symptom reduction and generally occurs between the 5th and 15th sessions
(3) Rehabilitation - focuses on life functioning gains and occurs more gradually.

Question 2

What is a tenet of interpersonal therapy when dealing with depression?

Answer 2

They believe that depression is caused and maintained by disturbances in early life, especially ATTACHMENT disturbances. Rather than focusing on the past, however, they focus on the connection between the presenting problem and the client’s current relationships, including the one with the therapist. Grief reactions are a common focus of interpersonal therapy.

Question 3

What is the most basic defense mechanism?

Answer 3

Repression.

Question 4

Describe the defense mechanism of repression.

Answer 4

It involves excluding an unacceptable impulse from consciousness.

Question 5

Describe the defense mechanism of denial.

Answer 5

The person rejects a threatening fact that is true, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to support it. It is common in addiction, in which the people commonly deny the seriousness of the problem.

Question 6

What is the healthiest defense mechanism?

Answer 6

Sublimation.

Question 7

Describe the defense mechanism of sublimation.

Answer 7

When a person rechannels socially unacceptable impulses into socially useful activity, such as art or work. Gandhi was the master of sublimation.

Question 8

Describe the defense mechanism of reaction formation.

Answer 8

One perceives an anxiety-provoking impulse or feeling as its opposite, such as by turning love into aggression, or a wish into a fear. Larry Craig, the politician who disparaged homosexuality and made a pass in the men’s bathroom, used this defense mechanism.

Question 9

What is one of the major differences between Freud and Jung.

Answer 9

Jung believed in the collective unconscious, which includes memories of our cultural past, archetypes, and pre-human memories. Freud believed only in the individual unconscious.

Question 10

What is another name for “depressogenic schemata”?

Answer 10

Cognitive distortions. These are from Beck’s theory.

Question 11

What is Lewinsohn associated with?

Answer 11

Depressed individuals’ self-evaluations reflect an unbiased perception of reality and more accurately correspond with observer evaluations.

Question 12

What is Seligman associated with?

Answer 12

The theory of learned helplessness.

Question 13

Who is associated with learned helplessness?

Answer 13

Seligman

Question 14

In therapy, who has more individual differences, younger patients or the elderly?

Answer 14

The elderly. This is particularly true in terms of physical abilities, intellectual abilities, and personal characteristics.

Question 15

True or false: elderly people do not drop out of therapy prematurely.

Answer 15

True.

Question 16

What is the function of self-disclosure in feminist therapy?

Answer 16

Creation of an egalitarian relationship.

Question 17

What is projective identification?

Answer 17

A defense mechanism in which one or more parts of the self are falsely attributed to another, which are then unconsciously accepted by the recipient, and the projector then identifies with the projected part in the other.

Question 18

What is parallel process?

Answer 18

Recreating the supervisee-client relationship in the supervisee-supervisor relationship through a combination of transference, countertransference, and projection.

Question 19

What is introjection?

Answer 19

Absorbing the values or behaviors of others, including the larger society, without really understanding or assimilating those values or behaviors. It represents a disturbance in the boundary between self and others – the person does or believes things that are not reflective of a self that is clearly distinct from others in the environment.

Question 20

What is diagnostic overshadowing?

Answer 20

The tendency to attribute all of a client’s emotional, behavioral, and social problems to one salient characteristic instead of considering other, alternative explanations.

Question 21

According to recent research (as of 2014), which group responds best to psychotherapy?

Girls better than boys, with adolescent girls responding best

Girls better than boys, with younger girls responding best

Boys at all age levels

No differences in the effectiveness of treatment.

Answer 21

Girls better than boys, with adolescent girls responding best.

Question 22

In psychodynamic theory, what is secondary gain?

Answer 22

The benefit a person obtains from a experience in conection with a mental health or physical problem (i.e. concern from family and friends).

Question 23

In social learning theory, what is reinforcement?

Answer 23

It is concerned with the actions that support a specific behavior, e.g. it rewards the behavior.

Question 24

In psychodynamic theory, what is assimilative integration?

Answer 24

An approach in which the therapist has a commitment to one theoretical approach but is also willing to use techniques from other therapeutic approaches.

Question 25

What is theoretical integration?

Answer 25

The most difficult level of integration to achieve, as it require integrating concepts from different theoretical approaches (e.g. behavioral and psychoanalytic) in which the basic philosophy in each theory may differ. It attempts to create a “grand unified theory.”

Question 26

What is technical eclecticism?

Answer 26

A variation of assimilative integration. There are a wide variety of techniques, but there is no unifying theoretical understanding that underlies the approach. It is not concerned with theory. Instead, the therapist relies on experience and knowledge to choose interventions most appropriate for an individual with the benefit to the individual being of more significance than adherence to any one theory.

Question 27

What are common factors?

Answer 27

They are aspects present in most, if not all, approaches to therapy across all theoretical lines and psychotherapeutic activities, e.g. therapeutic alliance; expectation that improvement will result, etc.

Question 28

Of the following, who is most associated with an emphasis on social interest?

Berne
Rogers
Adler
Perls

Answer 28

Adler. He proposed an innate social interest primarily motivates people and acting in ways that fulfill social responsibilities is the goal of life.

Question 29

What are the A-B-C’s of Ellis’ Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy? And what is D and E?

Answer 29

ACTIVATING event triggers irrational BELIEFS about the event, and the beliefs have CONSEQUENCES such as negative emotions and self-defeating behavior. The therapist DISPUTES the irrational beliefs, leading to their replacement with rational beliefs and an EFFECTIVE outlook.

Question 30

According to Kohut, what leads to narcissism?

Answer 30

A consistent lack of parental empathy.

Question 31

According to Kohut, what should a therapist stress when working with a narcissistic client?

Answer 31

Consistent empathy.

Question 32

What is high-context communication?

Answer 32

It is characterized by reliance on non-verbal and culturally-shared cues, and is characteristic of a number of cultural / racial minority groups, including African-, Hispanic-, and Asian-Americans.

Question 33

What is somatic therapy?

Answer 33

Types of treatment involving manipulations of the body.

Question 34

What are the three main types of somatic therapy?

Answer 34

Psychopharmacological, or drug therapy (the most common type)

Electroconvulsive shock therapy (ECT), which involves administering a muscle relaxant and anaesthetizing a patient before passing an electric current through the non-dominant brain hemisphere

Psychosurgery - the most extreme form of somatic therapy. It is rarely used and reserved only for acute conditions such as extreme depression, chronic anxiety, and severe obsessional disorders for which all other treatments have been unsuccessful. This includes lobotomy or leucotomy (cutting the connections to a particular part of the brain).

Question 35

What is DiClemente’s transtheoretical or Stages of Change theory?

Answer 35

An eclectic model that integrates interventions from various theories of psychotherapy.

Question 36

What are the stages of change in DiClemente’s transtheoretical or Stages of Change theory?

Answer 36

Precontemplation
Contemplation
Preparation
Action
Maintenance

Question 37

What is Beck’s cognitive triad of depression?

Answer 37

A patient feels: he is worthless; his future is hopeless; and the world is unfair.