Clinical Psychology Flashcards
What is the medical model?
• Focuses on physiological explanations
• Uses an ‘illness-treatment’ model
• Borrows language from medicine
• Genetic and neurological explanations
• Tend to ignore psychological and sociological influences
• Medication as the primary treatment
- advantages: if it works its fast, avoids dealing with painful causes, cheaper
- disadvantages: suggests problems are an illness, ignores psycho-social causes, doesn’t help people to help themselves, adverse effects, addiction to medication
What are some criticisms of the medical model?
- Weak evidence relationship between chemical imbalance and mental health problems
- Even where neurological differences have been found brain differences can be caused by the environment so it is not clear that neurological characteristic is the ‘cause’ of the problem
Describe the psychoanalytic model
Inherent conflict between different parts of the psyche:
unacceptable feelings/thoughts are held back from awareness (consciousness) and remain in the unconscious
Explain Ego defences:
unconscious conflict causes anxiety and we respond by shoring up the ego’s defences against unconscious material emerging into consciousness.
This includes denial, projection, intellectualisation, etc.
BUT sometimes the anxiety comes out anyway and often these defences create other problems for the person….
Explain the importance of early relationships
- conflicts relate most often to early experiences
- Most important early experiences are focused on primary relationships (mother, father, caregiver)
- Early relationships for a blue-print for later relationships
- Attachment theory – showed how quality of relationships in early childhood predict later relationships
Psychoanalytic explanations of mental health problems
- Conflict between different wishes/motives
- Leads to unacceptable motives or feelings being repressed into the unconscious
- Ego defences help to keep these unacceptable motives and feeling in the unconscious
- But they end up showing themselves in indirect ways that produce mental health problems
- Most conflicts relate to early experiences in relationships with attachment figures
- Psychodynamic therapy focuses on the psychological roots of emotional suffering. Its hallmarks are self-reflection and self-examination, and the use of the relationship between therapist and patient as a window into problematic relationship patterns in the patient’s life. Its goal is not only to alleviate the most obvious symptoms but to help people lead healthier lives.
Techniques of psychoanalysis
A form of insight therapy where the aim is to help people discover and make sense of the root causes of their problems via:
• Free association: encouraging people to say the first thing that comes to mind – enables clues about unconscious material
• Dream analysis: Freud argued dreams were the ‘royal road to the unconscious’
• Interpretation: explore links that help to illuminate the unconscious conflict
• Challenge resistance: help people overcome their defences by recognising their resistance
Criticisms of psychoanalysis
- Case study method
- Theory untestable – concepts too abstract
- Theory is unfalsifiable – ‘if you say you didn’t it’s because you don’t remember’
- Limited evidence of treatment efficacy
Describe the Behavioural Model
- Not interested in internal psychological processes – only in overt behaviour – this has changed over time
- All behaviour (including maladaptive) is learned
- The source of all behaviour is stimuli in the environment
- Rejects diagnostic systems – environment causes problems not underlying disease/illness
Describe classical conditioning
refers to learning procedure in which a biologically potent stimulus (e.g. food) is paired with a previously neutral stimulus (e.g. a bell). Pavlov concluded that if a particular stimulus in the dog’s surroundings was present when the dog was given food then that stimulus could become associated with food and cause salivation on its own.
Explain the development of Phobias
“little Albert” (Watson)
• Was given a white rat – he was not afraid
• Showed him the white rat and made loud noise behind his head – HE CRIED
• Repeated pairing over several weeks
• Showed white rat without noise – he cried and tried to crawl away
Response generalisation – to other furry animals, white coat and… Santa’s beard
Explain Operant Conditioning
- Positive reinforcement (reward): increase in occurrence behaviour due to satisfying consequence (reward)
- Do not give reward every time – studies show that it is the most powerful way to use rewards (gambling, facebook)
- Punishment: decrease in problematic behaviour due to unpleasant stimulus e.g. hitting a child who misbehaves decreases the likelihood of the bad behaviour.
- Extinction: decrease in behaviour by removing the reinforcer e.g. the removal of the positive reinforcement of parental attention for bad behaviour decreases the likelihood of its occurring.
Explain Counter-conditioning
and give the 3 steps of systematic desensitisation
Counter-conditioning in which a feared stimulus is paired with relaxation until the stimuli no longer produces fear.
Steps in systematic desensitization:
1. Relaxation training – progressive muscle training/visualization/deep breathing
2. Creation of a fear hierarchy
3. Graded exposure paired with relaxation
explain social learning theorY
Children and adults learn behaviour by watching and imitating other.
Can learn maladaptive behaviour such as aggression.
Therapy offers observation of adaptive models of behaviour, e.g. assertiveness or social skills training
What are some criticisms of behaviourism?
- Excludes everything not observable – thoughts, emotions, values, beliefs, spirituality – radical behaviourism has changed this view
- Treats the symptoms not the ‘cause’
- Can lead to symptom substitution
What is Humanistic therapy?
therapy that emphasises the study of the whole person. Humanistic psychologists look at human behaviour not only through the eyes of the observer, but through the eyes of the person doing the behaving.
