Humanistic Constructivist Psychotherapies Flashcards
Characteristics of humanistic therapies
- Must understand subjective experience (exp is social constructed)
- Focus on current behav
- Therapy rlnsp is authentic, collaborative, and egalitarian
- Rejects traditional assess and diagnostics
- Potential for self-determination and self-actualization.
Types of humanistic therapies
person-centered, gestalt, existential, and reality
Persona-Centered Therapy
- Rogers.
- Self-actualizing tendency - motivates and guides toward positive, healthy growth
- The “self” is the central part of personality
Person-centered therapy: Maladaptive behavior
Self becomes disorganized due to incongruence btwn self and experience. For example, conditions of worth and positive regard is conditional rather than unconditional
Person-centered therapy: Therapy goals
Congruence btwn self and experience
Person-centered therapy: Therapy techniques
The “right environment” provided by therapist will allow client to achieve congruence btwn self and experience and self-actualization
- Unconditional positiv regard (Respect)
- Genuineness (Congruence)
Gestalt Therapy: Overview
Fritz Perls
- People seek closure
- A person’s gestalts reflect current needs
- Behavior represents a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts
- Behavior can only be understood in its context
- A person experiences the world in accord with the principle of figure/ground.
Gestalt Therapy: Personality theory
The self and the self-image
- Self = creative part of personality that promotes self-actualization
- Self-image = the darker side that hinders growth and self-actualization by imposing external standards
Gestalt Therapy: Maladaptive behavior
Growth disorder involving abandonment of the self for the self-image resulting in lack of integration. A “boundary disturbance”
- Introjection = psychologically swallowing whole concepts without fully understanding them.
- Projection = disowning aspects of self and assigning them to other people
- Retroflection = doing to oneself what one wants to do others
- Confluence = absence of boundary btwn self and the environment.
Gestalt Therapy: Therapy goals
Become a unified whole by integrating various aspects of the self.
Gestalt Therapy: Therapy techniques
Awareness is curative element = full understanding of thoughts, feelings, and actions in the here-and-now.
-Empty chair, role play with opposing aspects of personality, e.g., top dog/underdog
Existential therapies: Overview
Focus on personal choice and responsibility for developing a meaningful life.
People are in a constant state of evolving and becoming.
Gestalt Therapy: Maladaptive Behav
Inability to cope authentically with concerns of existence, death, freedom, existential isolation, meaninglessness.
Gestalt Therapy: Therapy goals and techniques
Goal = live in committed, self-aware, authentic, and meaningful ways Techniques = therapeutic relationship
Reality Therapy: Overview
Choice theory. People are responsible for the choices they make. Focuses on how the choices we make affect our life course.
Reality Therapy: Personality theory
5 basic needs:survival, love and belonging (most impt) power, freedom, and fun.
Successful identity = needs fulfilled in a responsible way
Failure Identity = needs fulfilled in irresponsible ways (underlies mental illness)
Reality Therapy: maladaptive behavior
Mental illness result of personal choices.
Reality Therapy: therapy goals and techniques
- Focuses on current behaviors and beliefs, stresses conscious processes, emphasizes judgments (ability to judge right and wrong).
- Goal to ID effective and responsible ways to satisfy needs and develop success identity
Personal Construct Therapy: Overview
How the person experiences the world and how they choose to deal with the world.
Personal Construct Therapy: Personality theory
- Psychological constructs determined by how one construes (perceives, interprets, and predicts) events.
- People use personal constructs, eg, bipolar dimensions of meaning (happy/sad, competent/incompetent). Devel in infancy
- People like scientists, continually testing and revising personal constructs
Personal Construct Therapy: Maladaptive behavior
Anxiety, hostility and other forms of maladaptive behav result from inadequate personal constructs do deal with life situations.
Personal Construct Therapy: Therapy goals and techniques
Co-experimenters to help patient identify, revise or replace maladaptive personal constructs to better make sense of experiences.
- Repertory grid, self-characterization.
- Fixed-role therapy
