Midterm theories Flashcards
Cognitive behavior therapy central focus-
cognitive therapy approaches in social work must incorporate clients’ life conditions and interpersonal events, particularly those who experience severe deprivation, threats, and vulnerability.
REBT: assessment and treatment
One of the strengths of the behavioral approach is the comprehensive assessment of clients (as in Dr. Lazarus’s multimodal approach), which assists clients in identifying personal goals and helps therapists conceptualize an appropriate treatment plan to help clients reach their goals.
Insight in psychodynamic psychotherapy
is a form of depth psychology, the primary focus of which is to reveal the unconscious content of a client’s psyche in an effort to alleviate psychic tension. In this way, it is similar to psychoanalysis.
Transference
the clients unconscious projection of feelings, thoughts and wishes onto the practitioner, ( represents a person from clients past and experiences )
- Countertransference
practitioner unconscious reaction to client, particularly the projections.
Aaron Beck: characteristics of his treatment approach
his observations led him to conclude that depressed people maintain a negative bias in their cognitive processing. He conceptualized this negativism in terms of cognitive schemas—memory structures made up of three basic themes of personal ineffectiveness, personal degradation, and the world as an essentially unpleasant place. Beck was less confrontational than Ellis, seeing clients as “colleagues” with whom he examined the nature of “verifiable” reality
- Cognitive errors
A person’s thoughts can accurately reflect what is happening in the external world, or be distorted to some degree. These distortions, called cognitive errors.
Common Cognitive Arbitrary inference: Drawing a conclusion about an event with no evidence, little evidence, or even contradictory evidence
”I’m not going to do well in this course. I have a bad feeling about it.”
“The staff at this agency seem to have a different practice approach than mine. They aren’t going to respect my work.”
Selective abstraction: Judging a situation on the basis of one or a few details taken out of a broader context
“Did you see how our supervisor yawned when I was describing my assessment of the client? He must think my work is superficial.”
Magnification or minimization: Concluding that an event is either far more significant, or far less significant, than the evidence seems to indicate
“I got a B on the first assignment. There is a good chance I will fail this course.”
“I don’t really need to get to work on time every day. My clients don’t seem to mind waiting, and the administrative meeting isn’t relevant to my work.”
Overgeneralization: Concluding that all instances of a certain kind of situation or event will turn out a particular way because one or two such situations did
My supervisor thinks that my depressed client client dropped out because I was too confrontational. I don’t have enough empathy to be a decent social worker.”
Personalization: Attributing the cause, or accepting responsibility for, an external event without evidence of a connection
“The instructor didn’t say this, but our group presentation got a mediocre evaluation because of my poor delivery.”
Dichotomous thinking: Categorizing experiences as one of two extremes: complete success or utter failure (usually the latter)
“I didn’t get an A on my final exam. I blew it! I’m not competent to move on to the next course.”
“I got an A on the midterm. I can coast the rest of the way through this course.”
- Reality therapy: assessment and treatment
Reality therapy operates from the premise that all relationship problems are in the present and must be solved in the present. Problematic symptoms are the result of clients trying to deal with a present unsatisfying relationship. Once a significant relationship is improved, the troubling symptom will disappear. Reality therapists challenge clients to consider whether their current behavior is getting them what they want. Clients are encouraged to explore their perceptions, share their wants, and make a commitment to counseling. Because clients can directly control their acting and thinking functions more than they can control what they are feeling, their actions become the focus of therapy. Clients explore the direction in which their behavior is taking them and evaluate what they are doing. They then create a plan of action to make the changes they want.
Behavior therapy: Assessment and treatment
Behavior therapy assumes that people are basically shaped by learning and sociocultural conditioning. This approach focuses on the client’s ability to learn how to eliminate maladaptive behavior and acquire
constructive behavior. Behavior therapy is a systematic approach that begins with a comprehensive assessment of the individual to determine the present level of functioning as a prelude to setting therapeutic goals. After the client establishes clear and specific behavioral goals, the therapist typically suggests strategies that are most appropriate for meeting these stated goals. It is assumed that clients will make progress to the extent that they are willing to practice new behaviors in real-life situations. Continual evaluation is used to determine how well the procedures and techniques are working.
