PSYC 508-counsel and personality theories Flashcards
Authentic existence
Part of: humanistic/existential therapy
Who: Carl Rogers
What: a goal in existential therapy; a person living life in accordance with their true Self, personal values, rather than according to the external demands of society, such as social conventions, kinship, and duty. Describes a person who is taking responsibility for their life and for the freedoms they have, and who has an accurate understanding of themselves and the world around them.
Clinical example: Staci likes to wear clothes and play with toys more traditionally associated with boys. Her parents push her towards more feminine choices in clothes and toys. She feels conflict between the authentic existence she wants and the pressures to conform to a less authentic (more feminine) version of herself.
EXAMPLE: The client in counseling reveals that he became a Lawyer because he comes from a family of lawyers. He discloses that he always felt called to be an artist. The counselor, being of existential orientation, works with the client on taking responsibility for his life and striving for growth. The counselor helps the client come up with ways in which he can lead an authentic existence-maybe join an art club, take the time on the weekends to create something.
Big Five Personality Model/Traits
The Big Five personality traits, also known as the five factor model, is a model based on common language descriptors of personality. These descriptors were grouped together using a statistical technique called factor analysis. This widely examined theory suggests five broad dimensions that describe the human personality and psyche. The five factors have been defined as openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism, often listed under the acronym OCEAN.
Beneath each proposed global factor, a number of correlated and more specific primary factors are claimed. For example, extraversion is said to include related qualities as gregariousness, assertiveness, excitement seeking, warmth, activity, and positive emotions
Clinical example: Dylann came into therapy because he was experiencing anxiety over the fact that he was unable to pick a major. The counselor gave John the NEO-PI which is based on the big 5 personality model to determine his personality traits and work together to explore different majors and career paths.
Client-centered/person-centered theory/therapy
Person-centered therapy is a humanistic approach first developed by Carl Rogers based on his theory of personality which asserts that humans have a natural tendency towards growth, learning, and change - actualization tendency.
Elements of client-centered therapy include:
- The therapist trusts the client.
- Therapists hold attitudes toward clients of genuineness, unconditional positive regard, and empathy understanding. (Necessary therapeutic conditions)
- The therapeutic relationship is the mechanism of change.
- Therapists don’t educate clients, interpret their conflicts, or identify faulty thoughts or behaviors; instead, they establish relational conditions that allow clients to engage in natural self-discovery and personal growth.
- client is expert of themselves
- Psychopathology results from a failure to learn from experience and it continues when clients accept projected parental conditions of worth instead of modifying self concept based on day-by-day personal experiences
- . Not technique-driven; all about listening
- . Research supports PCT as an effective intervention but not a ton of research; PCT not manualized
- Potential weaknesses include: focus on self may not fit all cultures or world views; focus on emotional expression might not fit with other cultures; culturally diverse client may prefer expert advice and directive therapies.
Clinical example: Trisha is a person-centered therapist. Her sessions are wide ranging and client driven. She provides continual empathic feedback and an environment that encourages her clients to be their authentic selves. She asks questions to help her clients come to their own conclusions.
EXAMPLE: A client came to therapy with anorexia. Her mother had repeatedly told her when she was young that the only way to win a husband was to stay thin and made Kara diet at a very young age. Kara came to think being thin was the only way to be acceptable & she would only be lovable if she was thin. Utilizing a person-centered approach, the therapist conceptualizes Kara’s pathology to be a result of her mother’s conditions of worth that taught her to deny the part of her that enjoys and likes food.
Cognitive therapy
Who: Aaron Beck,
What: cognitive therapy asserts that cognition is at the core of human suffering and that the symptoms associated with psychological problems can be reduced by correcting and challenging faulty beliefs. The therapist’s job is to help the client modify distress-producing thoughts.
Assumptions - link between cognitions and behavior, Cognitive activity is potentially observable, it can be monitored, counted, altered, Client is considered expert and collaborator
Levels of cognitive distortions (triggered by event)
-Automatic thoughts: spontaneous thoughts that
appear plausible. Includes dichotomous reasoning,
personalization, emotional reasoning etc.
-Assumptions: abstract ideas that have generalized
rules; often if-then statements
-Schemas/Core beliefs: cognitive structures that
organize and process info; deepest most ingrained
level of cognitions e.g. negative cognitive triad (self,
world, future)
*Type and content are analyzed
Goals:
-Correct faulty information processing
-Modify beliefs maintaining maladaptive behaviors and emotions
-Provide skills for adaptive thinking
*Techniques include: downward arrow, psychoeducational, Socratic questioning
*Focus: more on present vs. less on past, pathology and assets, objective data vs. projective tests, interventions and their evaluation
Clinical example: Beth tells her cognitive therapist that whenever she makes a mistake, however small, she feels worthless. The work of therapy will be to target these automatic thoughts with alternate interpretations to ultimately change her schema
EXAMPLE: A Grad student comes into therapy experiencing great anxiety about her comps exam in the fall. She reports having thoughts like, “I’m stupid, I can’t do this,” etc. when she sits down to study. The cognitive therapist points out these automatic thoughts and uses the downward arrow technique to begin exploring the client’s schemas and core beliefs so that they can work to change/correct them.
Common factors in psychotherapy
Who: Jerome Frank;
What: A model developed by that proposes that there are certain factors, regardless of specific techniques or theoretical approach, at the heart of successful psychotherapy and treatment.
Common factors include:
- Extratherapeutic factors: client factors such as motivation, support within environment.
- Therapeutic alliance: rapport and positive working relationship between therapist and client.
- Expectation: hope for positive outcomes
Clinical example: Dora has worked with both a client-centered therapist and a cognitive-behavioral therapist. Though their approaches differed, she notes the positive relationship she had with each and her own willingness to change as factors that affected her outcomes.
EXAMPLE: You’re treating a client with PTSD and you’re trying to decide between two treatments so you turn to the research. You find that both txs you are considering produce similar results. You conclude that this may be due to common factors in psychotherapy and you decide to think more about the client as a person and what therapy she might prefer.
Conditional v. unconditional positive regard
Part of: Rogerian or person-centered theory
Who: Carl Rogers
What: a necessary condition of successful therapy, unconditional positive regard includes acceptance and respect. Through acceptance, therapists lead clients to self acceptance. Conditional positive regard would be when acceptance is given or withheld based on how a client (or person) is acting. Unconditional positive regard is a prerequisite for self-actualization.
In unconditional positive regard, the positive regard is when others accept and love the person for who they are, regardless of mistakes or if something is wrong. The positive regard is never taken away from the person if it is unconditional, and tends to allow people to self-actualize.
-UPR core necessary condition for therapeutic relationship
In conditional positive regard, love and acceptance are only given when the person is or behaves a certain way and meet certain conditions in order to obtain positive regard. If conditions are not met, then no positive regard is given.
-If given conditional PR, a person acquires conditions of worth and rejects parts of themselves in order to be considered acceptable.
Clinical example: In a session, a client expresses attitudes toward his partner that the therapist finds personally repulsive. She maintains an open and accepting posture towards her client despite her personal feelings because she believes unconditional positive regard is key to the therapeutic relationship.
EXAMPLE: A client came to therapy presenting symptoms of anorexia. Her mother had repeatedly told her when she was young that the only way to win a husband was to stay thin and made Kara diet at a very young age. Kara came to think being thin was the only way to be acceptable & she would only be lovable if she followed these guidelines. The therapist explained to Kara that her mother’s conditional positive regard was contingent upon her weight. This contributed to her anorexia.
Conditions of worth
A term coined by Carl Rogers, conditions of worth are the standards that children and adults believe they must meet to be acceptable and worthy of love. These conditions lead individuals toward an external locus of evaluation. When conditions of worth are placed on a people, they will deny parts of their self-concept in order to meet these conditions. Conditions of worth cause incongruence between the real and ideal self and ultimately to pathology.
Clinical example: Denise’s parents had very strict standards for acceptable ways of thinking and acting. Emotional support was withheld when she breached these standards. As an adult, Denise struggles to feel secure in her relationships because she expects such conditions of worth to be present.
EXAMPLE: A client came to therapy presenting symptoms of anorexia. Her mother had repeatedly told her when she was young that the only way to win a husband was to stay thin and made Kara diet at a very young age. Kara came to think being thin was the only way to be acceptable & she would only be lovable if she followed these guidelines. Utilizing a person-centered approach, the therapist explains to Kara that her mother’s conditions of worth contributed to her pathology.
Another example would be if a teenaged client entered therapy for anxiety over getting straight A’s because that’s the only way her parents will pay positive attention towards her, she considers being a straight A student as a condition of worth.
Countertransference
A term developed by Sigmund Freud and related to psychoanalytic theory, countertransference is a process that occurs in therapy when the therapist projects past feelings or attitudes about something in their own lives onto the client, thereby distorting the way they perceive and react to the client and contributing to bias. It is important for the therapist to be aware of countertransference because it leads to confusing and/or harmful reactions in therapy.
Clinical example: Listening to a client discuss her resentment towards her mother brings up strong feelings in her therapist, who also has a troubled relationship with her own mother.
EXAMPLE: A therapist is seeing a client who is depressed following a miscarriage. The therapist herself has also experienced a miscarriage. The therapist found herself expressing much more empathy than she usually did with clients and recognized it as countertransference. While keeping an eye on her reactions, the therapist allowed her personal experience to help her with the client.
Defense mechanisms
Part of: psychodynamic theory
Who: Freud
What: defense mechanisms are automatic, unconscious reactions and ward off unacceptable impulses and distort reality. People use them to preserve the integrity of their self-image and keep their ego from experiencing anxiety. Defense mechanisms can also be used as coping mechanisms to protect against psychological harm/stress. Freudian psychology states that normal, healthy individuals do use defense mechanisms, which only become unhealthy when they lead to maladaptive behaviors. Defense mechanisms include:
* repression: forgetting an emotionally painful memory * denial: more forceful than repression * projection: pushing unacceptable thoughts and impulses on another person * reaction formation: expressing the opposite of an unacceptable impulse * displacement: shifting a sexual or aggressive impulse to a less dangerous person (kicking the dog) * rationalization: excessive explanation to justify behavior * regression: reverting to less sophisticated method of doing things * sublimation: sexual or aggressive energy channeled into something positive (creative tasks or hard work, house cleaning)
Clinical example: Cindy is abused by her father, but she expresses extreme favoritism and affection for him. She is using the defense mechanism of reaction formation.
EXAMPLE: Jim and Sarah are in couples therapy. Jim expresses paranoia and fear that his wife might be cheating on him with a coworker. Jim has had thoughts of cheating on his wife with many of his coworkers and had actually cheated on his previous wife with a coworker. Jim is using the coping mechanism of projection in which he places undesirable traits on others in order to protect himself against the psychological harm/stress of having thoughts and urges to cheat on his wife with a coworker.
Existential theory/therapy
Who: Victor Frankl
What: Existential psychotherapy is grounded in existential philosophy;
- Focuses on:
- self-awareness,
- facing the unavoidable conditions of human existence
- authentic living
Humans are in conflict with internal forces or ultimate concerns which produce anxiety.
The four ultimate concerns are:
- death,
- freedom
- isolation
- meaninglessness.
Focus on responsibility, free will, and the present/future (past does not determine future).
Psychopathology is related to diminished self-awareness; goal is to increase self-awareness and help clients face “ultimate concerns” of existence: death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness.
Elements of the therapeutic process include presence, empathic mirroring, feedback and confrontation, and mindfulness.
Clinical example: A client with an existential therapist is encouraged to accept his fear of death and learn to live with it rather than avoiding it through denial.
Factor analysis
A statistical procedure that helps to sort test responses on an assessment into relatively homogenous clusters of items that are highly correlated. (It can clarify which response patterns go together.)
A statistical procedure used to determine whether the variability among observed variables may be explained by fewer unobserved variables called factors
Clinical example: Factor analysis was done in the research leading up to the Big 5 Personality model. It examined correlations between 1700 different descriptive words typically used to describe personality and narrowed them down to 5 identifiable factors.
Fixation
Part of: psychoanalysis and
Who: Sigmund Freud,
What: fixation occurs when there is unresolved unconscious conflict (dysfunctional internal working model) at one or more of Freud’s psychosexual stages of development. Both frustration and overindulgence can cause fixation.
Fixation influences one’s personality and contributes to psychopathology.
Clinical example: Mary came to therapy for excessive binge eating. The therapist utilized a psychodynamic perspective and looked to Mary’s past to see if she progressed normally through Freud’s psychosexual stages, specifically the Oral stage. The therapist theorized that if her needs weren’t met at that stage, she is fixated at this stage, and this would explain the binge eating.
Insight/Catharsis
Part of: Psychodynamic theory
Who: Freud and Breuer
A term from psychodynamic theory and developed by Freud and Breuer. In psychodynamic therapy, the therapist guides the client towards insight and catharsis. A main goal of psychoanalytic theory is to gain insight, which is to understand intrapsychic conflicts and interpersonal relationships, understand the historical roots of current problems, then integrate them into current life and increase ego strength. Successfully achieving insight should enable the client to release or free their emotions, the experience of catharsis, providing relief from repressed emotions.
Clinical example: A client is finally able to describe in detail a painful childhood experience. She deeply feels the emotions associated with that experience after repressing them for decades. She has experienced a moment of catharsis.
Person-behavior-environment reciprocal interaction
Part of: Social Learning Theory
Who: Bandura
What: AKA reciprocal determinism; the idea that an individual’s behavior both influences and is influenced by personal factors and the environment. As personality develops in someone, all three aspects - the individual, their behaviors, and their environment are interacting influencing one another. Understanding how the person, behavior and environment relationship functions in clients can help create targeted, more effective therapeutic interventions.
Clinical example: Jenna stays at an after school program and often doesn’t get her homework done because she is distracted by peers. When she is at home, she gets her work done. There is an interaction happening between Jenna, her environment (at the program or at home) and her behavior (getting her work done or not).
EXAMPLE: You have client with social anxiety that thinks he is ugly and boring. (Personal Factor) His thoughts cause him to act awkward and be short with people at parties. (Behavior) His behavior causes the people around him to ignore him and not want to get to know him. (Environment). You explain that his personal factors, behavior, and environment are all influencing one another. You argue that by changing his cognitions in therapy, his behavior and environment might change as well
Person-situation debate
A debate between personality theorists about what is most important for determining a person’s behavior - the person/traits of the person, or the situation (environment).
- sparked by an influential book by Walter Mischel, arguing that traits fail to predict actual behavior
- Generally, traits are superior in predicting general behavior patterns, while situations are better at predicting specific behaviors.
Example: Tara is a therapist that strongly believes in the person side of the person situation debate in psychology. She believes that all traits are consistent across situations. Because of this, she administers the NEO-PI to all of her clients. Tara feels that she is better able to understand and predict her clients behavior because the assessment points out key personality traits.
Potentially harmful treatments
Part of: Ethical practice and efficacy research
Who: Scott Lilienfeld
What: A treatment where harm lies in either the nature of the intervention or in the improper application of the intervention. According to Lillienfield, characteristics include documented harmful psychological or physical effects on clients or others (eg relatives). The harmful effects are enduring and do not merely reflect an exacerbation of symptoms during treatment, the harmful effects have been replicated by independent investigative teams.
Clinical example: “Conversion therapy” has been proven as a potentially harmful treatment.
EXAMPLE: Critical incident stress debriefing has been found to increase some people’s risk for developing PTSD. It is considered a potentially harmful tx and is rarely used because of the enduring harmful effects that has been observed.
