Treatment of Psychological Disorders

Question 1

What are the Types of Treatment?

Answer 1

1. Insight Therapies : Clients engage in long conversations with their therapists (talk therapy)
- Intended to enhance clients’ self-knowledge, promote healthful changes in personality and behaviour

2. Behaviour Therapies : Behaviour therapists make direct efforts to alter problematic responses and maladaptive habits

3. Biomedical Therapies : Biomedical approaches involve interventions into a person’s biological functioning (Drug Therapy is the most dominant mode)

Question 2

What is Psychoanalysis?

Answer 2

• Insight therapy that emphasises the recovery of unconscious conflicts, motives and defences through techniques such as free association and transference

Question 3

Explain the Techniques used to Probe the Unconscious in Psychoanalysis

Answer 3

1. Free Association : Psychoanalytic technique in which clients spontaneously express their thoughts and feelings exactly as they occur, with as little censorship as possible

2. Dream Analysis : Psychoanalytic technique in which the therapist interprets the symbolic meaning of the client’s dreams

Question 4

Explain the Resistance & Transference techniques used in Psychoanalysis

Answer 4

1. Resistance : Largely unconscious defensive manoeuvres a client uses to hinder the progress of therapy

2. Transference : The phenomenon where clients start relating to their therapists in ways that mimic critical relationships in their lives
- Clients can reenact relations with crucial people in the context of therapy
- Reenactments can bring repressed feelings to the surface, allowing the client to work through the conflicts

Question 5

What is Client-Centred Therapy?

Answer 5

• An insight therapy that emphasises providing a supportive emotional climate for clients, who play a major role in determining the pace and direction of their therapy

Question 6

What is Group Therapy?

Answer 6

• Simultaneous treatment of several clients in a group
• Participants function as therapists for one another (provide acceptance and emotional support for one another)
• Saves time and money, promotes group cohesiveness

Question 7

What is Couples and Family Therapy?

Answer 7

Couples Therapy (Marital Therapy) : Treatment of both partners in a committed, intimate relationship, main focus is on relationship issues

Family Therapy : Treatment of a family unit as a whole, main focus is on family dynamics and communication

• Couples and family therapy both seek to understand the entrenched patterns of interaction that produce distress
• Seek to help couples and families improve communication