Types of therapy Flashcards
What is Gestalt therapy?
It focuses on insight into Gestalt (whole more than the sum of its parts) in patients and their relations to the world, and often uses role playing to aid the resolution of past conflicts.
Who formulated Gestalt therapy and when?
Perls
How to Gestalt therapists see the self?
Give a name
Holistic understanding of the self: Focuses on the whole entity of the self, more than the sum of its parts. Individuals and environment co-create together.
No objective truth everyone has their owns truths. People can only live in relation to their context.
Each individual has unique totality of the mind.
Why do issues occur according to Gestalt therapists?
And a name
Issues occur when the self is constrained to not adapt to experience and creates a fixed sense of self.
Disowning experiences creates conflict.
Negative thought patterns and behaviors are blocking true self-awareness and making them unhappy.
The paradox is that the more one tries to be who one is not, the more one stays the same (Beisser 1970), focus on the now and that can help direct who you want to be. Zen spirituality, being wholly present to what IS.
Describe the therapeutic style within Gestalt therapy
and a name
(Yontef and Fuhr, 2005)
Trusts organismic self-regulation more than therapist directed change.
Describe the immediate concrete.
Creates an open environment to promote self-awareness and self-discovery and clients may organise their own new behaviour in the here and now.
I-thou, setting into relations instead of setting distance. Buber. Client centred directional approach where the client and therapist work together to discover.
Hermeneutic interpretation
Not a talking approach, many elements not just discursive, language is the medium of experimentation.
Describe some techniques of Gestalt Therapy
Encouraging them to relive their concrete past experiences in the here and now, often through re-enactment, not through external meanings.
The past flows through the present, that which is most relevant comes into awareness. Becoming aware, to own them is to own the choices made
Empty chair technique
Anti technique
Who examined the effectiveness of the empty chair and what did they find?
Conoley, McConnell and Kimzey (1983)
Resolving triggered anger in patients. Listening group vs empty chair
reduced blood pressure and feeling of anger on subjective questionnaires.
What is psychodynamic therapy?
Focuses on overcoming negative repressed emotions in order to improve the patient’s interpersonal experiences
Interpretations remain the centre of therapeutic process enabling psychic change.
How do psychodynamic therapists envisage the person.
Several of freuds principles still relevant, notion of unconscious mental activity, role of conflict in sexuality and aggression
Client is a patient with a dysfunctional problem that can be identified objectively.
A person’s mind has a conscious which can be controlled and they are in awareness off and an unconscious that drives behaviour.
Unconscious mind comprises mental processes that are inaccessible to consciousness but influence behaviour (Wilson, 2002)
How do disorders arise according to psychodynamic therapists?
Childhood experiences are critical for shaping adult personality. Development of psychosexual stages, however more than sex and aggression, safety guilt and shame (Sandler 1960)
Maladaptation often occurs early in life and causes difficulties day to day, stored in unconscious
Often repressed trauma
Psychic tension builds when unconscious conflicts with conscious
(Norman 2001)
What are the therapeutic styles of the psychodynamic therapy?
Analytic neutrality
Treatment focuses on bringing repressed unconscious conflict to consciousness, where the client can then deal with it
Therapist interprets what the client is saying, objective reality where the client is the expert and can explain how repressed trauma is affecting current behaviour and relationships
Curious about motivations of behaviour, attuned to unconscious communication
Negative capacity
Psychodynamic techniques
Whilst techniques are important, specificity of therapists determines delivery.
Focus on the interpretation of conscious intrapsychic conflict and defence.
Evenly suspended attention to pick up on unconscious themes. There are not accidents, slip of the tongue access to unconscious mind.
Dream analysis
Analyse defence mechanisms and resistance during free association
3 types of interpretation.
From surface to depth
Main 3 differences summed up:
Person: concrete lived experience vs abstract unconscious and preconscious.
Style: work together in the here and now to promote self awareness vs therapist uncovers unconscious to understand how behaviour is linked to past trauma, stays neutral
Technique: Re-enact past trauma in the present vs reconstructive interpretation of past, transference in the now reflecting past
Who is the name name to turn to for gestalt?
Yontef and Kahr (2007)
Main name for contemporary freudian
Yakeley (2014)
3 good comparisons generally
Equipped with tools vs understanding and
Both about awareness .
What is analytic neutrality
Therapist is blank screen, avoid interference. Non-disclosure.
Therapist sits out of view of patient to avoid facial expression impact.
What is negative capacity
dwelling on unknowing
Explain dream analysis
mind is like a sensory but less vigilant when asleep
what are the 2 types fo interpretation.
2 types of interpretation:
reconstructive - influence of history
Transference - explicit reference to therapist relationship, past conflicts re-enacted in the current situation
What is the 3rd type contemporary freudians beleive is a factor?
Extra-transference interpretations – exploration and interpretation about the patient’s current external life without reference to the transference
Explain empty chair technique
relive interactions through imagination of the other. Often swap roles. Helps engage feelings and behaviours with respect to the relationship with the not so empty chair
Why is gestalt and anti-technique?
Indirectly through shared meaning
What does hermeneutic interpretation mean?
understanding the client through there own terms rather than external meanings.
What is language in Gestalt?
a medium for experimentation, many elements not just discursive
What is abreaction?
Discovered repressed reaction to passed trauma
What do contemporary freudians place unconscious thoughts on other than psychosexual stages?
Not just psychosexual but safety and attachment
What are the primary drives in contemporary?
internal model of relationships
What do contemporary freudians focus on more now?
More of a here-and-now focus on transference
Gestalt relation to the book of Tao
learns how to live and then lives in those ways
