WEEK 6 - Treatment Flashcards
Explain the term psychotherapy?
Involves techniques that attempt to improve psychological and emotional wellbeing.
Who, apart from psychologists, can use psychotherapy?
Social workers Counsellors Nurses GPs Psychiatrists
Name some characteristics that make a good therapist.
Warmth Therapeutic alliance Key issues Align treatment with patient Willing to get feedback from client, supervisor and colleagues Keep up-to-date with research Ethics
What model are therapeutic practices based around?
The science-practitioner model
Research-orientated practice
Name some psychotherapeutic perspectives
Psychodynamic Humanistic-existential Behavioural Cognitive behavioural Biological
What are psychodynamic therapies?
Founded by Freud.
Psychopathy is developed when people remain unaware of their true motivations and fears.
Health is restored when they become aware of their subconscious.
What is insight in relation to psychodynamic therapy?
Capacity to understand their own psychological processes
What is the therapist-client alliance and why is it important to psychodynamic therapy?
Relationship with therapist is crucial in changing psychological processes.
What are the 5 core beliefs of psychodynamic therapies?
- Most behaviour is driven by unconscious wishes, impulses, drives and conflicts
- There is meaningful explanation/cause for abnormal behaviour, which can be discovered by the therapist
- Current issues are due to childhood experience
- TO overcome problem, emotional expression and reliving of the past experiences is crucial
- Once the client understands and has emotional insight into the unconscious drives/material, the symptoms are understood and therefore, often resolve themselves
What are the stages of psychoanalysis?
- Free association
- Interpretation
- Dream analysis
- Resistance
- Transference (Counter transference)
- Working through
What is the psychodynamic stage of free association?
- Free reign to express thoughts/feelings and whatever comes to mind
- It is assumed that with enough practice, free association will facilitate the uncovering of the unconscious material
What is the psychodynamic stage of interpretation?
- Comes into play as presumably unconscious material begins to surface
- At the right time, the therapist will explain defences and underlying meaning of behaviours, thoughts, desires or dreams
- Interpretations should reflect insights that the patient os making themselves
- then interpretations can be claimed as patients idea rather than therapists
What is the psychodynamic stage of dream analysis?
- Therapist interprets dreams in the context of what is occurring in life for the person
- Looks at dreams manifest (Actual dreamt events) and tries to determine the latent (hidden) meaning
What is the psychodynamic stage of resistance?
- Resistance or blockages to free association are thought to arise from unconscious control over sensitive areas
- These are targeted by therapist
What is the psychodynamic stage of transference?
When people experience similar thoughts, feelings, fear, wishes and conflicts in new relationships as they did in previous ones
- Person may transfer feelings from prior relationship onto therapist as it is a highly intimate and disclosing relationship
What is counter transference in relation to the stages of psychodynamic theory?
Where therapist transfers their own emotional vulnerabilities onto the client
- Negative effect
What is the 6th stage of the psychodynamic theory, ‘working through’?
Therapist assists person in processing the information and insights gained during therapy. Also involves continued identification of arising conflicts and resistance
What are some criticisms of the psychodynamic approach?
- Sample bias: Frued based approach on rich, intelligent, successful individuals
- Confirmation bias: selecting pieces of information that supports claims and disregards info that doesn’t
- Long term = expensive
- Do we really need insight to solve problems?
- Lack of scientific rigour in some situations - circular arguments
What is humanistic-existential psychotherapy?
- Considered as 1 of 3 main approaches (behaviourism/psychoanalysis)
- Concerned with how a person experiences self, relationships with others and the world
- Person-centred therapy
- Gestalt therapy