Module 54 (Therapy - Introduction to Therapy and the Psychological Therapies - Psychology in Modules)

interpretation

in psychoanalysis, the analyst's noting of supposed dream meanings, resistances, and other significant behaviors and events in order to promote insight

resistance

in psychoanalysis, the blocking from consciousness of anxiety-laden material

transference

in psychoanalysis, the patient's transfer to the analyst of emotions linked with other relationships (such as love or hatred for a parent)

biomedical therapy

prescribed medication or procedures that act directly on the person's physiology

group therapy

therapy conducted with groups rather than individuals, permitting therapeutic benefits from group interaction

Mary Cover Jones

-Behaviorist psychologist -Designed and performed an experiment that associated a rabbit, an animal that a child feared, with the relaxing feelings of eating so that the child's previous fear was replaced with a pleasurable experience; experiment not well known at the time

How do the humanistic and cognitive therapies differ?

-By reflecting clients' feelings in a nondirective setting, the humanistic therapies attempt to foster personal growth by helping clients become more self-aware and self-accepting. -By making clients aware of self-defeating patterns of thinking, cognitive therapies guide people toward more adaptive ways of thinking about themselves and their world.

What are the insight therapies, and how do they differ from behavior therapies?

-The insight therapies—psychodynamic and humanistic therapies—seek to relieve problems by providing an understanding of their origins. -Behavior therapies assume the problem behavior is the problem and treat it directly, paying less attention to its origins.

David Shapiro (1999)

-Therapist -Illustrates the case of a young man who had told women that he loved them, when knowing that he didn't. They expected it, so he said it. But later with his wife, who wishes he would say that he loves her, he finds he cannot do that.

What is cognitive-behavioral therapy, and what sorts of problems does this therapy best address?

-This integrative therapy helps people change self-defeating thinking and behavior. -It has been shown to be effective for those with anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depressive disorders, bipolar disorder, and eating disorders.

Beck and his colleagues (1979)

-With cognitive therapy -Sought to reverse clients' catastrophizing beliefs about themselves, their situations, and their futures. -Gentle questioning seeks to reveal irrational thinking, and then to persuade people to remove the dark glasses through which they view life

What are the aims and benefits of group and family therapies?

1.) Group therapy sessions -Can help more people and costs less per person than individual therapy would. -Clients may benefit from exploring feelings and developing social skills in a group situation, from learning that others have similar problems, and from getting feedback on new ways of behaving. 2.) Family therapy -Views a family as an interactive system and attempts to help members discover the roles they play and to learn to communicate more openly and directly.

How do humanistic therapies differ from psychoanalytic therapies?

1.) Humanistic therapists aim to boost people's self-fulfillment by helping them grow in self-awareness and self-acceptance. 2.) Promoting this growth, not curing illness, is the therapy focus. 3.) The path to growth is taking immediate responsibility for one's feelings and actions, rather than uncovering hidden determinants. 4.) Conscious thoughts are more important than the unconscious. 5.) The present and future are more important than the past.

If you want to listen more actively in your own relationships, what three Rogers-inspired hints may help?

1.) Paraphrase 2.) Invite clarification 3.) Reflect feelings

What might a psychodynamic therapist say about Mowrer's therapy for bed-wetting? How might a behavior therapist reply?

A psychodynamic therapist might be more interested in helping the child develop insight about the underlying problems that have caused the bed-wetting response. A behavior therapist would be more likely to agree with Mowrer that the bed-wetting symptom is the problem, and that counterconditioning the unwanted behavior would indeed bring emotional relief.

An influential cognitive therapy for depression was developed by ______________ ______________.

Aaron Beck

unconditional-positive regard

a caring, accepting, nonjudgmental attitude, which Carl Rogers believed would help clients develop self-awareness and self-acceptance

client-centered therapy

a humanistic therapy, developed by Carl Rogers, in which the therapist uses techniques such as active listening within a genuine, accepting, empathetic environment to facilitate client growth (also called person-centered therapy)

cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)

a popular integrative therapy that combines cognitive therapy (changing self-defeating thinking) with behavior therapy (changing behavior)

aversive Conditioning

a type of counterconditioning that associates an unpleasant state (such as nausea) with an unwanted behavior (such as drinking alcohol)

insight therapies

a variety of therapies that aim to improve psychological functioning by increasing a person's awareness of underlying motives and defenses

virtual reality exposure therapy

an anxiety treatment that progressively exposes people to electronic simulations of their greatest fears, such as airplane flying, spiders, or public speaking

eclectic approach

an approach to psychotherapy that uses techniques from various forms of therapy

token economy

an operant conditioning procedure in which people earn a token of some sort for exhibiting a desired behavior and can later exchange their tokens for various privileges or treats

counter-conditioning

behavior therapy procedures that uses classical conditioning to evoke new responses to stimuli that are triggering unwanted behaviors; include exposure therapies and aversive conditioning

exposure therapies

behavioral techniques, such as systematic desensitization and virtual reality exposure therapy, that treat anxieties by exposing people (in imagination or actual situations) to the things they fear and avoid

active listening

empathetic listening where listener echoes, restates, and clarifies; a feature of Rogers' client centered therapy

family therapy

therapy that treats the family as a system; views an individual's unwanted behaviors as influenced by, or directed at, other family members

systematic desensitization

(extinction trials) a type of exposure therapy that associates a pleasant relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli; commonly used to treat phobias

Aversion therapy for alcohol use disorder

-After repeatedly imbibing an alcoholic drink mixed with a drug that produces severe nausea, some people with a history of alcohol use disorder develop at least a temporary conditioned aversion to alcohol. (Classical conditioning terms: US is unconditioned stimulus, UR is unconditioned response, NS is neutral stimulus, CS is conditioned stimulus, and CR is conditioned response.)

What are the basic themes of humanistic therapy?

-BOTH psychoanalytic and humanistic therapists are insight therapies—they attempt to improve functioning by increasing clients' awareness of motives and defenses. -INSIGHT THERAPIES -Humanistic therapy's goals have included helping clients grow in self-awareness and self-acceptance; promoting personal growth rather than curing illness; helping clients take responsibility for their own growth; focusing on conscious thoughts rather than unconscious motivations; and seeing the present and future as more important than the past.

How does the basic assumption of behavior therapy differ from the assumptions of psychodynamic and humanistic therapies?

-Behavior therapies are not insight therapies. -Their goal is to apply learning principles to modify problem behaviors.

What are the specific goals and techniques of Rogers' client-centered approach?

-Carl Rogers' client-centered therapy proposed that therapists' most important contributions are to function as a psychological mirror through active listening and to provide a growth-fostering environment of unconditional positive regard, characterized by genuineness, acceptance, and empathy. -CLIENT-CENTERED REGARD -ACTIVE LISTENING -UNCONDITIONAL POSITIVE REGARD

Aaron Beck

-Cognitive Therapist -Therapy for depression -Believed that changing people's thinking can change their functioning -Analyzed depressed people's dreams, and he found recurring negative themes of loss, rejection, and abandonment that extended into their waking thoughts. -Such negativity even extends into therapy, as clients recall and rehearse their failings and worst impulses

Carl Rogers (1902-1987)

-Developed the widely used humanistic technique he called client-centered therapy -Which focuses on the person's conscious self-perceptions. In this nondirective therapy, the therapist listens, without judging or interpreting, and seeks to refrain from directing the client toward certain insights. -Encouraged therapists to exhibit genuineness, acceptance, and empathy. -Active listening technique -Unconditional positive regard

Sigmund Freud

-First major psychological therapy was psychoanalysis -Helped form the foundation for treating psychological disorders -Influencing modern therapists working from the psychodynamic perspective -Believed that in therapy, people could achieve healthier, less anxious living by releasing the energy they had previously devoted to id-ego-superego conflicts. -Assumed that we do not fully know ourselves. There are threatening things that we seem to want not to know—that we disavow or deny -Therapy aimed to bring patients' repressed or disowned feelings into conscious awareness. By helping them reclaim their unconscious thoughts and feelings, and by giving them insight into the origins of their disorders, he aimed to help them reduce growth-impeding inner conflicts. -After discarding hypnosis as an unreliable excavator, Freud turned to free association.

B. F. Skinner

-His work and others teaches us a basic principle of operant conditioning: Voluntary behaviors are strongly influenced by their consequences. Knowing this, some behavior therapists practice behavior modification. They reinforce desired behaviors, and they withhold reinforcement for undesired behaviors.

O. H. Mowrer

-Learning theorist -Thought so and developed a successful -Conditioning therapy for chronic bed-wetters proposed two-factor theory of avoidance to explain phobias ("oh" or Mow-->phobia)

Donald Meichenbaum (1977, 1985)

-Offered stress inoculation training: teaching people to restructure their thinking in stressful situations. -Sometimes it may be enough simply to say more positive things to oneself: "Relax. The exam may be hard, but it will be hard for everyone else, too. I studied harder than most people. Besides, I don't need a perfect score to get a good grade." -After being trained to dispute their negative thoughts, depression-prone children, teens, and college students exhibit a greatly reduced rate of future depression

Ivan Pavlov

-One cluster of behavior therapies derives from principles developed in Ivan Pavlov's early twentieth-century conditioning experiments. -As Pavlov and others showed, we learn various behaviors and emotions through classical conditioning

What is the main premise of therapy based on operant conditioning principles?

-Operant conditioning operates under the premise that voluntary behaviors are strongly influenced by their consequences. -Therapy based on operant conditioning principles uses behavior modification techniques to change unwanted behaviors through positively reinforcing desired behaviors and ignoring or punishing undesirable behaviors.

Johnathan Shedler (2010)

-Psychodynamic therapist -Recalls his patient Jeffrey's complaints of difficulty getting along with his colleagues and wife, who saw him as hypercritical. Jeffrey then "began responding to me as if I were an unpredictable, angry adversary." -Shedler seized this opportunity to help Jeffrey recognize the relationship pattern, and its roots in the attacks and humiliation he experienced from his alcohol-abusing father—and to work through and let go of this defensive responding to people.

How have the goals and techniques of psychoanalysis been adapted in psychodynamic therapy?

-Psychodynamic therapy has been influenced by traditional psychoanalysis but differs from it in many ways, including the lack of belief in id, ego, and superego. -This contemporary therapy is briefer, less expensive, and more focused on helping the client find relief from current symptoms. -Psychodynamic therapists help clients understand how past relationships create themes that may be acted out in present relationships. -Interpersonal therapy is a brief 12- to 16-session form of psychodynamic therapy that has been effective in treating depression.

Kay Redfield Jamison

-Received psychotherapy in her meetings with her psychiatrist, and she took medications to control her wild mood swings -Like Jamison, many patients also receive psychotherapy combined with medication. Many psychotherapists describe themselves as taking an eclectic approach, using a blend of psychotherapies.

Dorthea Dix (1802-1887) and Philippe Pinel (1745-1826)

-Reformers -Pushed for gentler, more humane treatments and for constructing mental hospitals

Arthur Wiens and Carol Menustik (1983)

-Studied 685 hospital patients with alcohol use disorder who completed an aversion therapy program. -One year later, after returning for several booster treatments of alcohol-sickness pairings, 63 percent were still successfully abstaining. -But after three years, only 33 percent had remained abstinent. -The problem is that in therapy (as in research), cognition influences conditioning. -People know that outside the therapist's office they can drink without fear of nausea. -Their ability to discriminate between the aversive conditioning situation and all other situations can limit the treatment's effectiveness. -Thus, therapists often use aversive conditioning in combination with other treatments.

What are the goals and techniques of cognitive therapy and of cognitive-behavioral therapy?

-The cognitive therapies, such as Aaron Beck's cognitive therapy for depression, assume that our thinking influences our feelings, and that the therapist's role is to change clients' self-defeating thinking by training them to view themselves in more positive ways. -The widely researched and practiced cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) combines cognitive therapy and behavior therapy by helping clients regularly act out their new ways of thinking and talking in their everyday life.

How do psychotherapy and the biomedical therapies differ?

1.) Psychotherapy is treatment involving psychological techniques: -it consists of interactions between a trained therapist and someone seeking to overcome psychological difficulties or achieve personal growth. -The major psychotherapies derive from psychology's psychodynamic, humanistic, behavioral, and cognitive perspectives. 2.) Biomedical therapy treats -psychological disorders with medications or procedures that act directly on a patient's physiology. -An eclectic approach combines techniques from various forms of therapy.

What are the views of the main premise of therapy based on operant conditioning principles proponents and critics?

Critics maintain that 1.) techniques such as those used in token economies may produce behavior changes that disappear when rewards end 2.) deciding which behaviors should change is authoritarian and unethical. -Proponents argue that treatment with positive rewards is more humane than punishing people or institutionalizing them for undesired behaviors.

Exposure therapies and aversive conditioning are applications of ______________ conditioning. Token economies are an application of ______________ conditioning.

Classical Operant

What techniques are used in exposure therapies and aversive conditioning?

Classical conditioning techniques, including exposure therapies (such as systematic desensitization or virtual reality exposure therapy) and aversive conditioning, attempt to change behaviors through counterconditioning—evoking new responses to old stimuli that trigger unwanted behaviors.

Some maladaptive behaviors are learned. What hope does this fact provide?

If a behavior can be learned, it can be unlearned, and replaced by other more adaptive responses.

The long history of efforts to treat psychological disorders (5)

Includes: -A bewildering mix of harsh and gentle methods. -Well-meaning individuals have cut holes in people's heads and restrained, bled, or "beat the devil" out of them. -But they also have given warm baths and massages and placed people in sunny, serene environments. -They have administered drugs. -And they have talked with their patients about childhood experiences, current feelings, and maladaptive thoughts and behaviors.

psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud's therapeutic technique. Freud believed the patient's free associations, resistances, dreams, and transferences - and the patient's interpretations of them - released previously repressed feelings, allowing the patient to gain self-insight

What are the goals of psychoanalysis?

Through psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud tried to give people self-insight and relief from their disorders by bringing anxiety-laden feelings and thoughts into conscious awareness.

What are the techniques of psychoanalysis?

Using free association and interpretation of instances of resistance and transference.

psychodynamic theory

therapy deriving from the psychoanalystic tradition; views individuals as responding to unconscious forces and childhood experiences, and seeks to enhance self-insight

behavior therapy

therapy that applies learning principles to the elimination of unwanted behaviors -Assumes that disordered behavior is learned

cognitive therapy

therapy that teaches people new, more adaptive ways of thinking; based on the assumption that thoughts intervene between events and our emotional reactions

In psychoanalysis, when patients experience strong feelings for their therapist, this is called ______________. Patients are said to demonstrate anxiety when they put up mental blocks around sensitive memories, indicating ______________. The therapist will attempt to provide insight into the underlying anxiety by offering a(n) ______________ of the mental blocks.

transference resistance interpretation

psychotherapy

treatment involving psychological techniques; consists of interactions between a trained therapist and someone seeking to overcome psychological difficulties or achieve personal growth