Chapter 16: Therapy

B Drug Therapy Techniques

Psychopharmacology, Antipsychotic Drugs, Antianxiety Drugs, Antidepressent Drugs, Mood-Stabilizing Medications

Two ways of classifying psychological therapy

Psychotherapy and biomedical therapy (eclectic approach is a blend of the two)

B Critics of Today's Electroconvulsive Therapy

Raise the placebo effect as an explanation for how it works

P Psychodynamic Therapy Process

Rather than lying on a couch out of the line of vision, they meet face to face; meetings take place less frequently and over less time; therapists help reveal past relationship troubles as the origin of current difficulties

P Critics of Psychoanalysis

Relatively few therapists offer it. Critics say that the analyst's interpretations cannot be proven or disproven, and it also takes considerable time and money

B Electroconvulsive Therapy

Shock treatment; today, the patient receives a general anesthetic and muscle relaxant (to prevent injury from convulsions) before 30 to 60 seconds of electrical current are delivered. Within 30 minutes, the patient awakens and remembers nothing of the event or the hours that preceded it

B Psychosurgery

Surgery that removes or destroys brain tissues (most drastic and least-used); Lobotomy

P Behavioral Therapy

doubts the healing power of self-awareness-assumes that the problem behaviors are the problems, and the application of learning principles can eliminate them...rather than delving deeply below the surface looking for an inner cause, behavior therapists view maladaptive symptoms such as phobias or sexual disorders as learned behaviors that can be replaced by constructive behaviors

P Ways Humanistic Therapy Differs From Psychodynamic

encourages taking immediate responsibility for one's feeling and actions rather than uncovering hidden determinants; conscious thoughts are more important than unconscious; the present and future are more important than the past-the goal is to explore feeling as they occur

P Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy

progressively exposes people to electronic simulations of their greatest fears, such a airplane flying, spiders, or public speaking

P Token Economy

when people display appropriate behavior, they receive a token or plastic coin as a positive reinforcer. Later, they can exchange their accumulate tokens for various rewards

P Evaluating Psychotherapies

Client perceptions don't necessarily persuade skeptics-people often enter therapy in crisis and when it passes they often attribute their improvement to therapy; clients may need to believe that the therapy was worth the effort; clients generally speak kindly of their therapists

P Carl Rogers Humanistic Therapy Technique

Client-Centered Therapy

P Goals of Psychoanalysis

Aimed to bring patients' repressed or disowned feelings into conscious awareness; by helping them reclaim their unconscious thoughts and give them insight into the origins of their disorders, he aimed to help them reduce growth-impeding inner conflicts

P Behavioral Therapy Techniques

Classical Conditioning Techniques, Operant Conditioning

P Rational-Emotive Behavioral Therapy

Confrontational cognitive therapy, developed by Albert Ellis, that vigorously challenges people's illogical, self-defeating attitudes and assumptions

P Classical Conditioning Techniques

Counter Conditioning: pairs the trigger stimulus (enclosed space of an elevator) with a new response (relaxation) that is incompatible with the fear; uses Exposure Therapy and Aversive Conditioning

B Antipsychotic Drugs

Dampen responsiveness to irrelevant stimuli, provide the most help to patients experiencing positive symptoms of schizophrenia such as hallucinations and paranoia

B Antianxiety Drugs

Depress central nervous system activity, are often used in combination with psychological therapy

P Psychoanalysis Therapy

Developed by Freud, one of the first psychological therapies

B Biomedical Therapies

Drug therapies, brain stimulation, psychosurgery

B Lobotomy

Egas Moniz found that cutting the nerves connecting the frontal lobes with emotion-controlling centers of the inner brain calmed uncontrollably emotional and violent patients; usually decreased misery or tension, but also produced a permanently lethargic, immature, uncreative person

B Brain Stimulation Techniques

Electroconvulsive Therapy, Alternative Therapies

P Exposure Therapy

Expose people to what they normally avoid or escape; Systematic desensitization and virtual reality exposure therapy

P Client-Centered Therapy

Focuses on the person's conscious self-perceptions (the therapist listens, without judging or interpreting); employs active listening (echoing, restating, and seeking clarification of what the person expresses, verbally or nonverbally, and acknowledging the expressed feelings

P Techniques of Psychoanalysis

Free Association

P Aaron Beck's Therapy for Depression

Gentle questioning seeks to reveal irrational thinking, and then to persuade people to remove the dark glasses through which they view life

P Psychodynamic Therapy

Has evolved from psychoanalysis; doesn't talk much about the id, ego, and superego, but instead tries to help people understand their current symptoms

P Operant Conditioning

Holds that voluntary behaviors are strongly influenced by their consequences. Knowing this, behavior therapists can practice behavior modification-reinforcing desired behaviors, and withholding reinforcement for undesired behaviors; may use a token economy

P Humanistic Therapy

Like psychodynamic, it attempts to reduce growth-impeding inner conflicts by providing clients with new insights

B Alternative Brain Stimulation Therapies

Magnetic Stimulation and Deep-Brain Stimulation

P Free Association

Mental blocks during free association indicate resistance, which hints that you're defending against sensitive material. If offered at the right moment, this interpretation may illuminate underlying wishes, feelings, and conflicts you're avoiding. (Patients may also transfer feelings such as dependency or mingled love and anger onto the analyst)

B Antidepressent Drugs

Named for the ability to lift people up from a state of depression, but is also now used to treat anxiety disorders such as OCD

Biomedical Therapy

Offers medication or other biological treatments

Psychotherapy

When a trained therapist uses psychological techniques to assist someone seeking to overcome difficulties or achieve personal growth

P Interpersonal Psychotherapy

a brief (12-16 session) variation of psychodynamic therapy, where the goal is symptom relief in the here and now. Rather than focusing on mostly undoing past hurts, they concentrate primarily on current relationships

P Systematic Desensitization

associates a pleasant relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli, and is commonly used on phobias; substituting a positive response for a negative response to harmless stimulus

B Magnetic Stimulation

repeated pulses surged through a magnetic coil held close to a person's skull; called repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation and is performed on wide-awake patients over several weeks

P Group and Family Therapy Benefits

saving therapist time and client money, offers a social laboratory for exploring social behaviors, enables people to see that others share their problems, provides feedback as clients try out new ways of behaving

P Cognitive Therapy

teaches people new, more adaptive ways of thinking; based on the assumption that the thoughts intervene between events and our emotional reactions; Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy, Aaron Beck's Therapy for Depression, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

P Aversive Conditioning

the goal is substituting a negative response for a positive response to harmful stimulus (such as alcohol)

B Psychopharmacology

the study of drug effects on mind and behavior; enthusiasm about it often diminishes after we look at the normal recovery among untreated persons and recovery due to the placebo effect

P Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

widely practiced integrative therapy, aims not only to alter how people think (cognitive), but also how they act (behavior); seeks to make people aware of their irrational negative thinking, to replace it with new ways of thinking and to practice more positive approach in everyday settings; behavioral change is typically addressed first followed by sessions on cognitive change

P Operant Conditioning Critics

wonder if people will become so dependent on extrinsic rewards that the appropriate behaviors will stop when the reinforcers stop; wonder if it's ethical (is it right for one human to control another's behavior?)