Unit 13: Treatment of Abnormal Behavior

Joseph Wolpe

A South African psychiatrist, one of the most influential figures in Behavior Therapy.

Counterconditioning

A behavior therapy procedure that conditions new responses to stimuli that trigger unwanted behaviors; based on classical conditioning. Includes exposure therapies and aversive conditioning.

Flooding

A behavioral technique used to treat phobias in which the client is presented with the feared stimulus until the associated anxiety disapears.

Antidepressants

A class of drugs that help lift people's mood.

Anti-anxiety Drugs

A class of psychotropic medications used for the treatment of anxiety.

Active/Reflective Listening

A communication strategy involving two key steps: seeking to understand a speaker's idea, then offering the idea back to the speaker, to confirm the idea has been understood correctly.

Group Therapy

A form of psychotherapy that involves one or more therapists working simultaneously with a small group of clients.

Cognitive Therapies

A group of psychotherapies based on the assumption that psychological problems are due to maladaptive patterns of thinking; treatment techniques focus on recognizing and altering these unhealthy thinking patterns.

Psychoanalysis

A lengthy insight therapy that was developed by Freud and aims at uncovering conflicts and unconscious impulses through special techniques, including free association, dream analysis, and transference.

Deinstitutionalization

A movement that began in the 1950s that aimed to provide better, less expensive care for chronically mentally ill patients in their own communities rather than at large, centralized hospitals.

Fritz Perls

A noted German-born psychiatrist and psychotherapist. Perls coined the term 'Gestalt therapy' to identify the form of psychotherapy that he developed with his wife, Laura Perls, in the 1940s and 1950s.

Dream Analysis

A psychoanalytic technique in which the therapist interprets the symbolic meaning of the client's dreams.

Clinical Psychologists

A psychologist who diagnoses and treats people with emotional disturbances.

Counseling Psychologists

A psychologist who usually helps people deal with problems of everyday life.

Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)

A somatic treatment, mostly used for cases of severe depression, in which a brief electric current is passed through the brain to produce a convulsive seizure.

Trephining

A surgical method from the stone age in which part of the skull was chipped away to provide an opening through which an evil spirit could escape.

Systematic Desensitization

A type of counterconditioning that associates a pleasant relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli.

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 which aim to improve psychological functioning by increasing the client's awareness of underlying motives and defenses.

Manifest Content

According to Freud, the story-like superficial content of a dream, often representing only the daily activities and little underlying unconscious material.

Unconditional Positive Regard

According to Rogers, an attitude of total acceptance toward another person.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Action therapy in which the goal is to help clients overcome problems by learning to think more rationally and logically.

Client/Person-Centered Therapy

Also known as person-centered therapy, is a non-directive form of talk therapy that was developed by humanist psychologist Carl Rogers.

Dorothea Dix

An American activist on behalf of the indigent insane who, through a vigorous program of lobbying state legislatures and the United States Congress, created the first generation of American mental asylums.

Aaron Beck

An American psychiatrist and a professor emeritus in the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania.

Albert Ellis

An American psychologist who in 1955 developed Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. He held M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in clinical psychology from Columbia University and American Board of Professional Psychology

B.F. Skinner

An American psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor, and social philosopher. He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974.

Sigmund Freud

An Austrian neurologist, now known as the father of psychoanalysis.

Psychotherapy

An emotionally charged, confiding interaction between a trained therapist and someone who suffers from psychological difficulties.

Gestalt Therapy

An existentialist approach to treatment with the goal of helping the client become aware of his or her thoughts, behaviors, experiences, and feelings and to "own" or take responsibility for them.

Token Economy

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

Humanistic Therapies

Assume people have the ability and freedom to lead rational lives and make rational choices.

Somatic Therapies

Biologically based treatments that act upon known or presumed immediate causes of a psychological disorder.

Psychosurgery

Brain surgery on human patients intended to relieve severe and otherwise intractable mental or behavioral problems.

Carl Rogers

Carl Ransom Rogers was an influential American psychologist and among the founders of the humanistic approach to psychology.

Anxiety Hierarchy

Constructed by patient in which feared situations are arranged from least to most anxiety provoking; used to set sequence for therapy

Prevention

Controls deployed to avert unauthorized and/or undesired actions.

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy

Developed by Albert Ellis, a form of psychotherapy based on identifying and correcting irrational beliefs that are believed to underlie emotional and behavioral difficulties.

Antipsychotic Drugs

Drugs used to treat schizophrenia and other forms of severe thought disorder.

Latent Content

Freud's term for the underlying or hidden content represented in the symbols of dreams.

Existential Therapies

Humanistic therapies that focus on helping clients achieve a subjectively meaningful perception of their lives.

Free Association

In psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing.

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).

Psychiatrists

Physicians who specialize in the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders.

Psychoanalysts

Practitioners of psychoanalysis who are schooled in the Freudian tradition.

Psychopharmacology

The prescribed use of drugs to help treat symptoms of mental illness ostensibly to ensure that individuals are more receptive to talk therapies.

Attributional Style

The way a person typically explains the things that happen in his or her life.

Cognitive Therapy

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

Mary Cover Jones

Within psychology—a scientific field dominated by male scientists throughout much of the 20th century—Mary Cover Jones stands out as a pioneer of behavior therapy; Wolpe dubbed her "the mother of behavior therapy" due to her famous study of Peter and development of desensitization.