Psychotherapy
- Refers to all forms of talk therapy
- Used by psychoanalytic, humanistic, behavioral, and cognitive psychologists.
- Be careful: don't confuse psychotherapy, a general term used to describe any kind of therapy that treats the mind and not the body, with
Psychoanalysis
- A therapeutic technique developed by Freud. A patient undergoing psychoanalysis will usually lie on a couch while the therapist sits in a chair out of the patient's line of vision.
- Psychoanalytic theorists view the cause of disorders as unconscious co
Free Association
- A technique sometimes used by psychoanalysts to uncover unconscious conflicts
- Involves saying whatever comes to mind without thinking.
- Based on the idea that we all constantly censor what we say, thereby allowing us to hide some of our thoughts from
Dream Analysis
- A technique sometimes used by psychoanalysts to uncover unconscious conflicts.
- Psychoanalysts ask their patients to describe their dreams.
- Since the ego's defenses are relaxed during sleep, they hope the dreams will help the therapist see what is at
Manifest Content
- A term used by psychoanalysts when using dream analysis in order to uncover unconscious conflicts.
- What a patient reports about a dream.
- The latent content of the dream is revealed only as a result of the therapist's interpretive work.
Latent Content
- A term used by psychoanalysts when using dream analysis in order to uncover unconscious conflicts.
- Revealed only as a result of the therapist's interpretive work.
- What a patient reports about a dream is called the manifest content of the dream.
Resistance
A term used by psychoanalysts to describe a patient disagreeing with his or her therapist's interpretations.
- Since psychoanalysis can be a painful process of coming to terms with deeply repressed, troubling thoughts, people are thought to try to protect
Transference
- In the course of therapy, patients begin to have strong feelings toward their therapists.
- Patients may think they are in love with their therapists, may view their therapists as parental figures, or may seethe with hatred toward them.
- Psychoanalysts
Somatic Treatments
- Medical treatments for psychological disorders, including drug treatments (psychopharmacology), psychosurgery, and electroconvulsive shock therapy.
- Based on the biomedical model of psychological disorders.
Psychodynamic Theorists
- Psychologists who have been influenced by Freud's work but have significantly modified his original theory.
Humanistic Therapists
- Focus on helping people to understand and accept themselves and strive to self-actualize.
- Assert that if people are supported and helped to recognize their goals, they will move toward self-fulfillment.
- Humanistic therapists operate from the belief
Carl Rogers
DATE: 1902 - 1987
- Rogers created client-centered therapy, also known as person-centered therapy.
- This therapeutic method hinges on the therapist providing the client with what Rogers termed unconditional positive regard.
- Unconditional positive regar
Client-Centered Therapy (or Person-Centered Therapy)
- Created by therapist Carl Rogers.
- Hinges on the therapist providing the client with unconditional positive regard.
- Unconditional positive regard is blanket acceptance and support of a person regardless of what the person says or does.
- Rogers belie
Unconditional Positive Regard
- Important element of client-centered therapy developed by Carl Rogers.
- Blanket acceptance and support of a person regardless of what the person says or does.
Active Listening (also called Reflective Listening)
- Technique used in non-directive client-centered therapy.
- Therapists using active listening would not tell their clients what to do but, rather, would seek to help the clients choose a course of action for themselves.
- Client-centered therapists say v
Gestalt Therapy
- Developed by Fritz Perls.
- Gestalt psychologists emphasize the importance of the whole and encourage their clients to get in touch with their whole selves.
- Gestalt therapists encourage their clients to explore feelings of which they may not be aware
Existential Therapies
- Humanistic therapies that focus on helping clients achieve a subjectively meaningful perception of their lives.
- Existential therapists see clients' difficulties as caused by the clients having lost or failed to develop a sense of their lives' purpose.
Counterconditioning
- A type of behavioral therapy.
- A kind of classical conditioning developed by Mary Cover Jones in which an unpleasant conditioned response is replaced with a pleasant one.
- For instance, suppose Charley is afraid of going to the doctor and cries hyster
Systematic Desensitization
- A type of behavioral therapy.
- Involves teaching the client to replace the feelings of anxiety with relaxation. The first step is to teach the client to relax. Next, the therapist and client work together to construct what is called an anxiety hierarch
Anxiety Hierarchy
- Part of the process of systematic desensitization.
- The therapist and client work together to construct an anxiety hierarchy, a rank-ordered list of what the client fears, starting with the least frightening and ending with the most frightening.
Flooding
- A type of behavioral therapy.
- Unlike the gradual process of systematic desensitization, flooding involves having the client address the most frightening scenario first.
- Produces tremendous anxiety.
- If clients face their fears and do not back down,
Aversive Conditioning
- A type of behavioral therapy.
- Pairs a habit a person wishes to break (e.g., smoking or bed-wetting) with an unpleasant stimulus (e.g., electric shock or nausea).
Token Economy
- A type of behavioral therapy involving operant conditioning.
- Desired behaviors are identified and rewarded with tokens. The tokens can then be exchanged for various objects or privileges.
- Often used in mental institutions and schools.
Cognitive Therapies
- Locate the cause of psychological problems in the way people think.
- Concentrate on changing unhealthy thought patterns.
- Involves challenging the irrational thinking patterns of patients.
- An example of an unhealthy way of thinking is attributing al
Attributional Style
- Cognitive therapies sometimes involve challenging unhealthy attributional styles.
- An example of an unhealthy attributional style is attributing failures to internal, global, and permanent aspects of the self.
- For example, a student who has an unheal
Cognitive Therapy for Depression
- Developed by Aaron Beck
- Involves trying to get clients to engage in pursuits that will bring them success. This will alleviate the depression while also identifying and challenging the irrational ideas that cause unhappiness.
- Beck explains depressio
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Combines the ideas and techniques of cognitive and behavioral psychologists.
- One example is rational emotive behavior therapy, developed by Albert Ellis.
- Therapists look to expose and confront the dysfunctional thoughts of their clients.
- For insta
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT or RET)
- A type of cognitive behavioral therapy developed by Albert Ellis.
- Therapists look to expose and confront the dysfunctional thoughts of their clients.
- For instance, someone suffering from a social phobia might voice concern over being publicly embarr
Group Therapy
- Psychotherapy can involve groups of people in addition to one-on-one client-therapist interactions.
- Therapists running groups can have any of the theoretical orientations (e.g., cognitive, behavioral, psychodynamic).
- Family therapy is one common use
Somatic Therapies
- Therapies that produce bodily changes.
- Psychologists with a biomedical orientation see the cause of psychological disorders as being organic (i.e., imbalances in neurotransmitters or homes, structural abnormalities in the brain, genetic predisposition
Psychopharmacology
- Using drugs to treat psychological disorders.
- The most common type of somatic therapy.
- Drugs treat many kinds of psychological problems, ranging from anxiety disorders to mood disorders to schizophrenia. The more severe a disorder, the more likely t
Antipsychotic Drugs
- Type of somatic therapy used to treat schizophrenia, which is generally treated with antipsychotic drugs (e.g., Thorazine or Haldol).
- Function by blocking the receptor sites for dopamine.
- An unfortunate side effect of antipsychotic medication is tar
Antidepressant Drugs
- Type of somatic therapy used to treat mood disorders
- The three most common kinds of drugs used to treat unipolar depression are tricyclic antidepressants, monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitors, and serotonin-reuptake-inhibitor drugs (SSRI's, most notably
Antianxiety Drugs
- Type of somatic therapy used to treat anxiety disorders.
- Act by depressing the activity of the central nervous system, thus making people feel more relaxed.
- Two main types of antianxiety drugs are barbiturates (e.g., Miltown) and benzodiazepines (e.
Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)
- Type of somatic therapy.
- Electric current is passed through both hemispheres of the brain.
- The electric shock causes patients to experience a brief seizure.
- Prior to administering ECT, patients are given a muscle relaxant to reduce the effects of
Psychosurgery
- The most intrusive and rarest of somatic therapy.
- Psychsurgery involves the purposeful destruction of part of the brain to alter a person's behavior.
- Used only as a last resort and only on people suffering to a great extent.
- An early, and unfortun
Psychiatrists
- A kind of therapist.
- Psychiatrists are medical doctors and are therefore the only therapists permitted to prescribe medication in most U.S. states.
- Often favor a biomedical model of mental illness because of their backgrounds and are often less exte
Clinical Psychologists
- A kind of therapist
- Clinical psychologists hold doctoral degrees (PhDs) that require four or more years of study. They then work in an internship overseen by a more experienced professional.
Counseling Psychologists
- A kind of therapist.
- Counseling psychologists have graduate degrees in psychology. They have generally undergone less training and deal with less severe problems than clinical psychologists do.
Psychoanalysts
- A kind of therapist.
- Psychoanalysts are people specifically trained in Freudian methods. They may or may not hold medical degrees.