This document provides an overview of different approaches to psychotherapy and therapy, including psychoanalysis, humanistic therapy, cognitive therapies, behavior therapies, and biological approaches. It discusses key concepts for different therapeutic approaches such as transference, dream analysis, cognitive restructuring, systematic desensitization, and drug therapies. It also examines what makes an effective therapist and different types of therapies such as group therapy.
2. Psychotherapy
• Any treatment used by therapists to help troubled
individuals overcome their problems.
1. Verbal Interaction
2. Development of Supportive/Trusting Relationship
3. Analysis of problems by therapist, including
strategies to solve the problems
3. The Nature of Psychotherapy
• Medical Model
• Read Quote from “One Nation Under Therapy”
• “Mental Illness” = Less Social Stigma, but also less
taking responsibility/personal efforts to overcome
problems
• Agree or Disagree?
4. Main Kinds of Therapy
• Psychoanalysis
• Humanistic
• Cognitive
• Behavioral
• Biological
Activity – Leopold is struggling in school. He has problems relating to his
peers and completing homework because he really doesn’t care. While
not overtly misbehaving in class, he often just ignores the instructor,
spending much time in class day dreaming.
In groups, use each approach to try to treat Leopold. Identify his potential
problem. What solution(s) would you suggest? What other things can you
deduce from this scenario about potential problems?
6. What makes a good therapist?
• Psychological Healthy
• Empathy – warmth/understanding
• Experience dealing with people/understanding
complexities of individuals and situations
7. Group Therapies
• Most often grouped by issues
• Patients work together with the aid of a leader to
resolve interpersonal problems
• Put people who are struggling with similar problems
together.
• Includes family therapy, self-help groups
• Benefits?
• Concerns?
8. Does Psychotherapy Work?
• 1994 Consumer Reports Self Reported Survey
(Since not random, can’t be generalized, just see trends)
1. Therapy did help feel better, minimize/eliminate
symptoms, especially if lasts 6+ months
2. Improvements greatest when from psychologists,
psychiatrists, and social workers
3. Longer therapy lasted = greater improvements
4. Type of therapy generally didn’t matter
10. What is Psychoanalysis?
• Therapy aimed at making patients aware of their
unconscious motives so that they can gain control of
their behavior.
• Overcome repression recognize and confront hidden
impulses and feelings
• Lead to abreaction release of energy/tensions =
growth
11. Resistance
• Reluctance of a patient either to reveal painful feelings
or to examine long standing behavior patterns
15. Humanistic Therapy
• Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers – key guys
• Focus on value, dignity, and worth of each person;
holds that healthy living is the result of realizing one’s
full potential (“self-actualizing”)
17. Nondirective Therapy
• Free flow of images/ideas, no particular direction
• Client completely in charge
• Therapist listens, encourages conversation, doesn’t give
opinions
18. Active Listening
• Empathetic listening, listener acknowledges, restates,
clarifies a person’s thoughts/concerns without arguing
or judging
• Used in relationships also…
20. Cognitive Therapies
• Changing emotions/behaviors by modifying thoughts
• Assumes that faulty cognitions are the cause of
distorted behaviors, attitudes and emotions
Disconfirmation – evidence challenge clients thinking
Reconceptualization – work towards new belief systems
Insight – work toward understanding/deriving new or
revised beliefs
21. Rational-Emotive Therapy
• Ellis (1973) – people behave in delibrate/rational ways
based on assumptions about life.
• Therefore, problems arise from false assumptions
• So, the goal is to change those assumptions
• Techniques - Role Playing, Modeling, Persuasion
• ABC’s – Activating, Belief, Consequences
22. Beck’s Cognitive Therapy
• Focus on illogical thought process, disprove thoughts
• 3 Types of Illogical Thoughts
1. Overgeneralization
2. Polarized Thinking
3. Selective Attention
24. Behavior Therapies
• Focus on behavior, not thinking
• Assumption Disturbed people learn bad behavior,
any behavior can be unlearned, often through
conditioning
• Reasons for behavior unimportant
25. Counter-conditioning
• 3 Steps
1. Anxiety hierarchy – list things, least to most anxious
2. Learn deep muscle relaxation
3. Imagine/experience each step with gradual intensity
Useful in treating phobias
26. Systematic Desensitization
Help patient overcome irrational fears/anxieties
• Imagine fear while relaxing
• Gradually imagine/experience increase in stress
• Can’t feel anxious while relaxing at the same time
27. Aversive Conditioning
• Linking unpleasant state with an unwanted behavior in
an attempt to eliminate the behavior
• Shot for alcoholics, feel sick
• Aversive = bad
31. Drug Therapy
• Most commonly used biological approach, and
approach to psychological problems overall
32. Antipsychotic Drugs
• Used to treat schizophrenia
• Reduces agitation, delusions, hallucinations by blocking
activity of dopamine in the brain
• Drugs are tranquilizers
33. Antidepressant drugs
• Treat major depression
• Affects neurotransmitters
noradrenalin and serotonin
• Some of the most widely
prescribed drugs in the USA
34. Lithium Carbonate
• Naturally occuring salt element
(other drugs are synthetics)
• Used to treat Bipolar disorder
• Helps reduce mood swings
35. Anti-anxiety Drugs
• Used to treat Anxiety disorders; slow nervous system
• Depressives
• Valium, Xanax
• Side Effects – Drowsiness, Dependence
36. Electroconvulsive Therapy
• “Shock Treatment”
• Sent through brain
• Treat severe depression, acute mania, schizophrenia
• Not sure how it works
• Theory – Induced seizures “prime” the brain, “knock
loose” some transmitters
37. Psychosurgery
• Drastic procedures, last resort
• More common in past
• Destroy part of brain to relieve symptoms
• Example – Severed corpus callosum to relieve seizures
38. Prefrontal Lobotomy
• A section of the frontal lobe is destroyed
• Help control emotions
• Side effects difficulty planning, apathy, lack creativity
