Chapter 14
AP Psychology
Psychotherapy – An Overview
 The treatment of psychological disorders through
psychological methods
 Clients


Inpatients
Outpatients
 Therapist


Psychiatrists
Psychologists
 Basic goal: to help people change their way of thinking,
feeling, or behavior
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
 Personality and behavior reflect the ego’s efforts to referee
unconscious conflicts
 Psychoanalysis – understanding unconscious conflicts
 Freud’s one-on-one methods – free association, dream analysis,
hypnosis
 Aims to help clients gain insight into and work through problems




Manifest content
Latent content
Freudian slip
Transference
 Resistance – when a person disagrees with the therapist’s
interpretations – people try to protect themselves through resisting
the truth –unconsciously blocks the process of revealing
unconscious conflicts
Contemporary Psychoanalysis
 Traditional psychoanalysis – too long and expensive
 Short-term psychodynamic therapy evolved – less
expensive and time consuming
 Interpersonal therapy – helps clients cope with current
problems and situations (work, marital issues, stress,
loss, etc.)
Humanistic Psychotherapy
 Phenomenologists
 Behavior is motivated by an innate drive toward
growth – therapists help people to self-actualize
 People are innately good and possess free will –
capable of controlling their own destinies
 Clients will improve on their own, given the right
conditions
 Patients must feel totally accepted and supported –
emphasis on relationships
Humanistic (con’t)
 Client-Centered Therapy (Person-Centered Therapy)
 Carl Rogers – non-directive therapy - allowed clients to
decide what to talk about and when, without judgment
or direction – requires active listening
 Unconditional positive regard – blanket acceptance for a
person
 Empathy
 Congruence
Humanistic (con’t)
 Gestalt Therapy
 Importance of the whole
 Frederick Perls – encourage people to get in touch with
their whole selves - make people aware of their
environment, present feelings, and actions
 Gestalt therapy seeks to create conditions in which
clients can become more self-aware and self-accepting
Behavioral Therapy
 Clients see their problems as learned behaviors that
can be changed, without searching for hidden
meanings or unconscious causes
 Based on the work of Watson, Pavlov, & Skinner
 Features:
 Development of a productive therapist-client
relationship
 Careful listing of the behaviors and thoughts to be
changed – assessment and establishment of goals
 Learning-based treatments – giving “homework”
 Continuous monitoring and evaluation of treatment
Techniques for Modifying Behavior
 Counterconditioning
 Mary Cover Jones
 Systematic Desensitization
 Joseph Wolpe
 Modeling
 Assertiveness and social skills training
 Positive reinforcement
 Token economy
 Extinction
 Flooding
 Aversive Conditioning
 Breaking a habit
 Operant Conditioning
 Reinforcement/Punishment
Cognitive Therapy
 Focus is on changing unhealthy thought patterns
 Rational-emotive behavior therapy – Albert Ellis
 Cognitive Restructuring
 healthy v. unhealthy attributional style
 Aaron Beck – founder of Cognitive Therapy
 Most often used in treating depression
 Cognitive triad – people’s thoughts about themselves,
their worlds, and their futures

Aims to make these beliefs more positive
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
 CBT – Combines ideas of Cognitive and Behavioral
psychologists
 Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) – Albert
Ellis
 Therapists look to expose and confront dysfunctional
thoughts of their clients
 Based on the premise that when we become upset, it is
not the events taking place that upset us – it is the
beliefs we hold that cause us to become depressed

ABC Model – teaches people how their beliefs cause their
emotional and behavioral response
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
(con’t)
 Ellis’ ABC Model
A. Something happens
B. You have a belief about that situation
C. You have an emotional reaction to the belief
For example:
A. Your employer falsely accuses you of taking money
from the register and threatens to fire you
B. You believe, “She has no right to accuse me! What a
jerk!”
C. You feel angry
***B causes C
Group, Family, and Couples
Therapy
 Group Therapy – simultaneous treatment of several clients
– no single theoretical approach used
 Advantages – allows interaction among clients, clients feel
less alone (raised expectation for improvement), clients boost
each other’s confidence, clients are more willing to share
 Anti-addiction groups
 Family & Couples Therapy – treatment of two or more from
same family system – goal is to create harmony and balance
 Developed from psychodynamic theory – disorders are
rooted in family conflicts
Biological Treatments
(Somatic Therapy)
 Somatic therapies – therapies that produce bodily changes
 Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) – “shock treatment” – used for
depressive patients who didn’t respond to medication
 Early use – physicians passed electric currents through brains of
people with schizophrenia
 Modern use – shock is applied to one side of the brain at a time –
used to treat patients with severe depression, who do not respond
well to medication


Improves neurotransmitter functions?
Controversial
 Psychosurgery – destruction of brain tissue for treating mental
disorders
 Prefrontal lobotomy – severs neural connection between the
prefrontal cortex and the rest of the brain
Biological Treatments
Psychoactive Drugs
 Neuroleptics (Antipsychotics)– reduce psychotic
symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, &
disordered thinking (Schizophrenia)
 Block receptor sites for dopamine

Thorazine, Haldol
Biological Treatments
Psychoactive Drugs (con’t)
 Antidepressants – help relieve symptoms of depression
– immediate effect on neurotransmitters (usually
increasing serotonin or norepinephrine)



Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors (MAO-I) – treats panic
disorder
Tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) – more effective in treating
panic disorder
Prozac – affects serotonin – most prescribed in the U.S. – also
used for panic disorder and OCD
 Effexor, Serzone, Wellbutrin
Antidepressants
Biological Treatments
Psychoactive Drugs (con’t)
 Lithium – mineral salt found to reduce frequency and
intensity of manic and depressive phases of bipolar
patients

Anticonvulsants – treats mania
 Depakote
 Anxiolytics (tranquilizers) – treats anxiety – most
widely prescribed and used of all legal drugs

Xanax, Klonopin, Prozac, Paxil, Anafranil, Luvox, Zoloft
Evaluating Psychoactive Drug
Treatments
 Limitations –
 Drugs may cover up the problem without permanently
curing it
 Relieve symptoms without addressing underlying causes
 Drug abuse – physical and psychological dependence
 Side effects