Psychological Therapies
Psychotherapy
• Interaction between a trained therapist and
someone suffering from psychological difficulties.
3 Types of Treatment Categories
Insight Therapies
– gives insight and understanding into persons condition
• client driven
Behavior Therapies
– therapist directed
• tries to influence and correct maladaptive (disruptive)
behavior
Biomedical Therapies
– therapy though medication or surgery
Eclectic Approach
• it is basically a smorgasbord
• therapist combines techniques from
different schools of psychology
depending on the problem
Different Therapy Techniques
Correspond to Different
Psychological approaches
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Example
Psychodynamic
Humanistic
Cognitive
Behaviorist
Psychoanalysis
• Freud's therapy.
• Main goal is to dig up the past to clarify the
present
• Uses free association, hypnosis and dream
interpretation to gain insight into the client’s
unconscious.
Psychoanalytic Methods
• To help someone therapists must
overcome resistance
– blocking from consciousness and the
therapist anxiety causing material
– Often will use a defense mechanism
Transference
• Clients relate to their therapist as they would to
important figures in their past
– They literally “transfer” their feelings and emotions from
someone they have unconscious feelings toward onto
their therapist
Example: A client who
is resentful about her
mother’s authority
over her might show
angry, rebellious
behavior toward the
therapist
Humanistic Therapy
• Main goals…
• Personal responsibility
• Potential for self-actualization
•The present and future
•And conscious thoughts
Most widely used Humanistic technique is:
Client Centered Therapy
• Developed by Carl Rogers
• Is nondirective
• the therapist does not direct the course and
pace of therapy – the client does
•How Does Client Centered Therapy Work??
• creates and environment of UPR
• provides a supportive emotional environment
through AGE
WHY?
What is Active Listening??
•Empathetic listening where the listener
echoes, restates and clarifies.
• Central to Roger’s
client-centered
therapy
Behavior Therapies
• Applies learning principles to eliminate unwanted
behaviors.
• Believes that behaviors are the problems
– so we must change the behaviors.
Uses both classical and operant
conditioning techniques
Classical Conditioning Techniques
Counterconditioning:
• conditions new responses to stimuli that previously
triggered unwanted behaviors (responses)
– i.e. tries to undo conditioning with new conditioning
Two Types:
Systematic Desensitization
and
Aversion Therapy
Systematic Desensitization
• Gradually reduces anxiety through a step by
step process
– Associates a pleasant relaxed state with
gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli.
How would I use
systematic desensitization
to reduce my fear of old
women?
Systematic Desensitization
Progressive Relaxation
Exposure Therapy
Flooding
Virtual Technology Exposure Therapy
Aversion Therapy
• associates an unpleasant state with an
unwanted behavior.
How would putting an unappetizing
substance on the fingernails of a nail biter
effect their behavior?
Aversive Conditioning
Operant Conditioning Techniques
Token Economy
an operant conditioning procedure that
rewards or reinforces a desired behavior.
A patient exchanges a token of some sort,
earned for exhibiting the desired behavior,
for various privileges or treats.
Cognitive Therapy
“Our thinking colors our feelings”
Almost half of all
psychologists who
conduct therapy say
they use some sort
of cognitive type
Cognitive Therapies
• teaches people new, ways of thinking, acting
and viewing their world
• Correct distorted thinking
– Try to change your schema
• Clients learn how to identify negative
thoughts they make about the world and how
to consider other interpretations of events
Cognitive Therapy
Have to
Change this
Albert Ellis
• Another big dog in cognitive therapy
• Created Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
(REBT)
– If you think rationally about your fears you can
overcome them
• Say that you have a social phobia that might cause
you embarrassment (speaking in class for example
and everyone laughing)
– By using REBT, a therapist would question both the
likelihood of such embarrassment occurring and the
impact that would result
– the goal would be to show you that it is unlikely to occur
and if it did, it would be no big deal
Aaron
Beck
• The most famous Cognitive
Therapist
• Noticed that depressed people
were similar in the way they
viewed the world.
• Would often say…”we have to take
the dark sunglasses of depression
off and see the world for the
bright, wonderful place it is.”
• Explained depression using the
Cognitive Triad
– People with depression often have
irrationally negative beliefs about
three areas of their lives
– People’s beliefs about themselves
– Their worlds
– And their futures
Group and Family Therapies
Group and Family Therapies
• Clients may benefit from knowing others
with similar problems and from getting
feedback and reassurance
– AA
• Therapy that treats the family as a system
– no person is an island, that we live and grow in
relation to others, especially our family
• Often views an individual’s unwanted
behaviors as influenced by or directed at
other family members
• Attempts to guide families toward positive
relationships and improved communication
• Quiz!!!!!!