Therapies

Two broad categories of therapy

Psychotherapy and Biomedical therapy

Psychotherapy

The goal is to achieve insight or understanding for the
client’s feelings, actions, and thoughts

Manifest content

actual dream events

latent contents

hidden or symbolic meaning of dream events

Free association

patients were encouraged to say freely whatever
came into their minds without fear of being negatively
evaluated

their flow of ideas often revealing what could be
thought of as being hidden or unconscious

Resistance

When a client becomes reluctant to talk about a certain
topic, either changing the subject or remaining silent

Transference

the tendency for a client to project positive feelings for important
people from the past onto the therapist.

Rogers’ Client-Centered Therapy

Goal for people to have real and an ideal self
be similar to one another – more well adjusted

For this to be achieved, the client
needs to receive unconditional positive
regard

4 elements of client-centered therapy

Reflection: therapist restates what the client
says rather than interpreting those statements
 Unconditional positive regard: creating an
atmosphere of warmth, respect, and acceptance
for the client.
 Empathy: Ability to understand the client's
feelings.
 Authenticity: a genuine, open, and honest
response.

Behavior therapies

Applies principles of learning to eliminate undesirable
or maladaptive behaviors. Often called Applied Behavior
Analysis

Results tend to happen faster than in talking therapies
that focus on insight and understanding of the causes of
the behavior

Exposure therapies

based on classical conditioning.
Pairs the stimuli that causes unwanted behavior with a
new desired response

Systematic desensitization

Pairs relaxation response with ever increasing fearful stimuli. Often used for
phobias

Flooding

the client is quickly and intensely exposed
to the fear-provoking stimuli and prevented from
making the usual maladaptive response

Aversion

An undesirable behavior is
paired with an aversive stimulus to reduce
the frequency of that behavior

(e.g., painting a bitter taste on fingernails to stop
nail biting)

Token economy

The use of objects to reinforce desired behavior in which the “tokens” can be exchanged for desired items or activities

Participant Modeling

A model demonstrates each step of a desired behavior

Shaping

rewarding successive approximations of the
desired behavior

Extinction

removing a reinforcer in order to reduce the
frequency of an undesired behavior (Time out: person is removed from the situation that provides reinforcement for the undesired behavior)

Cognitive therapies

Focus is on helping clients recognize distortions
in their thinking and replace these unrealistic,
beliefs with more realistic, helpful thoughts

Arbitrary inference

a person draws conclusions that
are not based on any evidence

Selective thinking

person focuses on only one aspect
of a situation while ignoring other relevant aspects

Overgeneralization

A person draws a general conclusion based on only one incident and applies those conclusions to unrelated events

Magnification & Minimization

A person blows a negative event out of proportion to its importance
(magnification) while ignoring relevant positive events (minimization)

Personalization

A person takes responsibility or blame for events that are unconnected to the person.

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

The goal is to help clients overcome problems
by learning to think more rationally and logically.
 Relieve symptoms and help clients resolve their
problems.
 Help clients develop strategies that can be used to
cope with future problems.
 Help clients change the way they think from irrational,
self-defeating thoughts to more rational, self-helping,
positive thoughts

Is Psychotherapy effective?

No one therapy has been found more
effective over others.
 Some therapies are
more effective for certain disorders
 What appears to be the common curative
factors in therapy is a client’s sense of
trust and rapport with their therapist,
providing hope, and creating a new perspective