Therapy

Psychotherapy

Treatment involving psychological techniques; consists of interactions between a trained therapist and someone seeking to address psychological difficulties or achieve personal growth.

Biomedical Therapy

Prescribed medications or procedures that act directly on the person's physiology.

Eclectic Approach

An approach to psychotherapy that uses techniques from various forms of therapy.

Psychoanalysis

(1) Freud’s theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts. (2) Freud’s therapeutic technique. Freud believed the patient’s free associations, resistances, and dreams—and the analyst’s interpretations of them—released previously repressed feelings, allowing the patient to gain self-insight.

Resistance

In psychoanalysis, the blocking from consciousness of unpleasant or anxiety-laden material.

Interpretation

In psychoanalysis, the analysist's noting of dream meanings, resistances, and other significant behaviors and events in order to promote insight and growth.

Transference

In psychoanalysis, the patient's transfer to the analyst of emotions linked with other relationships (such as love or hatred for a parent).

Psychodynamic Therapy

Therapy influenced by the psychoanalytic tradition; views clients as responding to unconscious forces and childhood experiences, and seeks to enhance self-insight and emotional well-being.

Insight Therapies

Therapies that aim to improve psychological functioning by increasing a person’s awareness of underlying motives and defenses.

Person-Centered Therapies

A humanistic therapy, developed by Carl Rogers, in which the client directs the discussion and the therapist uses techniques such as active listening within an accepting, genuine, empathetic environment to facilitate clients' growth.

Active Listening

Empathic listening in which the listener echoes, restates, and seeks clarification. A feature of Rogers' person-centered therapy.

Unconditional Positive Regard

A caring, accepting, nonjudgmental attitude, which Carl Rogers believed would help people develop self-awareness and self-acceptance.

Behavior Therapy

Therapy that uses learning principles to reduce unwanted behaviors and increase desirable behaviors.

Counterconditioning

Behavior therapy procedures that use classical conditioning to evoke new responses to stimuli that are triggering unwanted behaviors; includes exposure therapies and aversive conditioning.

Exposure Therapies

Behavioral techniques that treat anxieties by exposing people (in imaginary or actual situations) to the things they fear and avoid.

Systematic Desensitization

A type of exposure therapy that associates a pleasant, relaxed state with gradually increasing, anxiety-triggering stimuli. Commonly used to treat specific phobias.  

Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy

A counterconditioning technique that treats anxiety through creative electronic simulations in which people can safely face specific fears, such as flying, spiders, or public speaking.

Adverse Conditioning

Associates an unpleasant state (such as nausea) with an unwanted behavior (such as drinking alcohol).

Token Economy

An operant conditioning procedure in which people earn a token for exhibiting a desired behavior and can later exchange tokens for privileges or treats.

Cognitive Therapy

Therapy that teaches people new, more adaptive ways of thinking; based on the assumption that thoughts intervene between events and our emotional reactions.

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

A popular integrative therapy that combines cognitive therapy (changing self-defeating thinking) with behavior therapy (changing behavior).

Group Therapy

Therapy conducted with groups rather than individuals, providing benefits from group interaction.

Family Therapy

Therapy that treats people in the context of their family system. Views an individual's unwanted behaviors as influenced by, or directed at, other family members.

Confirmation Bias

A tendency to search for information that supports your preconceptions and to ignore or distort evidence that contradicts them.

Evidence-Based Practice

Clinical decision making that integrates the best available research with clinical expertise and client characteristics and preferences.

Therapeutic Alliance

A bond of trust and mutual understanding between a therapist and client, who work together constructively to overcome the client's problem.

Antipsychotic Drugs

Drugs used to treat schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders.

Antianxiety Drugs

Drugs used to control anxiety and agitation.

Antidepressant drugs

Drugs used to treat depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive and related disorders, and posttraumatic stress disorder.

Psychedelic Drugs

A subset of hallucinogenic drugs, sometimes used to treat depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, suicidal thoughts, posttraumatic stress disorder, and alcohol use disorder. These drugs cause temporary visual, psychological, and auditory changes, and an altered state of consciousness (often called a psychedelic experience or "trip").

Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)

A biomedical therapy for severe and treatment-resistant depression in which a brief electric current is sent through the brain of an anesthetized person.

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)

The application of repeated pulses of magnetic energy to the brain; used to stimulate or suppress brain activity.

Psychosurgery

Surgery that removes or destroys brain tissue to change behavior.

Lobotomy

A psychosurgical procedure once used to calm uncontrollably emotional or violent patients. The procedure cut the nerves that connect the frontal lobes to the emotion-controlling centers of the inner brain.

Resilience

The personal strength that helps most people cope with stress and recover from adversity and even trauma.