Unit 8 Part 2 Myers' Psychology for the AP Course

Psychotherapy

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

Resistance

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

Interpretation

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

Transference

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

Insight Therapies

Variety of therapies which aim to improve psychological functioning by increasing the client's awareness of underlying motives and defenses.

Client-centered Therapy

A humanistic therapy based on Carl Roger's beliefs that an individual has an unlimited capacity for psychological growth and will continue to grow unless barriers are placed in the way.

Active Listening

Empathic istening in which the listener echoes, restates, and clarifies. A feature of Rogers' client-centered therapy.

Counterconditioning

A behavior therapy procedure that uses classical conditioning to evoke new responses to stimuli that are triggering unwanted behaviors.

Exposure Therapies

Behavioral techniques, such as systematic desensitization, that treat anxieties by exposing people (in imagination or actuality) to the things they fear and avoid.

Systematic Desensitization

Type of exposure therapy that associates a pleasant relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli; commonly used to treat phobias.

Aversive Conditioning

A type of counterconditioning that associates an unpleasant state with an unwanted behavior.

Cognitive Therapy

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

Cognitive-behavioral Therapy

A popular integrative therapy that combines cognitive therapy with behavior therapy.

Biomedical Therapy

Prescribed medications or medical procedures that act directly on the patient's nervous system.

Psychopharmacology

The study of the effects of drugs on mind and behavior.

Antipsychotic Drugs

Drugs used to treat schizophrenia and other forms of severe thought disorder.

Antianxiety Drugs

Drugs used to control anxiety and agitation.

Antidepressant Drugs

Drugs used to treat depression; also increasingly prescribed for anxiety. Different types work by altering the availability of various neurotransmitters.

Electroconvulsive Therapy

A biomedical therapy for severely depressed patients in which a brief electric current is sent through the brain of an anesthetized patient.

Psychosurgery

Surgery that removes or destroys brain tissue in an effort to change behavior.

eclectic approach

an approach to psychotherapy that uses techniques from various forms of therapy

psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud's therapeutic technique. Freud believed the patient's free associations, resistances, dreams, and transferences - and the therapist's interpretations of them - released previously repressed feelings, allowing the patient to gain self-insight.

psychodynamic therapy

therapy deriving from the psychoanalytic tradition; views individuals as responding to unconscious forces and childhood experiences, and seeks to enhance self-insight

unconditional positive regard

a caring, accepting, nonjudgmental attitude, which Carl Rogers believed would help clients to develop self-awareness and self-acceptance

behavior therapy

therapy that applies learning principles to the elimination of unwanted behaviors

virtual reality exposure therapy

a counterconditioning technique that treats anxiety by creative electronic simulations in which people can safely face their greatest fears, such as airplane flying, spiders, or public speaking

token economy

an operant conditioning procedure in which people earn a token of some sort for exhibiting a desired behavior and can later exchange the tokens for various privileges or treats

rational-emotive behavior therapy (REBT)

a confrontational cognitive therapy, developed by Albert Ellis, that vigorously challenges people's illogical, self-defeating attitudes and assumptions

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.

meta-analysis

a procedure for statistically combining the results of many different research studies

evidence-based practice

clinical decision making that integrates the best available research with clinical expertise and patient 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

repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS)

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

lobotomy

a psychosurgical procedure once used to calm uncontrollably emotional or violent patients. The procedure cut the nerves connecting 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

posttraumatic growth

positive psychological changes as a result of struggling with extremely challenging circumstances and life crises