Unit 13: Disorders and Treatments

psychotherapy

psychotherapy

treatment involving psychological techniques; consists of interactions between a trained therapist and someone seeking to overcome psychological difficulties or achieve personal growth. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 709)

biomedical therapy

prescribed medications or procedures that act directly on the person's physiology. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 709)

eclectic approach

an approach to psychotherapy that, depending on the client's problems, uses techniques from various forms of therapy. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 709)

psychoanalysis

(2) 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. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 709)

resistance

in psychoanalysis, the blocking from consciousness of anxiety-laden material. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 710)

interpretation

in psychoanalysis, the analyst's noting supposed dream meanings, resistances, and other significant behaviors and events in order to promote insight. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 710)

transference

in psychoanalysis, the patient's transfer to the analyst of emotions linked with other relationships (such as love or hatred for a parent). (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 710)

psychodynamic therapy

therapy deriving from the psychoanalytic tradition that views individuals as responding to unconscious forces and childhood experiences, and that seeks to enhance self-insight. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 710)

insight therapies

a variety of therapies that aim to improve psychological functioning by increasing a person's awareness of underlying motives and defenses. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 711)

client-centered therapy

a humanistic therapy, developed by Carl Rogers, in which the therapist uses techniques such as active listening within a genuine, accepting, empathic environment to facilitate clients' growth. (Also called person-centered therapy.) (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 712)

active listening

empathic listening in which the listener echoes, restates, and clarifies. A feature of Rogers' client-centered therapy. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 712)

unconditional positive regard

a caring, accepting, nonjudgmental attitude, which Carl Rogers believed would help clients to develop self-awareness and self-acceptance. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e pp. 572, 712)

behavior therapy

therapy that applies learning principles to the elimination of unwanted behaviors. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 716)

counterconditioning

behavior therapy procedures that use classical conditioning to evoke new responses to stimuli that are triggering unwanted behaviors; include exposure therapies and aversive conditioning. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 717)

exposure therapies

behavioral techniques, such as systematic desensitization and virtual reality exposure therapy, that treat anxieties by exposing people (in imagination or actual situations) to the things they fear and avoid. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 717)

systematic desensitization

a type of exposure therapy that associates a pleasant, relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli. Commonly used to treat phobias. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 717)

virtual reality exposure therapy

an anxiety treatment that progressively exposes people to electronic simulations of their greatest fears, such as airplane flying, spiders, or public speaking. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 718)

aversive conditioning

a type of counterconditioning that associates an unpleasant state (such as nausea) with an unwanted behavior (such as drinking alcohol). (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 718)

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. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 719)

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. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 720)

rational-emotive behavior therapy (REBT)

a confrontational cognitive therapy, developed by Albert Ellis, that vigorously challenges people's illogical, self-defeating attitudes and assumptions. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 721)

cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)

a popular integrative therapy that combines cognitive therapy (changing self-defeating thinking) with behavior therapy (changing behavior). (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 723)

group therapy

therapy conducted with groups rather than individuals, permitting therapeutic benefits from group interaction. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 723)

family therapy

therapy that treats the family as a system. Views an individual's unwanted behaviors as influenced by, or directed at, other family members. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 724)

regression toward the mean

the tendency for extreme or unusual scores to fall back (regress) toward their average. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 730)

meta-analysis

a procedure for statistically combining the results of many different research studies. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 731)

evidence-based practice

clinical decision making that integrates the best available research with clinical expertise and patient characteristics and preferences. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 732)

therapeutic alliance

a bond of trust and mutual understanding between a therapist and client, who work together constructively to overcome the client's problem. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 735)

resilience

the personal strength that helps most people cope with stress and recover from adversity and even trauma. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 737)

psychopharmacology

the study of the effects of drugs on mind and behavior. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 740)

antipsychotic drugs

drugs used to treat schizophrenia and other forms of severe thought disorder. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 741)

antianxiety drugs

drugs used to control anxiety and agitation. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 741)

antidepressant drugs

drugs used to treat depression, anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder. (Several widely used antidepressant drugs are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors—SSRIs.) (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 741)

electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)

a biomedical therapy for severely depressed patients in which a brief electric current is sent through the brain of an anesthetized patient. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 743)

repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS)

the application of repeated pulses of magnetic energy to the brain; used to stimulate or suppress brain activity. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 745)

psychosurgery

surgery that removes or destroys brain tissue in an effort to change behavior. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 746)

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. (Myers Psychology for AP 2e p. 746)