psyc 490 key terms

Action therapies

Therapies that emphasize behavioral changes through direct action rather than insight alone.

Awareness (insight) therapies

Therapies focused on helping clients gain deep personal understanding of their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Catharsis

Emotional release or purification achieved through expressing strong feelings.

Choosing

The process where clients make empowered decisions about their behavior, often emphasized in humanistic or existential therapies.

Common (nonspecific) factors

Elements like the therapeutic relationship, empathy, and client expectations that contribute to therapy success across different approaches.

Corrective emotional experiences

Experiences in therapy where clients rework and heal from past emotional wounds in a safe setting.

Dramatic relief

Becoming emotionally moved by information or experiences, motivating change (often seen in change models).

Expectation

The belief that therapy will be helpful, which can itself contribute to positive outcomes.

Hawthorne effect

When individuals modify their behavior simply because they are being observed or studied.

Integration

Combining elements from different psychotherapy approaches into a unified model.

Processes of change

Mechanisms or steps through which individuals make lasting behavior changes (e.g., in the Transtheoretical Model).

Psychotherapy

A professional relationship using psychological methods to help a person change behavior, increase happiness, and overcome problems.

Reevaluation

Reassessing thoughts, feelings, or behaviors in a new light, often prompted by therapy.

Specific factors

Unique techniques or components of a particular therapy model that contribute to client improvement.

Therapeutic content

The actual material (thoughts, emotions, memories) addressed in therapy.

Transtheoretical

Refers to a model that integrates different theories to explain how people change (e.g., stages of change model).

Actualization (tendency)

An innate drive to grow, develop, and realize one's potential, central to humanistic psychology.

Client-centered therapy

Carl Rogers' therapy emphasizing unconditional positive regard, empathy, and genuineness.

Conditions of worth

Standards a person believes they must meet to be worthy of love or acceptance.

Empathy

Deep understanding of another's feelings and experiences from their perspective.

Fully functioning person

Rogers' concept of someone living authentically, flexibly, and realizing their potential.

Genuineness

Being open, honest, and authentic with clients.

Incongruence

A mismatch between a person's self-concept and their actual experiences.

Organismic valuing

Trusting one's own inner experience as a guide to behavior.

Reflection

Therapist's technique of mirroring clients' emotions and thoughts to deepen understanding.

Self-concept

A person's perception of themselves.

Self-regard

The way a person feels about themselves; their self-esteem.

Unconditional positive regard

Accepting and valuing a person without conditions.

Basic psychotherapy ethics

Principles like confidentiality, informed consent, beneficence, and non-maleficence guiding therapists' behavior.

Consciousness-raising groups

Groups aimed at increasing awareness of social and political inequalities affecting personal experiences.

Egalitarianism

Belief in equal rights and value for all individuals, often emphasized in therapy.

Empowered consent

Ensuring clients fully understand and freely agree to therapeutic procedures.

Feminist therapy

Therapy that incorporates social, cultural, and political factors, emphasizing equality and empowerment.

Feminization of poverty

The growing trend of women representing a disproportionate percentage of the world's poor.

Fundamental attribution error

The tendency to overemphasize personality traits and underestimate situational factors when explaining others' behavior.

Socialization

How individuals learn cultural norms about gender.

Nonconforming

Gender expression that doesn't follow traditional norms.

Cisgender

When one's gender identity matches the sex assigned at birth.

Internalized oppression, homophobia, racism

Absorbing societal prejudices and turning them inward against oneself or one's group.

Male-sensitive therapy

Therapy that recognizes and addresses unique issues faced by men, including emotional expression.

Role conflict

Tension from competing demands between different roles (e.g., work vs. family).

Role strain

Stress experienced from the demands of a single role.

Social liberation

Seeking and creating social conditions that empower individuals for change.

The personal is political

Idea that personal experiences are linked to larger social and political structures.

Cultural adaptation

Modifying interventions to better fit a client's cultural background.

Cultural empathy

Deep understanding of a client's cultural experiences.

Relativism

Understanding that behaviors must be interpreted within their cultural context.

Universality

Recognition of universal aspects of human experience across cultures.

Culture-bound syndromes

Mental health conditions specific to particular cultural groups.

Ethnicity

Shared cultural heritage, language, or ancestry.

Gay-affirmative therapy

Therapy that supports and validates gay clients' identities.

Heterosexism

The assumption that heterosexuality is the norm, leading to discrimination.

Intersection of multiple identities

Recognizing how multiple social identities (race, gender, sexuality) interact to shape experiences.

Multicultural psychotherapy

Therapy that actively considers and respects cultural differences.

Racial identity

A person's sense of belonging to a particular racial group.

Reparative therapy (sexual conversion therapy)

Discredited, harmful practices aimed at changing a person's sexual orientation.

Unconscious racism

Implicit biases and prejudices held without conscious awareness.

Manualized intervention/therapy

Therapy approaches that follow a standardized manual to ensure consistency.

Randomized control trial (RCT)

An experimental study design where participants are randomly assigned to groups to test interventions.

Observational study

Research where outcomes are observed without manipulating variables.

True experiment

Research involving random assignment and manipulation of variables to establish cause-and-effect relationships.

Replication crisis

Difficulty in reproducing findings of major studies, questioning the reliability of research.

Power (in research)

The likelihood a study will detect an effect if there is one.

Questionable research practices

Research behaviors that compromise study integrity, like p-hacking or selective reporting.

Clinical observation (vs. research)

Direct therapist observations in clinical settings vs. systematic investigation for scientific knowledge.

Cognitive biases

Systematic patterns of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment.

Naïve realism

Believing we see the world objectively and others are biased.

Confirmation bias

Seeking information that confirms existing beliefs.

Illusory causation

Seeing a cause-and-effect relationship where none exists.

Illusion of control

Overestimating one's influence over external events.

Placebo control group

Participants receive a fake treatment to control for expectations.

Attention control group

Participants receive the same amount of therapist attention without active treatment components.

Wait list control group

Participants wait for therapy while their progress is monitored, serving as a comparison.

Treatment as usual control group

Participants receive standard treatment, used as a baseline for comparison.

Dismantling studies

Research examining which parts of a therapy are most effective.

Sham treatment

A fake treatment used to control for the placebo effect.

Credibility

The degree to which a therapy or explanation appears believable or trustworthy.

Counterresistance

Client resistance that increases when a therapist pushes too hard, requiring therapist adjustment.

Dissemination and Implementation

The process of spreading research-based therapies into real-world clinical settings.

Motivational Interviewing (MI)

A client-centered, directive method for enhancing intrinsic motivation to change by exploring and resolving ambivalence.

OARs

Core MI techniques — Open-ended questions, Affirmations, Reflective listening, and Summaries.

Project MATCH

A large clinical trial that tested different treatments for alcoholism, finding that matching clients to treatments wasn't as crucial as expected.

Roll with Resistance

MI strategy where the therapist accepts client resistance rather than confronting it, gently guiding the conversation.

Anal personality/stage

Psychoanalytic stage (1-3 years) focusing on control, cleanliness, and orderliness.

Analysand

The person undergoing psychoanalysis (the client).

Castration anxiety

In Freudian theory, fear in boys of losing their penis as punishment for Oedipal desires.

Countertransference

Therapist's emotional reactions toward the client, often based on therapist's own unconscious issues.

Defense mechanisms

Unconscious strategies the ego uses to manage anxiety (e.g., denial, projection).

Denial

Refusing to acknowledge reality or facts.

Displacement

Redirecting emotions from a threatening target to a safer one.

Fixation

Getting stuck at a psychosexual stage due to unresolved conflicts.

Free association

Saying whatever comes to mind without censorship to uncover unconscious thoughts.

Genital personality/stage

Mature adult sexuality; final psychosexual stage focusing on love and work.

Intellectualization

Using logic and reason to avoid emotional distress.

Interpretation

Therapist offering explanations about the unconscious meaning of client behaviors or thoughts.

Latency stage

Psychosexual stage (6-12 years) where sexual feelings are dormant and social skills develop.

Latent content

Hidden, symbolic meaning of dreams.

Manifest content

The actual storyline or imagery of a dream.

Neurosis

Psychological symptoms resulting from unconscious conflict.

Oedipal conflict

Child's unconscious sexual desire for the opposite-sex parent and rivalry with the same-sex parent.