Theories of Psychotherapy: Adlerian, Existential, Person-Centered, and Gestalt Therapies

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering key concepts, movements, and clinical definitions across Adlerian, Existential, Person-Centered, and Gestalt therapeutic frameworks.

Law of Movement

The Adlerian principle that all human life consists of goal-directed movement from birth to death, characterized by striving, overcoming, compensating, and navigating challenges through movement toward, against, away from, or ambivalent movement.

Movement Toward

A pattern of movement characterized by emotions such as shyness, embarrassment, humiliation, shame, envy, lust, and guilt; behaviors including attention-getting, dependency, pleasing and placating, and putting others first to the exclusion of self; and disorders such as dependent personality disorder and histrionic personality disorder.

Movement Against

A pattern of movement characterized by emotions of frustration, disappointment in others, anger, disgust, resentment, and contempt; behaviors such as anger outbursts, rage, impulsive behavior, excessive criticism, and stonewalling; and disorders such as conduct disorder, antisocial personality disorder, and narcissistic personality disorder.

Movement Against Self

A subcategory of movement against characterized by emotions of personal disappointment and self-contempt; behaviors including cutting, other forms of self-harm, and suicide; and disorders such as anorexia, bulimia, body dysmorphic disorder, trichotillomania, and excoriation.

Movement Away From

A pattern of movement characterized by emotions such as sadness, sorrow, grief, hurt, dread, and depression; behaviors including depersonalization and insomnia; and disorders such as avoidant personality disorder, schizoid personality disorder, schizophrenia, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Ambivalent Movement

A pattern of movement characterized by emotions of fear, feeling stuck, anxiety, panic, and anguish; behaviors like hesitation, stonewalling, panic attacks, hoarding, insomnia, and dissociation; and disorders such as panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and obsessive compulsive personality disorder.

Style of Living

A person's characteristic style of movement through life, emerging in early childhood around ages 4 to 5, which unifies the personality once the life goal is formed.

Fictional Finalism

The Adlerian concept stating that human behavior is guided and directed by future goals rather than by past experiences.

Private Logic

A system of mistaken beliefs, faulty assumptions, and incomplete knowledge developed by individuals unable to connect with others, leading to self-absorption, isolation, withdrawal, and emotional distress.

Family Constellation and Family Values

A concept referring to family systems and the way parents' behaviors and treatment of their child impact the child's development.

Family Atmosphere

The family climate that children observe continually, specifically how parents interact with one another.

Gender Guiding Lines

Parental role models for children's gender identities, in which young boys observe their fathers as models of men, and young girls observe their mothers as models of women.

First-Order Change

An early phase or goal in Adlerian therapy focused on addressing and managing severe symptoms.

Psychological Muscle

The Adlerian concept describing the exercise of responsibility and cooperation in an individual's daily approach to life tasks.

Presence

A core existential therapy condition that enables true I/Thou relationships, allows meaning to exist in a situation, and enables an individual to be responsible in the here and now.

Daseinanalysis

Existential analysis that emphasizes the subjective and spiritual dimensions of human existence.

Resistance (James Bugental)

A client's self-and-world construct or way of understanding the world that manifests as life-limiting patterns, such as intellectualizing, being argumentative, or always seeking to please.

Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT)

A therapeutic approach designed to help clients increase awareness, acceptance, and understanding of the visceral experience of their emotions, addressing either emotional deficiency (accessing emotions) or emotional overwhelm (containing emotions).

Third Force in Therapy

A psychological movement that emerged as an alternative to psychoanalytic and behavioral approaches, encompassing existential, person-centered, and Gestalt therapies.

Congruence

A core condition in person-centered therapy characterized by genuineness and realness on the part of the therapist.

Unconditional Positive Regard

A growth-promoting climate component in person-centered therapy defined as nonjudgmental acceptance and deep caring for the client.

Empathic Understanding

The ability of a therapist to accurately grasp and understand the subjective world and internal frame of reference of another person.

Actualizing Tendency

A directional process inherent in humans of striving toward realization, fulfillment, autonomy, and self-determination.

Expressive Arts Therapy

A multimodal approach extending the person-centered approach by using movement, visual art, journal writing, sound, and music to foster spontaneous creative expression, integrate mind, body, emotions, and inner spiritual resources, and access deep feelings.

Gestalt Therapy

An existential, phenomenological, and process-based approach founded on the premise that individuals must be understood in the context of their ongoing relationship with the environment, aiming to expand present-moment awareness.

Relational Gestalt Therapy

A contemporary approach to Gestalt therapy that stresses authentic dialogue and the I/Thou relationship between client and therapist.

Paradoxical Theory of Change

The Gestalt concept stating that authentic change occurs when individuals fully acknowledge and become who they 'are,' rather than constantly striving to become who they 'should be.'

Holism

The Gestalt perspective that views the individual as an integrated whole, encompassing thoughts, feelings, behaviors, body, memories, and dreams.

Field Theory

The theoretical premise in Gestalt therapy asserting that individuals can only be understood in the context of their surrounding, interrelated environment.

Figure-Formation Process

The Gestalt process that tracks how specific needs or experiences emerge into the foreground as the primary focus of attention (figure), while others remain in the background (ground).

Organismic Self-Regulation

The natural mechanism by which human beings attempt to restore equilibrium and balance when a need, feeling, or interest arises.

Contact (Gestalt Therapy)

Interacting with nature and with other people through seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and moving, without losing one's own sense of individuality.

Confrontation (Gestalt Therapy)

A therapeutic invitation for clients to examine their behaviors, attitudes, and thoughts, particularly looking at incongruities between verbal and nonverbal expression or recognizing how they block their own strengths.