Chapter 16

Psychotherapy

Psychological intervention designed to help people resolve emotional, behavioural, and interpersonal problems and improve the quality of their lives

Insight Therapies

Psychotherapies including psychodynamic, humanistic, and group approaches, with the goal of expanding awareness or insight

Humanistic Therapies

Therapies that emphasize the development of human potential and the belief that human nature is basically positive

Free Association

Technique in which clients express themselves without censorship of any sort

Resistance

Attempts to avoid confrontation and anxiety associated with uncovering previously repressed thoughts, emotions and impulses

Transference

Projecting intense, unrealistic feelings

Person Centred Therapy

Therapy centering on the client’s goals and ways of solving problems

Gestalt Therapy

Therapy that aims to integrate different and sometimes opposing aspects of personality into a unified sense of self

Group Therapy

Therapy that treats more than one person at a time

Alcohol Anonymous

Self help program based on 12 steps that provides social support for achieving sobriety, views alcoholism as a mental disease

Strategic Family Intervention

Family therapy approach designed to rmeove barriers to effective communication

Structural Family Therapy

Treatment in which therapists deeply involve themselves in family activities to change how family members arrange and organize interactions

Behavioral Therapists

Therapists who focus on specific problems behaviours and on current variables that maintain problematic thoughts, feelings and behaviours

Ecological Momentary Assessment

Assessment of thoughts, emotions, and behaviours that arise in the moment in situations in which tey occur in everyday life

Systematic Desensitization

Patients are taught to relax as they are gradually exposed to what they fear in a stepwise manner

Exposure Therapy

Therapy that confronts patients with what they fear with the goal of reducing fear

Dismantling

Research procedure for examining the effectiveness of isolated components of a larger treatment

Response Prevention

Technique in which therapists prevent clients from performing their typical avoidance behaviours

Participant Modeling

Technique in which the therapist first models a problematic situation and then guides the client throughts steps to cope with it unassisted

Token Economy

Method in which desirable behaviours are rewarded with tokens that clients can exchange for tangible rewards

Aversion Therapies

Treatment that uses punishment to decrease the frequency of undesirable behaviors

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapies

Treatments that attempts to replace maladaptive or irrational cognitions with more adaptive, rational cognitions

Reciprocal Inhibition

People cannot experience two conflicting respones at the same time

-Systematic desensitization is based on this

Psychotherapies Conclusion

-Although some can be harmful, consensus is that most are equally effective

-largely due to “non-specific factors”, like empathetic listening, having a strong emotional bond, instilling hope

-In contract, “specific factors”, characterize certain therapies; include exposure, challenging irrational beliefs, and social skill training

Empirically Supported Treatments

Intervention for specific disorders supported by high quality scientific evidence

Psychopharmacotherapy

Use of medications to treat psychological problems

-Scientists find that in some cases, psychotherapy and medication produce similar changes

Electroconvulsive Therapy

Patients receive brief electrical pulses to the brain that produce a seizure to treat serious psychological problem

-used primarily in depression

Abstinence Violation Effect

Person with alcoholism feels bad about a lapse, so they return to high drinking levels

Flooding Therapy

Exposes clients to images of the stimuli they fear for prolonged periods