Clinical Psychology Lecture Glossary

Vocabulary flashcards covering key theories, therapies, models, and constructs from the lecture notes for exam preparation.

Reality Therapy

Glasser’s treatment based on choice theory; clients are held responsible for the choices they make and develop a “success identity” by responsibly satisfying five innate needs—survival, love & belonging, power, freedom, and fun.

Choice Theory

The framework underlying Reality Therapy that posits behavior is driven by attempts to responsibly meet five basic needs and that people can choose more effective actions to improve their lives.

Resilience

A person’s psychological capacity to cope with and bounce back from socio-environmental challenges.

Separation–Individuation (Mahler)

Object-relations phase (≈4–5 months onward) during which an infant develops an autonomous physical and psychological identity; adult psychopathology can stem from disruptions here.

Internalized Homophobia

When sexual-minority individuals absorb society’s negative stereotypes, leading to low self-esteem, self-doubt, and self-destructive behavior.

Coming Out

The process of disclosing one’s sexual orientation; linked to possible rejection but also to higher self-esteem, positive affect, and lower anxiety.

Sexual Stigma

Herek’s term for society’s shared negative regard for any non-heterosexual behavior, identity, relationship, or community.

Heterosexism

Cultural ideologies and systems that justify and perpetuate antipathy, hostility, or violence toward sexual minorities.

Sexual Prejudice

Negative attitudes based on sexual orientation (homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual); higher among older, less-educated, rural, Southern/Midwestern heterosexual men.

Smith, Glass, & Miller Meta-Analysis

Landmark review showing psychotherapy’s average effect size of .85—indicating treated clients fare better than about 80 % of untreated individuals.

Solution-Focused Therapy

Brief approach emphasizing solutions; employs miracle, exception, and scaling questions to elicit client-generated change.

Telepsychology

Provision of assessment or treatment via telephone, e-mail, text, video conferencing, chat, or virtual-reality technologies.

Therapist-Client Matching

Pairing therapist and client by race/ethnicity/culture; evidence mixed, although matching may lower premature termination for some groups, with value/worldview similarity often more critical.

Transtheoretical Model

Prochaska & DiClemente’s six stages of change—precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance, termination—with stage-matched interventions improving outcomes.

Treatment Manuals

Standardized guides detailing theory, goals, and specific techniques to facilitate research and training; criticism: may oversimplify therapy.

Triangular Model (Supervision)

Supervision framework balancing client service, organizational policies, professional knowledge, and the supervisor-supervisee relationship.

White Racial Identity Development Model

Helms’s six-status sequence: contact, disintegration, reintegration, pseudo-independence, immersion-emersion, autonomy—moving from racism to a nonracist White identity.

Interpersonal Therapy (IPT)

Manualized, brief treatment targeting depression and other disorders by resolving issues in one of four areas: grief, role disputes, role transitions, or interpersonal deficits.

Collective Unconscious

Jung’s inherited repository of latent ancestral memories shared by all humans.

Archetypes

Universal primordial images within the collective unconscious that shape human perceptions and behavior.

Individuation (Jung)

Lifelong process of integrating conscious and unconscious aspects to form a unique, wise identity.

Mental Health Consultation (Caplan)

Four types: client-centered case, consultee-centered case, program-centered administrative, consultee-centered administrative—each enhancing service delivery through expert guidance.

Motivational Interviewing (OARS)

Technique for ambivalent clients using Open questions, Affirmations, Reflective listening, and Summaries to enhance motivation and self-efficacy.

Multisystems Model (Boyd-Franklin)

Ecostructural approach for African-American families that engages multiple systems (extended kin, church, community agencies) to empower and treat the family.

Network Therapy

Intervention often used with American Indians for substance abuse; mobilizes family and community networks to address problems within broader social systems.

Parallel Process

In supervision, the supervisee’s interactions with the supervisor mirror the client’s behavior toward the therapist.

Person-Centered Therapy

Rogers’s approach that restores self-actualizing tendency through therapist empathy, genuineness, and unconditional positive regard.

Personal Construct Therapy

Kelly’s model helping clients identify and revise maladaptive bipolar constructs used to interpret experiences.

Primary Prevention

Intervention delivered to an entire population to stop disorders before they start.

Secondary Prevention

Early identification and treatment for at-risk individuals showing initial signs of a disorder.

Tertiary Prevention

Efforts aimed at reducing the duration and impact of an existing illness.

Psychiatric Inpatient Demographics

Admissions lowest for widowed, highest for never-married; overrepresentation of racial minorities; largest age group 25–44 years.

Racial/Cultural Identity Development Model

Atkinson, Morten, & Sue’s five-stage minority model: conformity, dissonance, resistance & immersion, introspection, integrative awareness.

Differentiation of Self (Bowen)

Capacity to separate one’s intellectual/emotional functioning from that of the family; therapy increases differentiation to reduce triangulation.

Existential Therapy

Approach viewing maladjustment as evasion of life’s ultimate concerns (death, freedom, isolation, meaninglessness); stresses authentic choice and responsibility.

Eysenck’s 1952 Outcome Review

Controversial analysis claiming psychotherapy offered no benefit beyond spontaneous remission, sparking later outcome research.

Feminist Therapy

Therapy emphasizing empowerment, egalitarian relationship, and sociopolitical factors; distinguished from nonsexist therapy focused on personal change.

Self-in-Relation Theory

Feminist object-relations perspective attributing many gender differences to early mother-child relationship dynamics.

Freudian Defense Mechanisms

Unconscious operations (e.g., repression, reaction formation) that distort reality to reduce anxiety.

Working Through (Psychoanalysis)

Repeated interpretation and exploration of conflicts and resistances to integrate insights into the personality.

General Systems Theory

View of families as open, self-regulating systems seeking homeostasis; behavior understood in relational context.

Gestalt Therapy

Perls’s approach emphasizing here-and-now awareness; neurosis seen as growth disorder from boundary disturbances like introjection.

Group Cohesiveness (Yalom)

Primary curative factor in group therapy analogous to the therapeutic alliance in individual therapy.

Dose-Dependent Effect (Howard et al.)

Finding that 75% of clients improve by 26 sessions, rising to 85% by 52; therapy effects relate to session “dose.”

Phase Model (Howard et al.)

Three therapy phases—remoralization, remediation, rehabilitation—correlating with increasing session numbers and outcome gains.

Health Belief Model

Predicts health actions from perceived susceptibility, severity, benefits minus costs, and cues to action.

Health Promotion

Methods (e.g., education, advertising) designed to encourage healthy behaviors in populations.

High-Context Communication

Style relying on shared cultural meanings and non-verbal cues; common in many minority groups, slow to change.

Low-Context Communication

Direct, verbal style typical of Anglo culture; less unifying and more easily altered than high-context communication.

Homosexual Identity Development Model

Troiden’s four stages: sensitization, identity confusion, identity assumption, identity commitment.

Hypnosis & Repressed Memories

Altered state involving suggestibility; may produce confident but inaccurate pseudo-memories rather than accurate recall.

Worldview (Sue)

Combination of locus of control and locus of responsibility shaped by culture; mismatches can hinder cross-cultural therapy.

HOWARD AND COLLEAGUES (DOSE DEPENDENT EFFECT; PHASE MODEL

about 75% of patients show measurable improvement at 26 sessions and that this number increases to only about 85% at 52 sessions. They also identified a phase model, which predicts that the effects of Psychotherapy are related to the number of sessions and distinguishes between three phases: remoralization, remediation, and rehabilitation.