5.5 vocab

Deinstitutionalization

The process of moving people with psychological disorders out of institutional facilities.

Psychotherapy

Treatment involving psychological techniques; consists of interactions between a trained therapist and someone seeking to overcome psychological difficulties or achieve personal growth.

Biomedical therapy

Prescribed medications or procedures that act directly on the person’s physiology.

Eclectic approach

An approach to psychotherapy that uses techniques from various forms of therapy.

Psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud’s therapeutic technique using free associations, resistances, dreams, and transferences to release repressed feelings.

Resistance

The blocking from consciousness of anxiety-laden material in psychoanalysis.

Interpretation

The analyst’s noting of supposed dream meanings, resistances, and other significant behaviors in psychoanalysis.

Transference

The patient’s transfer to the analyst of emotions linked with other relationships in psychoanalysis.

Psychodynamic therapy

Therapy deriving from the psychoanalytic tradition that views individuals as responding to unconscious forces and childhood experiences.

Insight therapies

Therapies that aim to improve psychological functioning by increasing awareness of underlying motives.

Person-centered therapy

A humanistic therapy developed by Carl Rogers using active listening within an accepting environment.

Active listening

Empathic listening in which the listener echoes, restates, and seeks clarification.

Unconditional positive regard

A caring, accepting, nonjudgmental attitude that helps clients develop self-awareness and self-acceptance.

Behavior therapy

Therapy that uses learning principles to reduce unwanted behaviors.

Counterconditioning

Behavior therapy procedures that use classical conditioning to evoke new responses to stimuli triggering unwanted behaviors.

Exposure therapies

Behavioral techniques that treat anxieties by exposing people to the things they fear.

Systematic desensitization

A type of exposure therapy that associates a pleasant relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli.

Virtual reality exposure therapy

A counterconditioning technique that treats anxiety through electronic simulations to face specific fears.

Aversive conditioning

Associates an unpleasant state with an unwanted behavior.

Token economy

An operant conditioning procedure allowing tokens to be earned for exhibiting desired behaviors.

Cognitive therapy

Therapy that teaches people new, more adaptive ways of thinking.

Rational-emotive behavior therapy (REBT)

A confrontational cognitive therapy that vigorously challenges self-defeating attitudes and assumptions.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)

An integrative therapy combining cognitive therapy with behavior therapy.

Group therapy

Therapy conducted with groups providing benefits from group interaction.

Family therapy

Therapy that treats people in the context of their family system.

Confirmation bias

A tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions.

Meta-analysis

A statistical procedure for analyzing the results of multiple studies to reach an overall conclusion.

Evidence-based practice

Clinical decision making integrating the best available research with clinical expertise.

Therapeutic alliance

A bond of trust between a therapist and client working together to overcome problems.

Psychopharmacology

The study of the effects of drugs on mind and behavior.

Antipsychotic drugs

Drugs used to treat schizophrenia and severe thought disorders.

Antianxiety drugs

Drugs used to control anxiety and agitation.

Antidepressant drugs

Drugs used to treat depressive disorders and anxiety disorders.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)

A biomedical therapy for severe depression involving electric currents through the brain.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)

The application of magnetic energy to stimulate or suppress brain activity.

Psychosurgery

Surgery that removes or destroys brain tissue to change behavior.

Lobotomy

A psychosurgical procedure used to calm uncontrollably emotional patients.

Hypnosis

A social interaction where one person suggests perceptions, feelings, or behaviors to another.

Dissociation

A split in consciousness allowing thoughts and behaviors to occur simultaneously.

Posthypnotic suggestion

A suggestion made during hypnosis to be carried out after the subject is no longer hypnotized.

Posttraumatic growth

Positive psychological changes following a struggle with challenging circumstances.