Therapies

6. Therapy Approaches

• Psychoanalysis (Freud):

  • Methods: Free association, interpretation of resistances, transference.

  • Criticisms: Hard to disprove, long and expensive, anti-women.

• Humanistic Therapy:

  • Focus: Present situation, conscious thoughts, self-perception.

  • Person-Centered Therapy: Client focuses on conscious self-perception. Therapist provides genuineness, empathy, and acceptance.

• Cognitive Therapy:

  • Focus: Changing negative patterns of thinking.

  • Rational-Emotive Therapy (ABC Model): Addresses irrational beliefs that cause emotional distress. Example: Fail test → Think he/she is perfect → Depression.

• Behavioral Therapy:

  • Techniques: Systematic desensitization for phobias, aversive therapy (using negative stimuli to reduce undesirable behaviors).

• Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT):

  • Use: Treatment for severe depression that does not respond to medication or therapy.

  • Procedure: Involves electrical stimulation of the brain (90 volts) with sedatives and muscle relaxers.

  • Side Effects: Can include memory loss (resetting the hippocampus).

• Effectiveness of Psychotherapy:

  • Studies: Tysneck's 24 studies (1952) showed that 2/3 of people in psychotherapy improved, similar to those not in therapy.

  • Controlled Outcome Research: Random assignment of clients to different types of therapy showed cognitive, interpersonal, and drug therapies had high improvement rates (80%).

  • Meta-Analysis: Average therapy client is more improved than 80% of untreated people.

  • Factors: Most effective when the problem is clear-cut. No one type of therapy is best; it depends on the specific problem (e.g., phobias treated with behavioral therapy, schizophrenia with drug therapy).