5.5 vocab

Module 5.5a: 13 words

1. Deinstitutionalization: the process, begun in the late twentieth century, of moving people with psychological disorders out of institutional facilities.

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

3. biomedical therapy: prescribed medications or procedures that act directly on the person’s physiology.

4. eclectic approach: an approach to psychotherapy that uses techniques from various forms of therapy.

5. psychoanalysis (technique): Sigmund Freud’s therapeutic technique. Freud believed the patient’s free associations, resistances, dreams, and transferences — and the analyst’s interpretations of them — released previously repressed feelings, allowing the patient to gain self-insight.

6. Resistance: in psychoanalysis, the blocking from consciousness of anxiety-laden material.

7. Interpretation: in psychoanalysis, the analyst’s noting of supposed dream meanings, resistances, and other significant behaviors and events in an effort to promote insight.

8. Transference: in psychoanalysis, the patient’s transfer to the analyst of emotions linked with other relationships (such as love or hatred for a parent).

9. psychodynamic therapy: therapy deriving from the psychoanalytic tradition; views individuals as responding to unconscious forces and childhood experiences, and seeks to enhance self-insight.

10. insight therapies: therapies that aim to improve psychological functioning by increasing a person’s awareness of underlying motives and defenses.

11. person-centered therapy: a humanistic therapy, developed by Carl Rogers, in which the therapist uses techniques such as active listening within an accepting, genuine, empathic environment to facilitate clients’ growth. (Also called client-centered therapy.)

12. active listening: empathic listening in which the listener echoes, restates, and seeks clarification. A feature of Rogers’ person-centered therapy.

13. unconditional positive regard: a caring, accepting, nonjudgmental attitude, which Carl Rogers believed would help clients develop self-awareness and self-acceptance. (Also known as unconditional regard.)

Module 5.5b: 12 words

1. behavior therapy: therapy that uses learning principles to reduce unwanted behaviors.

2. Counterconditioning: behavior therapy procedures that use classical conditioning to evoke new responses to stimuli that are triggering unwanted behaviors; include exposure therapies and aversive conditioning.

3. exposure therapies: behavioral techniques, such as systematic desensitization and virtual reality exposure therapy, that treat anxieties by exposing people (in imaginary or actual situations) to the things they fear and avoid.

4. systematic desensitization: a type of exposure therapy that associates a pleasant relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli. Commonly used to treat specific phobias.

5. virtual reality exposure therapy: a counterconditioning technique that treats anxiety through creative electronic simulations in which people can safely face specific fears, such as flying, spiders, or public speaking.

6. aversive conditioning: associates an unpleasant state (such as nausea) with an unwanted behavior (such as drinking alcohol).

7. token economy: an operant conditioning procedure in which people earn a token for exhibiting a desired behavior and can later exchange tokens for privileges or treats.

8. cognitive therapy: therapy that teaches people new, more adaptive ways of thinking; based on the assumption that thoughts intervene between events and our emotional reactions.

9. rational-emotive behavior therapy (REBT): a confrontational cognitive therapy, developed by Albert Ellis, that vigorously challenges people’s illogical, self-defeating attitudes and assumptions.

10. cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT): a popular integrative therapy that combines cognitive therapy (changing self-defeating thinking) with behavior therapy (changing behavior).

11. group therapy: therapy conducted with groups rather than individuals, providing benefits from group interaction.

12. family therapy: therapy that treats people in the context of their family system.Views an individual’s unwanted behaviors as influenced by, or directed at, other family members.

Module 5.5c: 4 words

1. confirmation bias: a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence.

2. Meta-analysis: a statistical procedure for analyzing the results of multiple studies to reach an overall conclusion.

3. evidence-based practice: clinical decision making that integrates the best available research with clinical expertise and client characteristics and preferences.

4. therapeutic alliance: a bond of trust and mutual understanding between a therapist and client, who work together constructively to overcome the client’s problem.

Module 5.5d: 12 words

1. Psychopharmacology: the study of the effects of drugs on mind and behavior.

2. antipsychotic drugs: drugs used to treat schizophrenia and other forms of severe thought disorders.

3. antianxiety drugs: drugs used to control anxiety and agitation.

4. antidepressant drugs: drugs used to treat depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive and related disorders, and posttraumatic stress disorder. (Several widely used antidepressant drugs are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors — SSRIs.)

5. electroconvulsive therapy (ECT): a biomedical therapy for severe depression in which a brief electric current is sent through the brain of an anesthetized person.

6. transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS): the application of repeated pulses of magnetic energy to the brain; used to stimulate or suppress brain activity.

7. Psychosurgery: surgery that removes or destroys brain tissue to change behavior.

8. Lobotomy: a psychosurgical procedure once used to calm uncontrollably emotional or violent patients. The procedure cut the nerves connecting the frontal lobes to the emotion-controlling centers of the inner brain.

9. Hypnosis: a social interaction in which one person (the hypnotist) suggests to another (the subject) that certain perceptions, feelings, thoughts, or behaviors will spontaneously occur; in a therapeutic context, the hypnotist attempts to use suggestion to reduce unpleasant physical sensations or emotions.

10. Dissociation: a split in consciousness, which allows some thoughts and behaviors to occur simultaneously with others.

11. posthypnotic suggestion: a suggestion, made during a hypnosis session, to be carried out after the subject is no longer hypnotized; used by some clinicians to help control undesired symptoms and behaviors.

12. posttraumatic growth: positive psychological changes following a struggle with extremely challenging circumstances and life crises.