Psych 1101 Chapter 16 Therapy Psychotherapy In psychotherapy a trained therapist uses psychological techniques to assist someone seeking to overcome difficulties or achieve personal growth The biomedical therapies are prescribed medications or medical procedures that act directly on the person s physiology Half of all psychotherapists describe themselves as taking an eclectic approach in which they use techniques from various forms of therapy depending on the client s problem Psychoanalysis Goal help people gain insight into the unconscious origins of their disorders to work through the accompanying feelings and to take responsibility for their own growth Techniques include free association the patient says whatever comes to their mind resistance interpretation therapist making comments or statements about the unconscious material and making a link between that and behavior or childhood and transference when the patient interacts with the therapist as if the therapist is an important figure in the past and countertransference feelings that the patient bring up for the therapist how the therapist feels Psychoanalysis is criticized because its interpretations are hard to prove or disprove and because it is time consuming and costly Psychodynamic therapists try to understand patients current symptoms by exploring their childhood experiences and the therapist patient relationship Interpersonal psychotherapy a brief variation of psychodynamic therapy emphasizes symptom relief in the present not overall personality change The therapist also focuses on current relationships and the mastery of relationship skills It has been found effective with depressed patients depression Humanistic Client Centered Therapy Both psychodynamic and humanistic therapies are referred to as insight therapies which attempt to improve psychological functioning by increasing the person s awareness of underlying motives and defenses However Humanistic therapists focus more on the present and the future than the past on clients conscious feelings and on their taking responsibility for their own growth aim to promote growth rather than to cure illness CARL ROGERS used active listening to express genuineness acceptance and empathy Behavior Therapy Behavior therapists assume behaviors are the problems and thus do not look for inner causes Instead they apply learning principles to eliminate a troubling behavior Counterconditioning is a behavior therapy procedure based on classical conditioning that conditions new responses to stimuli that trigger unwanted behaviors Exposure therapies treat anxieties by exposing people to the things they fear and avoid Systematic desensitization an exposure therapy a pleasant relaxed state is associated with gradually increasing anxiety triggering stimuli This procedure is commonly used to treat phobias commonly used to treat phobias Virtual reality exposure provides vivid simulations of feared stimuli such as a plane s takeoff Also used with PTSD In aversive conditioning an unpleasant state such as nausea is associated with an unwanted behavior such as drinking alcohol This method works in the short run but for long term effectiveness it is usually combined with other methods Behavioral Modification Operant conditioning therapies are based on the premise that voluntary behaviors are strongly influenced by their consequences Behavior therapists apply operant conditioning principles in behavior modification Reinforce desired behaviors and withhold reinforcement for undesired behaviors or punish them The rewards used to modify behavior vary from attention or praise to more concrete rewards such as food Token economy the patient exchanges a token of some sort earned for exhibiting the desired behavior for various privileges or treats Critics express two concerns 1 What happens when the reinforcers stop Might the person have become so dependent upon the extrinsic rewards that the appropriate behaviors quickly disappear 2 Is it ethical for one person to control another s behavior Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Cognitive therapists assume that our thinking influences our feelings and so they try to teach people who suffer from psychological disorders new more constructive ways of thinking In treating depression they seek to reverse clients catastrophizing beliefs about themselves their situations and their futures In stress inoculation training people suffering from depression learn to dispute their negative thoughts and to restructure their thinking in stressful situations Cognitive behavioral therapists aim to make people aware if their irrational negative thinking to replace it with the new ways of thinking and talking and to practice the more positive approach in everyday settings negative thoughts replaced with positive Group and Family Therapy The social context provided by group therapy allows people to discover that others have problems similar to their own and to try out new ways of behaving Receiving honest feedback can be very helpful and it can be reassuring to find that you are not alone Family therapy assumes that we live and grow in relation to others especially our families It views an individual s unwanted behaviors as influenced by or directed at other family members In an effort to heal relationships therapists attempt to guide family members toward positive relationships and improved communication Many people also participate in self help and support groups that mostly focus on stigmatized or hard to discuss illnesses Therapy Criticism Clients tend to overestimate how effective therapy is One reason for this is patients who come in to therapy come in with crisis Regression toward the mean the tendency for unusual events including emotions to return to their average state may lead people to overestimate the effectiveness of therapy Clients and therapists views of therapy s effectiveness are vulnerable to inflation from the placebo effect the power of belief in a treatment People in therapy 1 3 gets better 1 3 gets worse 1 3 stays the same Alternative Therapies In EMDR eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy the therapist waves a finger in front of the eyes of the client to unlock and reprocess previously frozen trauma memories Controlled studies have not supported the effectiveness of EMDR belief in its effectiveness may be explained in terms of the combination of exposure therapy repeatedly reliving traumatic memories in a reassuring environment and a