This document provides an overview of different approaches to psychotherapy and therapy, including psychoanalysis, humanistic therapy, cognitive therapies, behavior therapies, and biological approaches. It discusses key concepts for different therapeutic approaches such as transference, dream analysis, cognitive restructuring, systematic desensitization, and drug therapies. It also examines what makes an effective therapist and different types of therapies such as group therapy.

1. Ch. 17 – Therapy and Change

2. Psychotherapy
• Any treatment used by therapists to help troubled
individuals overcome their problems.
1. Verbal Interaction
2. Development of Supportive/Trusting Relationship
3. Analysis of problems by therapist, including
strategies to solve the problems

3. The Nature of Psychotherapy
• Medical Model
• Read Quote from “One Nation Under Therapy”
• “Mental Illness” = Less Social Stigma, but also less
taking responsibility/personal efforts to overcome
problems
• Agree or Disagree?

4. Main Kinds of Therapy
• Psychoanalysis
• Humanistic
• Cognitive
• Behavioral
• Biological
Activity – Leopold is struggling in school. He has problems relating to his
peers and completing homework because he really doesn’t care. While
not overtly misbehaving in class, he often just ignores the instructor,
spending much time in class day dreaming.
In groups, use each approach to try to treat Leopold. Identify his potential
problem. What solution(s) would you suggest? What other things can you
deduce from this scenario about potential problems?

5. Eclectic Approach
• Pulling in many types, using the one that works best
Strengths?
Weaknesses?

6. What makes a good therapist?
• Psychological Healthy
• Empathy – warmth/understanding
• Experience dealing with people/understanding
complexities of individuals and situations

7. Group Therapies
• Most often grouped by issues
• Patients work together with the aid of a leader to
resolve interpersonal problems
• Put people who are struggling with similar problems
together.
• Includes family therapy, self-help groups
• Benefits?
• Concerns?

8. Does Psychotherapy Work?
• 1994 Consumer Reports Self Reported Survey
(Since not random, can’t be generalized, just see trends)
1. Therapy did help  feel better, minimize/eliminate
symptoms, especially if lasts 6+ months
2. Improvements greatest when from psychologists,
psychiatrists, and social workers
3. Longer therapy lasted = greater improvements
4. Type of therapy generally didn’t matter

9. Section 2 – Psychoanalysis/Humanistic

10. What is Psychoanalysis?
• Therapy aimed at making patients aware of their
unconscious motives so that they can gain control of
their behavior.
• Overcome repression recognize and confront hidden
impulses and feelings
• Lead to abreaction release of energy/tensions =
growth

11. Resistance
• Reluctance of a patient either to reveal painful feelings
or to examine long standing behavior patterns

12. Dream Analysis
• Interpret content of dreams – reveal motives
• Manifest content – actual dream content
• Latent content – hidden/symbolic meanings

13. Transference
• Patient feels similar feels for therapists as a different
significant other in their life

14. Freudian Approach

15. Humanistic Therapy
• Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers – key guys
• Focus on value, dignity, and worth of each person;
holds that healthy living is the result of realizing one’s
full potential (“self-actualizing”)

16. Client-Centered Therapy
• Client and therapist are partners in therapy
• Client encouraged to discuss whatever concerns them

17. Nondirective Therapy
• Free flow of images/ideas, no particular direction
• Client completely in charge
• Therapist listens, encourages conversation, doesn’t give
opinions

18. Active Listening
• Empathetic listening, listener acknowledges, restates,
clarifies a person’s thoughts/concerns without arguing
or judging
• Used in relationships also…

19. Section 3 – Cognitive/Behavior Therapies

20. Cognitive Therapies
• Changing emotions/behaviors by modifying thoughts
• Assumes that faulty cognitions are the cause of
distorted behaviors, attitudes and emotions
Disconfirmation – evidence challenge clients thinking
Reconceptualization – work towards new belief systems
Insight – work toward understanding/deriving new or
revised beliefs

21. Rational-Emotive Therapy
• Ellis (1973) – people behave in delibrate/rational ways
based on assumptions about life.
• Therefore, problems arise from false assumptions
• So, the goal is to change those assumptions
• Techniques - Role Playing, Modeling, Persuasion
• ABC’s – Activating, Belief, Consequences

22. Beck’s Cognitive Therapy
• Focus on illogical thought process, disprove thoughts
• 3 Types of Illogical Thoughts
1. Overgeneralization
2. Polarized Thinking
3. Selective Attention

23. Bipolar and Psychotherapy

24. Behavior Therapies
• Focus on behavior, not thinking
• Assumption  Disturbed people learn bad behavior,
any behavior can be unlearned, often through
conditioning
• Reasons for behavior unimportant

25. Counter-conditioning
• 3 Steps
1. Anxiety hierarchy – list things, least to most anxious
2. Learn deep muscle relaxation
3. Imagine/experience each step with gradual intensity
Useful in treating phobias

26. Systematic Desensitization
Help patient overcome irrational fears/anxieties
• Imagine fear while relaxing
• Gradually imagine/experience increase in stress
• Can’t feel anxious while relaxing at the same time

27. Aversive Conditioning
• Linking unpleasant state with an unwanted behavior in
an attempt to eliminate the behavior
• Shot for alcoholics, feel sick
• Aversive = bad

28. Contingency Management
• Undesirable behavior is not reinforced, desirable
behavior is reinforced
• Reward contingent on new behavior

29. Cognitive-behavior Therapy
• Try to change behavior and thinking
• Place emphasis on changing clients interpretation of
situation

30. Section 4 – Biological Approaches

31. Drug Therapy
• Most commonly used biological approach, and
approach to psychological problems overall

32. Antipsychotic Drugs
• Used to treat schizophrenia
• Reduces agitation, delusions, hallucinations by blocking
activity of dopamine in the brain
• Drugs are tranquilizers

33. Antidepressant drugs
• Treat major depression
• Affects neurotransmitters
noradrenalin and serotonin
• Some of the most widely
prescribed drugs in the USA

34. Lithium Carbonate
• Naturally occuring salt element
(other drugs are synthetics)
• Used to treat Bipolar disorder
• Helps reduce mood swings

35. Anti-anxiety Drugs
• Used to treat Anxiety disorders; slow nervous system
• Depressives
• Valium, Xanax
• Side Effects – Drowsiness, Dependence

36. Electroconvulsive Therapy
• “Shock Treatment”
• Sent through brain
• Treat severe depression, acute mania, schizophrenia
• Not sure how it works
• Theory – Induced seizures “prime” the brain, “knock
loose” some transmitters

37. Psychosurgery
• Drastic procedures, last resort
• More common in past
• Destroy part of brain to relieve symptoms
• Example – Severed corpus callosum to relieve seizures

38. Prefrontal Lobotomy
• A section of the frontal lobe is destroyed
• Help control emotions
• Side effects  difficulty planning, apathy, lack creativity