Psychological Therapies

Psychotherapy An emotionally charged, confiding interaction between a trained therapist and someone suffering from psychological difficulties

Psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud's therapeutic technique The use of free association, hypnosis, and dream interpretation to gain insight into the client’s unconscious.

Psychoanalytic Methods Psychotherapists use their techniques to overcome resistance (blocking from consciousness of anxiety-laden emotions) by the client. The psychoanalyst wants you to become aware of the resistance and together interpret its underlying meaning (latent content).

Transference In psychoanalysis, the patient transfers to the analyst/therapist emotions linked with other relationships

Humanistic Therapy The aim is to help people reach their potential for self-fulfillment (self-actualization) Focuses on the present and future (not the past) Focuses on conscious thoughts (not unconscious ones) Believes in taking responsibility for your actions instead of blaming childhood anxieties Promotes growth instead of curing illness (those in therapy are “clients” rather than “patients”)

Client (Person) Centered Therapy Developed by Carl Rogers Therapist should use genuineness, acceptance and empathy to show unconditional positive regard towards their clients Most widely used Humanistic technique is :

Active Listening Central to Roger’s client-centered therapy Empathetic listening where the listener echoes, restates and clarifies

Behavior Therapies Therapy that applies learning principles to the elimination of unwanted behaviors The behaviors are the problems - so we must change the behaviors

Classical Conditioning Techniques Counterconditioning: A behavioral therapy that conditions new responses to stimuli that trigger unwanted behaviors. Two Types: Systematic Desensitization Aversive Conditioning

Systematic Desensitization A type of counterconditioning that associates a pleasant relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety- triggering stimuli How would a psychoanalyst use systematic desensitization to reduce the fear of old women?

Systematic Desensitization Progressive Relaxation Exposure Therapy Flooding

Virtual Technology Exposure Therapy

Aversive Conditioning A type of counterconditioning that associates an unpleasant state with an unwanted behavior What are some ways you can change the behaviors of your friends with aversive conditioning?

Aversive Conditioning  Aversion therapy for alcoholics

Operant Conditioning Token Economy : an operant conditioning procedure that rewards a desired behavior A patient exchanges a token of some sort, earned for exhibiting the desired behavior, for various privileges or treats.

Cognitive Therapies A therapy that teaches people new, more adaptive (more constructive) ways of thinking and acting; based on the assumptions that thoughts intervene between events and our emotional reactions. Is 300. a good or bad batting average?

Cognitive Therapy

Aaron Beck and his view of Depression Noticed that depressed people were similar in the way they viewed the world Used cognitive therapy get people to take off the “dark sunglasses” in which they view their surroundings

Cognitive Therapy- Does It Work?

Family & Group Therapies  treats the family or group as a system  views an individual’s unwanted behaviors as influenced by or directed at other family members  attempts to guide family members toward positive relationships and improved communication

Evaluating Psychotherapies  To whom do people turn for help for psychological difficulties?

The Biomedical Therapies Therapies aimed at the altering the body chemistry

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

Drugs and Hospitalization

Emptying of Mental Hospitals

Testing New Drugs When a new drug is released there is always too much enthusiasm Must use a double-blind procedure to combat placebo and experimental effects These experiments enable us to classify different types of drugs:

Antipsychotic Drugs Antipsychotic drugs are a class of medicines used to treat psychosis and other mental and emotional conditions These drugs are beginning to help schizophrenics with both positive and negative symptoms These drugs (i.e. Thorazine, Haldol) often have powerful side effects

Antianxiety Drugs Includes drugs like Xanax, Valium and Librium, barbiturates Like alcohol, they depress nervous system activity Most widely abused drugs Do they really solve the problem?

Antidepressant Drugs Lift you up out of depression Most increase the availability of the neurotransmitters: norepinephrine or serotonin (which elevate arousal and mood)

Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft Work by blocking serotonin reuptake.

Biomedical Therapies Antidepressant prescriptions have soared!

Biomedical Therapies Lithium  Chemical (simple salt) that provides an effective drug therapy for the mood swings of bipolar (manic-depressive) disorders  With continued use, emotional highs and lows typically level  Suicide risk is one-sixth that of bipolar patients not taking lithium

Electroconvulsive Therapy Biomedical therapy for severely depressed patients in which brief electric current is sent through the brain of an anesthetized patient Although controversial, it is the preferred treatment for depression that does not respond to drug therapy

Psychosurgery Surgery that removes or destroys brain tissue in an effort to change behavior Egas Moniz developed the lobotomy in the 1930s. Ice pick like instrument through the eye sockets cutting the links between the frontal lobes and the emotional control centers

Lobotomy