1. Therapy

2. Psychotherapy Goals
Psychotherapy can provide relief to a client for issues relating to:
Disturbed thoughts
Disturbed emotions
Disturbed Behaviors
Interpersonal and life difficulties
Biomedical Disturbances
Which do you think is most common?

3. Myths of Psychotherapy
There is one best therapy
Therapy simply does not work
Therapists can “read minds”
People who go to therapists are crazy or just weak
Only the rich can afford therapy
Is therapy expensive? Have you seen a counselor before?

4. Drug Therapy
Biomedical therapy may administer drugs to improve abnormal behavior
Drug classes include:
Antianxiety drugs relieve anxiety.
Antipsychotic drugs improve thought processes, but they can have major adverse side effects
Antidepressant drugs can help with depression
If you were suffering from Major Depression, would you want to take medication, go to counselling or both?

5. Electroconvulsive Therapy
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) can alleviate profound depression
Electrodes are used to pass electrical current through one of the brain hemispheres, thereby provoking a brain seizure (anesthesia is given to minimize trauma)
ECT can lift depression
How ECT lifts depression is unknown
What have you hear about past uses
of electroconvulsive therapy?

6. Psychosurgery
Physicians have long recognized that the brain is key to the control of behavior
Trephining: the opening of the skull to release evil spirits
Roman Times: sword wound of the head was noted to relieve insanity
1940s: Moniz argued that the frontal lobes could be surgically altered to alleviate mental illness
Lobotomy procedure cut fibers in the frontal lobes
Problem: patients were calm after the procedure but also had changed personality and drive
Do you think that there could be a future for psychosurgery?

8. Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis, as devised by Freud, involves techniques that move issues from the unconscious to the conscious level for resolution
Therapy assumes that some issues may relate to childhood experiences
The ego serves to keep these issues below the level of consciousness (defense mechanisms)
Catharsis is an emotional energy that is released when early conflicts are relived
Do you think that simply identifying problems is the key to resolving them?

10. Psychoanalytic Techniques
Moving issues from the unconscious to the conscious can be achieved through
Free association: patient says whatever comes to mind
Dream analysis: Dreams express unconscious issues
Manifest content: the actual content of a dream
Latent content: symbols that are disguised unconscious issues or motives
What might dreaming of falling represent?

12. Psychoanalytic Techniques
3) Resistance: Therapist looks for evidence that the patient is avoiding an issue
4) Transference: Does the patient treat the therapist in ways that are similar to their parents?
5) Interpretation: Therapist provides analysis of the meaning of the thoughts, behaviours, and dreams of the patient – interpretation leads to understanding and resolution of unconscious issues
Can you think of a topic that you avoid that upsets you?

13. Cognitive Therapies Cognitive Therapy
Assumes that problem behaviours and emotions result from faulty thought processes and beliefs
Analyzes a person’s thought processes
Attempts to restructure thought processes – changing thought patterns will in turn alter problem behaviours and emotions
Can you identify something that you both believe and know to be untrue?

14. How can we combat this negative thinking?

15. Rational Emotive Model

16. Cognitive Therapy: Depression
Selective perception: Depressed person focuses on negative events, while ignoring positive life events
Overgeneralization: Depressed person draws negative conclusions about their self-worth, based on minimal data – No one is talking to me right now, I must be unpopular
Magnification: Person magnifies the significance of a negative event – I failed the test, my life is over.
All-or-none thinking: Everything is good or bad
Do you focus on the negative or positive in your life?

17. Do you focus on the negative in your life?
Can you think of an example where you over interpreted an event?

18. Humanistic Therapy Rogers’s Client-Centered Approach
Treats people as clients rather than patients
Creates an atmosphere that emphasizes the clients’ tendency toward health
Why do you think that people naturally move towards their problems when talking?

19. Therapeutic techniques include: Empathy Unconditional positive regard
Genuineness
Active listening
Why must a therapist be “real”

20. Behavior Therapies
The focus of behavior therapies is the use of learning techniques to change behaviors
Therapist determines frequency of maladaptive and adaptive behaviors

21. Learning techniques are used to alter behaviors; these techniques include:
Classical Conditioning
Operant Conditioning
Modeling

22. Systematic Desensitization

23. Behavior Therapy Techniques
Classical conditioning:
Aversion therapy pairs an aversive stimulus with the unwanted behavior
Operant Conditioning:
Shaping new behaviors
Punishment: making an aversive stimulus contingent on the unwanted behavior
Extinction: removing all rewards for the target behavior
Modeling: client observes and imitates appropriate behaviors

24. Group Therapy
Some approaches offer treatment to a group of persons rather than to one client
Advantages of group therapy:
Economy: group therapy is less expensive
Group support: there is comfort in knowing that others have similar problems
Feedback: group members learn from each other
Behavioral rehearsal: group members can role-play the activities of the key persons in a member’s life

25. Therapy Cultural Universals
Naming the problem
Qualities of the therapist
Establishing credibility
Placing the problem in a familiar framework
Applying techniques to bring relief
A special time and place

26. Lecture Review Biomedical Therapies Psychoanalysis Cognitive Therapies
Humanistic Therapies
Behavior Therapies
Group and Family Therapy
Which do you think is the best kind of therapY?