Psychological Therapies

Psychotherapy• An interaction between a trained

therapist and someone suffering from psychological difficulties.

Eclectic Approach• The most popular form of therapy-

it is basically a buffet where the therapist combines techniques from different schools of psychology.

Psychoanalysis• Freud's therapy.

•Freud used free association, hypnosis and dream interpretation to gain insight into the client’s unconscious.

Psychoanalytic Methods

• Psychotherapists use their techniques to overcome resistance by the client.•The psychoanalyst wants you to become aware of the resistance and together interpret (ex. Latent content) it’s underlying meaning.

Transference• In psychoanalysis, the patient’s transfer to

the analyst of emotions linked with other relationships.

Humanistic Therapy

• Focuses of people’s potential for self-fulfillment (self-actualization).

•Focus on the present and future (not the past).

•Focus on conscious thoughts (not unconscious ones).

•Take responsibility for your actions- instead of blaming childhood anxieties.

Client (Person) Centered Therapy

• Developed by Carl Rogers

Most widely used Humanistic technique is:

•Therapist should use genuineness, acceptance and empathy to show unconditional positive regard towards their clients.

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

• A type of counterconditioning that associates a pleasant relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli.

How would I use systematic desensitization to reduce my fear of old women?

Systematic Desensitization

• Progressive Relaxation-relax muscles while imagining arousing situation

•Exposure Therapy-exposing people to the things they avoid•Flooding-immersed in the fear until it goes away

Virtual Technology Exposure Therapy

Aversive Conditioning• A type of counterconditioning that

associates an unpleasant state with an unwanted behavior.

How would putting poop on the fingernails of a nail biter effect their behavior?

Aversive Conditioning

Aversive Conditioning

What are some ways you can change the behaviors of your friends with aversive conditioning?

Operant ConditioningToken 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 Therapy

Cognitive Therapies• A therapy that teaches people

new, more adaptive ways of thinking and acting; based on the assumptions that thoughts intervene between events and our emotional reactions.

Cognitive Therapy

• Cognitive Therapists try to teach people new, more constructive ways of thinking. 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?

Albert Ellis-Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)

• One of the first cognitive therapies• A-adversity• B-belief (about A)• C-consequence (emotional/behavioral)• teaches the client how to identify irrational

and self-defeating beliefs• forcefully and actively question and dispute

them and replace them with more rational and self-helping ones

Group Therapies

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 better able use 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 (Thorazine) often have powerful side effects

33

Antipsychotic Drugs

Classical antipsychotics [Chlorpromazine (Thorazine)]: Remove a number of positive symptoms associated with schizophrenia such as agitation,

delusions, and hallucinations.

Atypical antipsychotics [Clozapine (Clozaril)]: Remove negative symptoms associated with schizophrenia such as apathy, jumbled thoughts, concentration difficulties, and difficulties in interacting with others.

34

Atypical Antipsychotic

Clozapine (Clozaril) blocks receptors for dopamine and serotonin to remove the negative symptoms of schizophrenia.

Antianxiety Drugs• Includes drugs like Valium and Librium.

•Like alcohol, they depress nervous system activity.

•Most widely abused drugs.

Do they really solve the problem?

36

Antianxiety Drugs

Antianxiety drugs (Xanax and Ativan) depress the central nervous system and reduce anxiety and tension by elevating the levels of the Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) neurotransmitter.

Antidepressant Drugs

•Lift you up out of depression.

Most increase the neurotransmitter Norepinephrine.

Prozac, Paxil Zoloft• Work by blocking serotonin reuptake.

39

Mood-Stabilizing Medications

Lithium Carbonate, a common salt, has been used to stabilize manic episodes in bipolar

disorders. It moderates the levels of norepinephrine and glutamate neurotransmitters.

Electroconvulsive Therapy

• Biomedical therapy for severely depressed patients in which brief electric current is sent through the brain of an anesthetized patient.

41

Brain Stimulation

Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)

ECT is used for severely depressed patients who do not respond to drugs.

The patient is anesthetized and given a

muscle relaxant. Patients usually get a 100 volt shock that

relieves them of depression.

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