Michael Brazil
February 6, 2015
Period 2
AP Psych
Weight: 20
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● The transition between brutal to gentler treatments occurred thanks to the efforts of reformers such as Philippe Pinel in France and Dorothea Dix in the United States, Canada and Scotland.
● Both advocated constructing mental hospital to offer more humane methods of treatment.
● Today’s mental health therapies can be classified into two main categories, and the favored treatment depends on both the disorder and the therapist’s viewpoint. ● Biomedical therapy
- a prescribed medication or medical procedure that acts directly on the patient’s nervous system.
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● Eclectic approach
- using a blend of therapies.
● Psychotherapy integration attempts to combine a selection of assorted techniques into a single, coherent system.
The Psychological Therapies
● Psychotherapy- treatment involving psychological techniques; consists of interactions between a trained therapist and someone seeking to overcome psychological difficulties or achieve personal growth.
● Each is built on one or more of psychology’s major theories: psychoanalytic, humanistic, behavioral, and cognitive.
● Most of these techniques can be used one on one or in groups.
Psychoanalysis
● Psychoanalysis
- Sigmund Freud’s therapeutic technique. Freud believed the patient’s free associations, resistances, dreams and transferences- and the therapist’s interpretations of them- released previously repressed feelings, allowing the patient to gain self insight.
Aims
● Psychoanalytic theory presumes that healthier, less anxious living becomes possible when people release the energy they had previously devoted to id-superego conflicts.
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● Psychoanalysis is historical reconstruction. It’s theory emphasizes the formative power of childhood experiences, and thus aims to unearth the past in hope of unmasking the present.
● Resistance- in psychoanalysis, the blocking from consciousness of anxiety-laden material.
● The analyst notes the resistances and then interprets their meaning, providing insight into the underlying wishes, feelings and conflicts within ourselves. ● Interpretation
- in psychoanalysis, the analyst’s noting supposed dream meanings, resistances, and other significant behaviors and events in order to promote insight.
● Freud believed that another clue to unconscious conflicts in our dreams’ latent content
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their underlying but censored meaning. ● The analyst may offer a dream analysis, suggesting its meaning.
● Transference- in psychoanalysis, the patient’s transfer to the analyst of emotions linked to other relationships (such as the love or hatred for a parent). ● Psychoanalysts acknowledge the criticism that their interpretations cannot be proven or disproven. But they insist that interpretations often are a great help to patients.
● Psychoanalysis is therapy, not science.
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Psychodynamic Therapy
● Psychodynamic therapy
- therapy deriving from the psychoanalytic tradition that views individuals as responding to unconscious forces and childhood experiences, and that seeks to enhance self insight.
● Psychodynamic therapists try to understand a patient’s current symptoms by focusing on themes across important relationships, including childhood experiences and the therapist relationship.
● Interpersonal psychotherapy, a brief variation of psychodynamic therapy, has been effective in treating depression.
● It aims to help people gain insight into the roots of their difficulties, but its purpose is symptom relief in the here and now, not overall personality change. ● Rather than focusing mostly on undoing past hurts and offering interpretations, the therapist focuses primarily on current relationships and on helping people improve their relationship skills.
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Humanistic Therapies
● Humanistic therapist aim to boost self fulfillment by helping people grow in self awareness and self acceptance.
