Treatment of Psychological Disorders
Modern mental health therapies can be classified into two main categories – favored treatment depends on disorder and therapist’s viewpoint
Learning-related disorders (phobias) are usually treated with psychotherapy
Biologically influenced disorders (schizophrenia) usually treated with biomedical therapy – prescribed medication/medical procedure that acts directly on the patient’s nervous system
Usually patients receive combination of drug and psychotherapy
Eclectic Approach: an approach to psychotherapy that, depending on the client’s problems, uses techniques from various forms of therapy
Psychotherapy integration – attempts to combine a selection of assorted techniques into a single, coherent system
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THERAPIES
Psychotherapy: treatment involving psychological techniques – consisting of interactions between a trained therapist and someone seeking to overcome psychological difficulties or achieve personal growth
Dozens of types of psychotherapy – all built on one or more of psychology’s major theories: psychoanalytic, humanistic, behavioral, and cognitive – can be used one-on-one or in groups
PSYCHOANALYSIS
Psychoanalysis: Freud’s therapeutic technique – 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
First psychological therapy
AIMS
Wanted to bring repressed feelings of childhood conflicts and impulses into patients’ conscious awareness
By gaining insight patients can then work through buried feelings and take responsibility for own growth
Healthier, less anxious living becomes possible when people release the energy they had previously devoted to id-ego-superego conflicts
METHODS
Psychoanalysis = historical reconstruction – emphasizes the formative power of childhood experiences and aims to unearth past in hope of