Chapter 13 & 14 Therapies & Social Behaviors

Chapter 13 & 14Therapies & Social Behaviors

What Is Psychotherapy? • Any psychological technique used to facilitate positive changes in personality, behavior, or adjustment; some types of psychotherapy: • Individual: Involves only one client and one therapist • Client: Patient; the one who participates in psychotherapy • Rogers used “client” to equalize therapist-client relationship and de-emphasize doctor-patient concept • Group: Several clients participate at the same time

More Types of Psychotherapy • Directive: Therapist provides strong guidance • Insight: Goal is for clients to gain deeper understanding of their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors • Time-Limited: Any therapy that limits number of sessions • Partial response to managed care and to ever-increasing caseloads • Caseload: Number of clients a therapist actively sees

Family Therapy • Family Therapy: All family members work as a group to resolve the problems of each family member • Tends to be brief and focuses on specific problems (e.g., specific fights)

Origins of Therapy • Trepanning: For primitive “therapists,” refers to boring, chipping, or bashing holes into a patient’s head; for modern usage, refers to any surgical procedure in which a hole is bored into the skull • In primitive times it was unlikely the patient would survive; this may have been a goal • Goal presumably to relieve pressure or rid the person of evil spirits

Demonology • Study of demons and people beset by spirits • People were possessed, and they needed an exorcism to be cured • Exorcism: Practice of driving off an “evil spirit”; still practiced today!

Origins of Therapy (cont'd) • Ergotism: Psychotic-like symptoms that come from ergot poisoning • Ergot is a natural source of LSD • Ergot occurs with rye • Phillippe Pinel: French physician who initiated humane treatment of mental patients in 1793 • Created the first mental hospital

Existential Therapy • An insight therapy that focuses on problems of existence, such as meaning, choice, and responsibility; emphasizes making difficult choices in life • Therapy focuses on death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness • Free Will: Human ability to make choices • You can choose to be the person you want to be • Confrontation: Clients are challenged to examine their values and choices

Behavior Therapy • Use of learning principles to make constructive changes in behavior • Behavior Modification: Using any classical or operant conditioning principles to directly change human behavior • Deep insight is often not necessary • Focus on the present; cannot change the past, and no reason to alter that which has yet to occur

Aversion Therapy • Conditioned Aversion: Learned dislike or negative emotional response to a stimulus • Aversion Therapy: Associate a strong aversion to an undesirable habit like smoking, overeating, drinking alcohol • Response-Contingent Consequences: Reinforcement, punishment, or other consequences that are applied only when a certain response is made • Rapid Smoking: Prolonged smoking at a rapid pace • Designed to cause aversion to smoking

Desensitization • Systematic Desensitization: Guided reduction in fear, anxiety, or aversion; attained by approaching a feared stimulus gradually while maintaining relaxation • Best used to treat phobias: intense, unrealistic fear • Model: Live or filmed person who serves as an example for observational learning • Vicarious Desensitization: Reduction in fear that takes place secondhand when a client watches models perform the feared behavior • Virtual Reality Exposure: Presents computerized fear stimuli to patients in a controlled fashion

Operant Conditioning • Positive Reinforcement: Responses that are followed by a reward tend to occur more frequently • Nonreinforcement: A response that is not followed by a reward will occur less frequently • Extinction: If response is NOTfollowed by reward after it has been repeated many times, it will go away • Punishment: If a response is followed by discomfort or an undesirable effect, the response will decrease/be suppressed (but not necessarily extinguished)

Cognitive Therapy • Therapy that helps clients change thinking patterns that lead to problematic behaviors or emotions • Selective Perception: Perceiving only certain stimuli in a larger group of possibilities • Overgeneralization: Allowing upsetting events to affect unrelated situations • All-or-Nothing Thinking: Seeing objects and events as absolutely right or wrong, good or bad, and so on • Cognitive therapy is VERY effective in treating depression, shyness, and stress

Key Features of Psychotherapy • Therapeutic Alliance: Caring relationship between the client and therapist; work to “solve” client’s problems • Therapy offers a protected setting where emotional catharsis (release) can occur • All the therapies offer some explanation or rationale for the client’s suffering • Provides clients with a new perspective about themselves or their situations and a chance to practice new behaviors

Basic Counseling Skills • Active listening • Clarify the problem • Focus on feelings • Avoid giving advice • Accept the client’s frame of reference • Reflect thoughts and feelings • Silence: Know when to use • Questions • Open: Open-ended reply • Closed: Can be answered “Yes” or “No” • Maintain confidentiality

Medical (Somatic) Therapies • Pharmacotherapy: Use of drugs to alleviate emotional disturbance; three classes: • Anxiolytics: Like Valium; produce relaxation or reduce anxiety • Antidepressants: Elevate mood and combat depression • Antipsychotics: Tranquilize and also reduce hallucinations and delusions in larger dosages

Shock • Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT): 150 volt electric shock is passed through the brain for about one second, inducing a convulsion • Based on belief that seizure alleviates depression by altering brain chemistry • ECT Views - Causes memory loss in many patients • Should only be used as a last resort

Psychosurgery • Any surgical alteration of the brain • Prefrontal Lobotomy: Frontal lobes in brain are surgically cut from other brain areas • Supposed to calm people who did not respond to other forms of treatment • Was not very successful • Deep Lesioning: Small target areas in the brain are destroyed by using an electrode

Hospitalization • Mental Hospitalization: Involves placing a person in a protected, therapeutic environment staffed by mental health professionals • Deinstitutionalization: Reduced use of full-time commitment to mental institutions • Half-way Houses: Short-term group living facilities for individuals making the transition from an institution (mental hospital, prison, etc.) to independent living

Community Mental Health Centers • Offer many health services like prevention, education, therapy, and crisis intervention • Crisis Intervention: Skilled management of a psychological emergency • Paraprofessional: Individual who works in a near-professional capacity under supervision of a more highly trained person

What Is Social Psychology? • Social Psychology: Scientific studies of how individuals behave, think, and feel in social situations; how people act in the presence (actual or implied) of others • Great Lesson - The POWER of the ________________.

Groups • Group Structure: Network of roles, communication, pathways, and power in a group • Group Cohesiveness: Degree of attraction among group members or their commitment to remain in the group • In Group: A group with which a person identifies • Out Group: Group with which a person does not identify • Cohesive groups work better together • What kind of groups did you see on “Survivor,” “Road Rules,” and “Real World”?

Social Perception • Attribution: Making inferences about the causes of one’s own behavior and others’ behavior • External Cause of Behavior: Assumed to lie outside a person • Internal Cause of Behavior: Assumed to lie within the person • Fundamental Attribution Error: Tendency to attribute behavior of others to internal causes (personality, likes, etc.). We believe this even if they really have external causes!

Conformity • Bringing one’s behavior into agreement with norms or the behavior of others. • Solomon Asch’s Experiment: You must select (from a group of three) the line that most closely matches the standard line. All lines are shown to a group of seven people (including you). • Other six were accomplices, and at times all would select the wrong line. • In 33% of the trials, the real subject conformed to group pressure even when the group’s answers were obviously incorrect!

Figure 14.4 FIGURE 14.4 Stimuli used in Solomon Asch’s conformity experiments.

Obedience (Milgram) • Conformity to the demands of an authority. • Would you shock a man with a known heart condition who is screaming and asking to be released? • Milgram studied this; the man with a heart condition was an accomplice and the “teacher” was a real volunteer. The goal was to teach the learner word pairs.

Milgram’s Conclusions • 65% obeyed by going all the way to 450 volts on the “shock machine,” even though the learner eventually could not answer any more questions • Group support can reduce destructive obedience

Figure 14.6 FIGURE 14.6 Results of Milgram’s obedience experiment. Only a minority of subjects refused to provide shocks, even at the most extreme intensities. The first substantial drop in obedience occurred at the 300-volt level (Milgram, 1963).

Brainwashing • Engineered or forced attitude change requiring a captive audience; three steps: • Unfreezing: Loosening of former values and convictions • Change: When the brainwashed person abandons former beliefs • Refreezing: Rewarding and solidifying new attitudes and beliefs

Cults • Groups that profess great devotion to a person and follow that person almost without question • Leader’s personality is usually more important than the issues he/she preaches • Members usually victimized by the leader(s) • Recruit potential converts at a time of need, especially when a sense of belonging is most attractive to potential converts • Look for college students and young adults • Some examples: People’s Temple and Jim Jones; Heaven’s Gate; Branch Davidians

Prejudice • Negative emotional attitude held toward members of a specific social group • Discrimination: Unequal treatment of people who should have the same rights as others • Personal Prejudice: When members of another racial or ethnic group are perceived as a threat to one’s own interests • Group Prejudice: When a person conforms to group norms

Prosocial Behavior and Bystander Apathy • Prosocial Behavior: Behavior toward others that is helpful, constructive, or altruistic • Bystander Apathy: Unwillingness of bystanders to offer help during emergencies • Related to number of people present • The more potential helpers present,the lower the chanceshelp will be given

Chapter 13 & 14 Therapies & Social Behaviors