Chapter 13 & 14 Therapies & Social Behaviors

1. Chapter 13 & 14Therapies & Social Behaviors

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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)

5. 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

6. 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!

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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)

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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

21. 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 ________________.

22. 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”?

23. 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!

24. 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!

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

26. 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.

27. 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

28. 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).

29. 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

30. 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

31. 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

32. 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