PERSONALITY

• Personality is the set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that are organized and relatively enduring and that influence his or her interactions and adaptations to the environment.

The concept of personality is used to explain the stability in a person’s behavior over time and across situations (consistency) and the behavioral differences among people reacting to the same situation (distinctiveness).

a durable disposition to behave in a particular way in a variety of situations.

The Five-Factor Model 

Extraversion (surgency)

Neuroticism (emotional stability)

Openness to experience

Agreeableness

Conscientiousness

Raymond Cattell 

In the 1950s and 1960s, Raymond Cattell used the procedure of factor analysis – correlating many variables to identify closely related clusters of variables – to reduce Gordon Allport’s (1937) list of thousands of personality traits to just 16 basic dimensions.  He also developed a test called the 16 PF to measure where a person falls along these 16 personality dimensions.

McCrae and Costa 

More recently, McCrae and Costa have used factor analysis to arrive at an even simpler, five-factor model of personality: the big five.

High Extraversion scores signify that a person is outgoing, sociable, upbeat, friendly, assertive, and gregarious.  Some trait models refer to this as positive emotionality.

High Neuroticism scores signify that a person is anxious, hostile, self-conscious, insecure, and vulnerable.  Some models call this negative emotionality.

Openness to experience is associated with curiosity, flexibility, vivid fantasy, imaginativeness, artistic sensitivity, and unconventional attitudes.

Agreeableness is associated with people who are sympathetic, trusting, cooperative, modest, and straightforward.  It may have its roots in temperament.

Conscientious people are diligent, disciplined, well organized, punctual, and dependable.  Some models refer to this trait as constraint.  It is related to high productivity in a variety of occupational areas.

Openness to experience is associated with curiosity, flexibility, vivid fantasy, imaginativeness, artistic sensitivity, and unconventional attitudes.

Agreeableness is associated with people who are sympathetic, trusting, cooperative, modest, and straightforward.  It may have its roots in temperament.

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

is one of the most frequently used personality tests in mental health. The test is used by trained professionals to assist in identifying personality structure and psychopathology.

projective tests ask participants to respond to vague, ambiguous stimuli in ways that may reveal the subject's needs, feelings and personality traits.

Rorschach consists of a series of ten ink blots

TAT = thematic apperception test... a series of pictures of simple scenes is presented to individuals who are asked to tell stories about what is happening in the scenes or what the characters are feeling.

• attempt to provide universal account of the fundamental psychological processes and characteristics of humans
• statements about the universal core of human nature lie at the center of grand theories of personality

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Freud divided personality into three components.

id 

ego 

superego

The id is the primitive, instinctive component of personality that operates according to the pleasure principle, which demands immediate gratification and engages in primary-process thinking (primitive, illogical, irrational, and fantasy oriented).

The ego is the decision-making component of personality that operates according to the reality principle, seeking to delay gratification of the id’s urges until appropriate outlets can be found, thus mediating between the id and the external world.  

The superego is the moral component of personality that incorporates social standards about what represents right and wrong.  The superego emerges out of the ego at around 3-5 years of age.

Freud’s most enduring insight was his recognition that unconscious forces can influence behavior.  Freud theorized that people have three levels of awareness, conscious, preconscious, and unconscious.

three levels of awareness:

conscious

three levels of awareness:

preconscious

three levels of awareness:

unconscious

Freud saw behavior as the outcome of an ongoing series of internal conflicts between the id, ego, and superego; with conflicts centering on sex and aggressive impulses having far reaching consequences. These conflicts lead to anxiety, which causes the ego to construct defense mechanisms, exercises in self-deception, as protection.

psychosexual stages are developmental periods with a characteristic sexual focus that leave their mark on adult personality.

oral 

anal

phallic

latency and genital stages

encompasses the first year of life.  during this period, the main source of erotic stimulation is the mouth (biting, sucking,chewing).  according to Freud, fixation at the oral stage could form the basis for obsessive eating or smoking later in life.  

age 0-1

key task: weaning from breast or bottle

children get their erotic pleasure from their bowel movements through either the expulsion or retention of feces.  crucial event is toildt training.(represents society's first sytematic effort to regulate the child's biological urges) 

age 2-3

genitals become the focus for the child's erotic energy, largely thru self stimulation.  during this pivotal sta=ge, the oedipal complex emerges.  supposedly little girls realize their parts are different from boys' and develop penis envy.

age 4-5

identifying with adult role models; coping with oedipal crisis.

age 6-12 

erotic focus: none, sexually repressed

expanding social contacts

puberty onward

erotic focus on genitals, being sexually intimate

establishing intimate relationships; contributing to society thru working 

Jung practiced psychiatry in Zurich

Jung called his approach to psychology, analytical psychology to differentiate it from Freuds.

personal and collective unconscious

archetypes

Carl Jung called his new theory analytical psychology, proposing that the unconscious mind is composed of two layers:  the personal unconscious, which houses material that is not within one’s conscious awareness because it has been repressed or forgotten; and the collective unconscious, which houses latent memory traces inherited from people’s ancestral past. 

Jung called these ancestral memories archetypes – emotionally charged images and thought forms that have universal meaning, such as the mandala.

Jung was also the first to describe the introverted (inner-directed) and extraverted (outer-directed) personality types.

striving for superiority (as a universal drive to adapt, improve oneself, and master life's challenges)

compensation (involves efforts to overcome imagined or real inferiorities by developing one's abilities.

Alfred Adler argued that Freud had gone overboard with his focus on sexual conflict.  According to Adler and his individual psychology, the foremost source of human motivation is striving for superiority – a universal drive to adapt, improve oneself, and master life’s challenges. Adler asserted that everyone feels some inferiority and works to overcome it, a process he called compensation.

repression

projection

displacement

reaction formation

regression

rationalization

identification 

keeping distressing thoughts and feelings buried in the unconscious

a traumatized soldier has no recollection of the details of a close brush with death.

attributing one's own thoughts feelings or motives to another

a woman who dislikes her boss thinks she likes her boss but feels that the boss doesnt like her

diverting emotional feelings (usually anger) from their original source to a substitute target

after parental scolding, a young girl takes her anger out on little brother

behaving in a way that is exactly the opposite of one's true feelings

a patent ot unconsciously resents a child spoils the child with outlandish gifts

a reversion to immature patterns of behavior

an adult has a temper tantrum when he doesnt get his way.

creating false but plausible excuses to justify unacceptable behavior

a student watches tv instead of studying, saying that "additional study would do any good anyway"

bolstering self-esteem by forming an imaginary or real alliance with some person or group

an insecure young man joins a fraternity to boost his self esteem

Skinner’s views

Conditioning and response tendencies

Bandura’s social cognitive theory

Observational learning

Models

Self-efficacy

Mischel’s views

The person-situation controversy

Skinner’s views on personality were similar to his views on all other human behavior; it is learned through conditioning.

Personality, according to Skinner, is based in response tendencies; acquired through learning over the course of the lifespan.

Bandura developed social cognitive (formerly known as social learning) theory, focusing on how cognitive factors such as expectancies regulate learning.

His theory of observational learning holds that behavior is shaped by exposure to models, or a person whose behavior they observe.

Bandura, in recent years, has emphasized self-efficacy in his research, referring to one’s belief about one’s ability to perform behaviors that should lead to expected outcomes.  He believes that self-efficacy (or lack thereof) influences which challenges people tackle and how well they perform.  Researchers believe that self-efficacy is fostered by parents who are stimulating and responsive to their children.

Walter Mischel is also an advocate of social learning theory, with a focus on the extent to which situational factors govern behavior, instead of person variables.

operant conditioning

(Skinner)

accounts for personality development by exkplaining how various response tendencies are acquired through learning.  most human responses shaped by conditioning.  

environmental consehences - reinforcement, punishment, and extinction - determine peoples patterns of responding.

focusing on how cognitive factors such as expectancies regulate learning.

Bandura, in recent years, has emphasized self-efficacy in his research, referring to one’s belief about one’s ability to perform behaviors that should lead to expected outcomes.  He believes that self-efficacy (or lack thereof) influences which challenges people tackle and how well they perform.  Researchers believe that self-efficacy is fostered by parents who are stimulating and responsive to their children.

observational learning occurs when an organism's responding is influenced by the observation of others.

A model is a person whose behavior is observed by another.

Carl Rogers’ person-centered theory

Self-concept

Conditional/unconditional positive regard

Incongruence and anxiety

Abraham Maslow’s theory of self-actualization

Hierarchy of needs

The healthy personality

Carl Rogers was one of the founders of the humanist movement, which emerged in the 1950’s as a reaction to the behavioral and psychodynamic theories.

Rogers viewed personality in terms of the self-concept, a collection of beliefs about one’s own nature, unique qualities, and typical behavior, a person’s mental picture of himself or herself.

Rogers stressed the subjective nature of the self-concept.  It may not be consistent with reality.  Rogers believed that when parents make their affection conditional, that is, dependent on a child’s living up to expectations, the child may block out of their self-concept those experiences that make them feel unworthy of love. 

Unconditional love is based in assurances that a child is worthy of affection, no matter what they do.  

When self-concepts don’t match reality (incongruence), they are threatened, and anxiety results.

rogers viewed personality structure in terms of just one contruct.  he called this contruct the self, although its more widely know today as the self-concept.

a self-concept is a collection of beliefs about one's own nature, unique qualities, and typical behavior.  your own mental picture of yourself.

rogers called the gap btwn. self-concept and reality "incongruence"...the degree of disparity btwn ones self-concept and ones actual experience .

if persons self concept is reasonably accurate its said to be congruent with reality.

Abraham Maslow proposed that human motives are organized into a hierarchy of needs – a systematic arrangement of needs, according to priority, in which basic needs must be met before less basic needs are aroused.  

Like Rogers, Maslow argued that humans have an innate drive toward personal growth, culminating in the need for self-actualization, which is the need to fulfill one’s potential (the highest need in his hierarchy).  “What a man can be, he must be.”

Maslow set out to identify people who had self-actualized, healthy personalities, for study. Self-actualizing persons, according to Maslow, are people with exceptionally healthy personalities, marked by continued personal growth.  

Maslow found that these people are tuned in to reality and at peace with themselves.  They are open and spontaneous and sensitive to others’ needs, making for rewarding interpersonal relations. 

pyramid: systematic arrangement of needs, according to priority, in which basic needs(base of pyramid at bottom) must be met before less basic needs are aroused(progresses upwards on pyramid if one level is satsfied).

FROM BOTTOM UP/START WITH MOST BASIC:

Physiological needs

safety and security needs

belongingness and love needs

esteem needs 

needs for self-actualization

• clear efficient perception of reality and comfortable relations with it
• spontaneity simplicity and naturalness
• problem centering (having something outside themself they "must" do as a mission)
• detachment and need for privacy
• autonomy independence of culture and environment
• continued freshness of appreciation
• mystical and peak experineces
• feelings of kinship and identification with the human race.
• strong friendships but limited in number
• democratic character structure
• ethical discrimination between good and evil
• philosophical, unhostile sense of humor
• balance between polarities in personality

Eysenk’s theory

Determined by genes

Extraversion-introversion

Behavioral genetics

Twin studies

Heritability estimates

The evolutionary approach

Traits conducive to reproductive fitness 

others

Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski have proposed that one of the key functions of self-esteem is to protect us against terror.  We feel terror because we have a desire to preserve ourselves, but also have the cognitive ability to recognize that death is inevitable.

Cultures provide worldviews—traditions, stories, and institutions—that salve this existential anxiety, and provide us with a sense of order in our lives.  Our self-esteem corresponds to our sense of self-worth engendered by our confidence in our culture’s solutions.

Experimental manipulations of subjects’ mortality salience causes behavioral changes in several directions predicted by terror management theory.

the medical model proposes that it is useful to think of abnormal behavior as a disease.

 became dominant way of thinking in the 18th and 19th centuries.

before 18th c most conceptions of abnormal behavior based on superstition. 

• Distressing dysfunctional behavior that is different from social norms

• Historically: demonology
• Now several theoretical views

when people violate the standards of their culture they may be labeled as mentally ill.

• From behaviors, thoughts, and emotions considered normal in a specifc place and time and by specific people
• From social norms (the stated and unstated rules for proper conduct in a society)
• Judgments of deviance also depend on specific circumstances (as in social context)

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

multi axial approach:

• Axis I: major clinical syndromes (most)
• Axis II: personality disorders (long-running problems, or mental retardation)

• Axis IV: psychosocial stressors

• Axis V: Global Assessment of Functioning (assessment of how you are doing, scale from 1-100)

The anxiety disorders are a class of disorders marked by feelings of excessive apprehension and anxiety. 

Generalized anxiety disorder

“free-floating anxiety”

Phobic disorder

Specific focus of fear

Panic disorder and agoraphobia

Obsessive compulsive disorder

Obsessions

Compulsions

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Generalized anxiety disorder is marked by a chronic, high level of anxiety that is not tied to any specific threat: “free-floating anxiety.”

marked by fear of something

• Phobic disorder is marked by a persistent and irrational fear of an object or situation that presents no realistic danger. Particularly common are acrophobia – fear of heights, claustrophobia – fear of small, enclosed places, brontophobia – fear of storms, hydrophobia – fear of water, and  various animal and insect phobias.

• Panic disorder is characterized by recurrent attacks of overwhelming anxiety that usually occur suddenly and unexpectedly.  These paralyzing attacks have physical symptoms.  After a number of these attacks, victims may become so concerned about exhibiting panic in public that they may be afraid to leave home, developing agoraphobia or a fear of going out in public.

• Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is marked by persistent, uncontrollable intrusions of unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and urges to engage in senseless rituals (compulsions). Obsessions often center on inflicting harm on others, personal failures, suicide, or sexual acts.  Common examples of compulsions include constant handwashing, repetitive cleaning of things that are already clean, and endless checking and rechecking of locks, etc.

a class of psychological disoders involving physical ailments with no authentic organic basis that are due to psychological disorders.  

• Somatization Disorder
• Conversion Disorder
• Hypochondriasis
• Etiology of somatoform disorders
  • somatoform disorders versus malingering
  • Cognitive factors
  • Personality factors
  • The sick role
• Somatoform disorders are physical ailments that cannot be explained by organic conditions.  They are not psychosomatic diseases, which are real physical ailments caused in part by psychological factors. (Recall from chapter 13 that psychosomatic disease as a category has fallen into disuse). Individuals with somatoform disorders are not simply faking an illness, which would be termed malingering.

• Biological factors
  • Genetic predisposition
  • GABA circuits in the brain
• Conditioning and learning
  • Acquired through classical conditioning
  • Maintained through operant conditioning
• Cognitive factors
  • Judgments of perceived threat
• Stress—a precipitator
• Twin studies and family studies suggest a moderate genetic predisposition to anxiety disorders. Abnormalities in neurotransmitter activity at GABA synapses have been implicated in some types of anxiety disorders, and abnormalities in serotonin synapses have been implicated in panic and obsessive-compulsive disorders.
• Many anxiety responses, especially phobias, may be caused by classical conditioning and maintained by operant conditioning.
• Cognitive theories hold that certain styles of thinking, overinterpreting harmless situations as threatening, for example, make some people more vulnerable to anxiety disorders.
• Stress also appears to precipitate the onset of anxiety disorders.

• Somatization disorder is marked by a history of diverse physical complaints that appear to be psychological in origin.  They occur mostly in women and often coexist with depression and anxiety disorders.

• Dissociative amnesia and fugue
• Dissociative identitiy disorder (multiple personality disorder… very rare)
  • Etiology
    • A severe emotional trauma during childhood
  • Controversy
    • Media creation?
• Dissociative disorders are a class of disorders in which people lose contact with portions of their consciousness or memory, resulting in disruptions in their sense of identity.
• Dissociative amnesia is a sudden loss of memory for important personal information that is too extensive to be due to normal forgetting. Memory loss may be for a single traumatic event or for an extended time period around the event.
• Dissociative fugue is when people lose their memory for their entire lives along with their sense of personal identity.  They forget their name, family, where they live, etc., but still know how to do math and drive a car.
• Dissociative identity disorder (formerly multiple personality disorder) involves the coexistence in one person of two or more largely complete, and usually very different, personalities.
• DID is related to severe emotional trauma that occurred in childhood, although this link is not unique to DID, as a history of child abuse elevates the likelihood of many disorders, especially among females.

people with bipolar disorder experience emotional extremes at both ends of the mood continuum, going through periods of both depression and mania (excitement and elation)

• two kinds of bipolar disorder:
  • Bipolar I disorder
    • Full manic and major depressive episodes
      • Most sufferers experience an alternation of episodes
      • Some experience mixed episodes
  • Bipolar II disorder
    • Hypomanic episodes and major depressive episodes

• Between 1 and 1.5% of adults in the world suffer from a bipolar disorder at any given time
• The disorders are equally common in women and men
  • Women may experience more depressive and fewer manic episodes than men
  Rapid cycling is more common in women

• Bipolar disorder (formerly known as manic-depressive disorder) is characterized by the experience of one or more manic episodes usually accompanied by periods of depression.  In a manic episode, a person’s mood becomes elevated to the point of euphoria.
• Bipolar disorder affects a little over 1%-2% of the population and is equally as common in males and females.
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• Major depressive disorder is marked by profound sadness, slowed thought processes, low self-esteem, and loss of interest in previous sources of pleasure.  Major depression is also called unipolar depression. Research suggests that the lifetime prevalence rate of unipolar depression is between 7 and 18%.  Evidence suggests that the prevalence of depression is increasing, particularly in more recent age cohorts, and that it is twice as high in women as in men. 
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etiology of mood disorders

passive behavior produced by exposure to unavoidable aversive events.

passive “giving up” behavior produced by exposure to unavoidable aversive events; asserts that the roots of depression lie in how people explain setbacks and other negative events

encompass a class of disorders marked by delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, and deterioration of adaptive behavior

marked by disturbances in thought that spill over to affect perceptual, social and emotional processes.  

delusions and irrational thought: delusions 

deterioration of adaptive behavior

distorted perception: Hallucinations are sensory perceptions that occur in the absence of a real, external stimulus or are gross distortions of perceptual input.

and disturbed emotion

Hallucinations are sensory perceptions that occur in the absence of a real, external stimulus or are gross distortions of perceptual input.

dominated by delusions of persecution(believe they have many enemies who want to harrass and oppress them)

along with delusions of grandeur(believe they must be enormously important people)

marked by striking motor disturbances, ranging from muscular rigidity to random motor activity

particularly sever deterioration of adaptive behavior is seen

(emotional indifference, frequent incohereence and virtually complete social withdrawal.)

an alternative approach to subtyping.  divides schizophrenic disorders into just two categories based on the predominence of negative versus positive symptoms. 

positive symptoms involve behavioral excesses or peculiarities, such as hallucinations, delusions, bizarre behavior, and wild flights of ideas

involve behavioral deficits, such as flattened emotions, social withdrawal, apathy, impaired attention, and poverty of speech

genetic vulnerability

Neurochemical factors 

structural abnormalities of the brain

the neurodevelopmental hypothesis 

expressed emotion 

precipitating stress

Research has linked schizophrenia to a genetic vulnerability and changes in neurotransmitter activity at dopamine, and perhaps serotonin, receptors. Structural abnormalities in the brain, such as enlarged ventricles, are associated with schizophrenia, as are metabolic abnormalities in the prefrontal and temporal lobes. Researchers theorize that positive symptoms are related to prefrontal abnormalities and negative symptoms to temporal abnormalities. The question remains to be answered re: whether these abnormalities are cause or consequence of schizophrenia.

The neurodevelopmental hypothesis of schizophrenia asserts that it is attributable to disruptions in maturational processes of the brain before or at the time of birth that are caused by prenatal viral infections or malnutrition, obstetrical complications, and other brain insults.

Studies of expressed emotion, or the degree to which a relative of a person with schizophrenia displays highly critical or emotionally overinvolved attitudes toward the patient, suggest that expressed emotion is a good predictor of the course of schizophrenic illness, negatively impacting prognosis.

Precipitating stress and unhealthy family dynamics have also been shown to be related to schizophrenia.

• _{genetic vulnerability: not proven but studies suggest possibility}
• personality factors:  victims of anorexia tend to be obsessive rigid and emotionally restrained.  victims of bulimia tend to be impulsive, overly sensitive, and low in self-esteem.
• cultural values: western society its prevalent... media image 
• role of the family
• cognitive factors: skewed perception of themselves. extreme thoughts like i have to be skinny to be accepted. 

• • A personality disorder is diagnosed only when it causes impairments in social or occupational funcitioning or when it causes personal distress.
  • A very rigid pattern of inner experience and outward behavior
  • This pattern is seen in most interactions, differs from the experiences and bgehaviors usually expected and continues for years

• •  
    • Personality disorders typically become recognizable in adolescence or early adulthood
    • Generally, the affected person does not regard his or her behavior as undesirable or problematic
    • It has been estimated that 9 to 13% of all adults may have a personality disorder
  • Classifying these disorders is difficult because little is known about their origins or development
  • They are diagnosed on Axis II of the DSM-IV.  Personality disorders diagnoses are sometimes called “character disorders” and some think they reflect more negatively on the person.
  • Those diagnosed with personality disorders are often also diagnosed with an Axis I disorder
    • This relationship is called “comorbidity”
      • Axis II disorders may predispose people to develop an Axis I disorder, or Axis I disorders may set the stage for Axis II disorders, or some biological condition may set the stage for both!
    • Whatever the reason, research indicates that the presence of a personality disorder complicates and reduces a person’s chances for a successful recovery

Diagnosed on axis two.  Axis level depends a lot on the duration of the problem. 

borderline personality disorder: also disturbed relationships.  Poor identity, don’t know who they are.  Relationships are very dramatic/black and white thinking… you’re either totally with them or totally against them.  Often very dramatic behavior.  fear of abandonment

• The DSM-IV identifies ten personality disorders and separates these into three categories or “clusters”:
  • Odd or eccentric behavior (cluster A)
    • Paranoid, schizoid, and schizotypal personality disorders
  • Dramatic, emotional, or erratic behavior (cluster B)
    • Antisocial, borderline, narcissistic, and histrionic personality disorders
  • Anxious or fearful behavior (cluster C)
    • Avoidant, dependent, and obsessive-compulsive personality disorders

• PTSD involves enduring psychological disturbance attributed to the experience of a major traumatic event.  It is seen after war, rape, major disasters, etc. Symptoms include re-experiencing the traumatic event in the form of nightmares and flashbacks, emotional numbing, alienation, problems in social relations, and elevated arousal, anxiety, and guilt.

major types of treatment

(of psychological disorders)

women, people with medical insurance, and higher education are more likely to seek treatment

15% of US population annually

psychiatrists devote more time to relatively severe disorders and less time to everyday problems; psychiatrists emphasize drug therapies

clinical psychologists and counseling psychologists specialize in teh diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders and everyday behavioral problems

psychiatrists are physicians who specialize in the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders. 

• transference occurs when clients start relating to their therapists in ways that mimic critical relationships in their lives.
• Transference- if I’m a blank slate as a therapist (don’t say much) and patient reacts to something the therapist says, theyre projecting their feelings onto the blank slate and its good and helpful.

The therapist’s emotional reactions to the patient that are based on the therapist’s unconscious needs and conflicts, as distinguished from his or her conscious responses to the patient’s behavior. Countertransference may interfere with the therapist’s ability to understand the patient and may adversely affect the therapeutic technique. Currently, there is emphasis on the positive aspects of countertransference and its use as a guide to a more empathic understanding of the patient.

Carl Rogers

an insight therapy that emphasizes providing a supportive emotional climate for clients, who play a major role in determining the pace and direction of their therapy

maintains that most personal distress is due to inconsistency, or “incongruence,” between a person’s self-concept and reality

•  
  • Goal: (of client centered therapy) restructure self-concept to better correspond to reality
  • Therapeutic climate
    • Genuineness
    • Unconditional positive regard
    • Empathy
  • Therapeutic process
    • Clarification
  • Using a humanistic perspective, Carl Rogers developed Client-centered therapy in the 1940s and 1950s.
  • Client-centered therapy is an insight therapy that emphasizes providing a supportive emotional climate for clients, who play a major role in determining the pace and direction of their therapy.
  • Rogers maintained that most personal distress is due to incongruence between a person’s self-concept and reality. The goal of therapy involves helping people restructure their self-concept to correspond better to reality.
  • Rogers held that there are three main elements to creating this atmosphere: genuineness, or the therapist being completely honest and spontaneous with the client; unconditional positive regard, or a complete nonjudgmental acceptance of the client as a person; and empathy, an understanding of the client’s point of view.
  • The key task of the therapist is to help the client achieve clarification, by acting as a human mirror.
  •  

•  
  • a complete nonjudgmental acceptance of the client as a person; and empathy, an understanding of the client’s point of view.

behavior therapy

involve the application of the principles of learning and conditioning to direct efforts to change clients’ maladaptive behaviors.

based on the work of B.F. Skinner

based on certian assumptions:

-assumed that behavior is a product of learning

-assumed that what has been learned can be unlearned 

Counterconditioning 

Aversion Therapy 

Systematic Desensitization

Desensitization hierarchy

Extinction Procedures

Flooding

Implosion therapy

Token Economies

Extrinsic reinforcers

Behavioral Contracting 

Social skills training

Modeling 

Behavioral rehearsal 

Systematic desensitization: behavior therapy used to reduce clients’ phobic responses

uses classical conditioning to create a negative response to a stimulus that has elicited problematic behavior

Aversion therapy is the most controversial of the behavior therapies, where an aversive stimulus is paired with a stimulus that elicits an undesirable response.  Alcoholics, for example, have had emetic drugs paired with their favorite drinks, with the subsequent vomiting creating a conditioned aversion to alcohol. This technique has been used with alcohol and drug abuse, sexual deviance, smoking, shoplifting, gambling, stuttering, and overeating.

social skills training

use combinations of verbal interventions and behavior modification techniques to help clients change maladaptive patters of thinking.  cognitive therapy uses specific strategies to correct habitual thinking errors that underlie various types of disorders

The role of cognition in our mood and how we may go about changing mood through cognition.

• Aaron Beck: Cognitive Therapy
  • Cognitive therapy
  • Goal: to change the way clients think
    • Detect and recognize negative thoughts
    • Reality testing – wanted people to see things from a realistic perspective
    • Kinship with behavior therapy – similarly he had patients keep journal of negagive thoughts etc.

•  
  • Beck devised cognitive oriented therapies.  The goal of these therapies is to change the way clients think, detecting and recognizing negative thoughts, reality testing, and devising behavioral “homework assignments” that focus on changing overt behaviors.

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• Albert Ellis: Rational-Emotional Therapy (RET)

Video: Albert Ellis therapy session with Glori

This is a toned down version of Ellis’ normal techniques…he cursed like a sailor.

He talked even more than she did

Beck's cognitive triad is a triad of types of negative thought present in depression proposed by Aaron Beck in 1976. The triad forms part of hisCognitive Theory Of Depression.

The triad involves negative thoughts about:

1. The self (i.e., self is worthless)
2. The world/environment (i.e., world is unfair), and
3. The future (i.e., future is hopeless).

Cognitive Error: Cause depression; examples include people blaming their setbacks on personal inadequacies, focus on negative events, make pessimistic projections about the future, and draw negative conclusions about their self-worth

Drug therapy and electroconvulsive (shock) therapy

barbiturates 

Reduce tension, apprehension, and nervousness

Tricyclics

Monoamine (MAO) inhibitors

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors

Gradually elevate mood and help bring people out of a depression

Drugs used to control mood swings in patients with bipolar mood disorders

A biomedical treatment in which electric shock is used to produce a cortical seizure accompanied by convulsions

• Electroconvulsive thereapy (ECT)
  • Shock therapy that induces seizures to treat psych disorders like depression
  • Analogy: like when you get so frustrated trying and failing to fix a problem on your computer that you just hit the reset button.
  • Now its done under sedation, but didn’t used to be
  • Early days it could cause dramatic side effects like memory loss etc.
  • Fewer side effects today
  • Only done on one side at a time now

•  
  •  
    • By late 60s it was outlawed worldwide, except in US…until early 80s
    • Horrible side effects 

Memory losses are common short-term side effects of ECT, but it’s mild and usually disappears within a month or two

Refers to transferring the treatment of mental illness from inpatient institutions to community-based facilities that emphasize outpatient care

Some of these therapies have proven useful in some other cultures, but many have turned out to be irrelevant or counterproductive when used with different cultural groups

The community mental health movement emphasizes local, community-based care, reduced dependence on hospitalization, and the prevention of psychological disorders.  

Deinstitutionalization and drug therapy have created a revolving door through which mentally ill people pass again and again.  Most of these people usually suffer from chronic, severe disorders that frequently require hospitalization.  Once they’re stabilized through drug therapy, they’re sent back out the door into communities that often aren’t prepared to provide adequate outpatient care.  Because of this, their condition deteriorates and they soon require readmission to a hospital