Unit XIII: Treatment of Abnormal

Behavior
Module 70: Introduction to Therapy, and Psychodynamic
and Humanistic Therapies
Term and Example/Application

Question and Answer

Psychotherapy
Treatment involving psychological
techniques; consists of interactions
between a trained therapist and
someone seeking to overcome
psychological difficulties or achieve
personal growth.

What is the purpose of

psychotherapy? To assist someone
in overcoming a difficulty or in
achieving personal growth.

Biomedical Therapy
Prescribed medications or procedures
that act directly on the persons
physiology.

Which branch of therapy treats

disorders as biological illnesses
that can be cured or maintained
with medicine and science?
Biomedical Therapy.

Eclectic Approach
An approach to psychotherapy that,
depending on the clients problems,
uses techniques from various forms
of therapy.

Kay Redfield Jamison was treated

with psychotherapy and
medicine. What kind of approach
was her psychiatrist taking? The
Eclectic Apprach.

Psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freuds therapeutic
technique. Freud believed the
patients free associations,
resistances, dreams, and
transferencesand the therapists
interpretations of themreleased
previously repressed feelings,
allowing the patient to gain selfinsight.

Why is Freuds psychoanalysis

still studied? It is a apart of the
foundation for treating psychological
disorders.

Resistance
In psychoanalysis, the blocking from
consciousness of anxiety-laden
material.

What would be an example of

resistance to a psychoanalytic
therapist? A dream that a patient
cant remember or a thought that is

constantly edited.
Interpretation
In psychoanalysis, the analysts
noting supposed dream meanings,
resistances, and other significant
behaviors and events in order to
promote insight.
Transference
In psychoanalysis, the patients
transfer to the analyst of emotions
linked with other relationships such
as love or hatred for a parent.

While watching the Dark Knight,

you notice qualities in the Joker
that point towards Histrionic
Personality Disorder because of
the way that he acts and what he
says. What is this notation
called? Interpretation.
A patient becomes infatuated
with his therapist during his
treatment. This could be an
example of what? Transference.

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.

What is the difference between

psychodynamic and
psychoanalytic therapy?
Psychodynamic focuses on current
symptoms while psychoanalytic
focuses on the past and the tension
between the id and the superego.

Insight Therapies
A variety of therapies that aim to
improve psychological functioning by
increasing a persons awareness of
underlying motives and defenses.

What are psychodynamic and

humanist therapies often
referred to as? Insight Therapies.

Client-Centered Therapy
A humanistic therapy, developed by
Carl Rogers, in which the therapist
uses techniques such as active
listening within a genuine, accepting,
empathic environment to facilitate
clients growth.

What is another term for PersonCentered Therapy? Client-Centered

Therapy

Active Listening
Empathic listening in which the
listener echoes, restates, and
clarifies. A feature of Rogers clientcentered therapy.

What technique did Carl Rogers

use in his client centered
therapy? Active Listening.

Unconditional Positive Regard

A caring, accepting, nonjudgmental

Why is unconditional positive

regard useful in Rogerss Client-

attitude, which Carl Rogers believed

would help clients to develop selfawareness and self-acceptance.

Centered Therapy? Because it

offers a caring, accepting,
nonjudgmental attitude that helped
clients develop self-awareness and
self-acceptance.

Many clinical psychologists incorporated a variety of approaches

into their therapy. They are said to take an eclectic approach.
What do psychodynamic therapists call the blocking of anxietyladen material from the conscious? Resistance
What is one of the ways humanistic therapies differ from
psychoanalytic therapies? Humanistic therapies focus on promoting
growth, not curing illness.
What is a feature of client-centered therapy? Freudian interpretation
Explain what psychoanalysis is, and then discuss the relationship of
transference and resistance to the therapy. Psychoanalysis is a
Freudian therapy that seeks to get patients to release repressed feelings to
gain self-insight. Transference is the patients transfer of emotion to the
analyst. Resistance is the blocking of consciousness (by patient) of anxietyladen material.
Explain what client-centered therapy is, then describe the two major
techniques of the therapy. Client-centered therapy is a form of humanistic
therapy in which a therapist attempts to create an empathic, accepting
environment to facilitate the clients growth. Active listening is a method in
which the client says something, the therapists repeats it, and the client is
given the chance to correct it. Unconditional positive regard is an attitude of
kindness and caring that a therapists adopts to help clients develop selfawareness and self-acceptance.

Module 71: Behavior, Cognitive, and Group Therapies

Term and Example/Application

Question and Answer

Behavior Therapy
Therapy that applies learning
principles to the elimination of
unwanted behaviors.

What is the difference between

Freudian and Behavior
Therapists? Freudian therapists look
for the root causes of behavior, while
behavior therapists just want to
change the behavior.

Counterconditioning

What is the method used if a

Behavior therapy procedures that use

classical conditioning to evoke new
responses to stimuli that are
triggering unwanted behaviors. This
includes exposure therapies and
aversive conditioning.

person afflicted with a

claustrophobic fear of elevators
undertakes another round of
conditioning to replace the fear
response and unlearn the
association? Counterconditioning.

Exposure Therapies
Behavioral techniques, such as
systematic desensitization and virtual
reality exposure theory, that treats
anxieties by exposing people to the
things they fear and avoid.

Who redefined Mary Carver

Joness counterconditioning of
fear as exposure therapies?
Psychiatrist Joseph Wolpe.

Systematic Desensitization
A type of exposure therapy that
associates a pleasant, relaxed state
with gradually increasing anxietytriggering stimuli. Commonly used to
treat phobias.

What is considered the trick in

systematic desensitization?
Proceed gradually.

Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy

An anxiety treatment that
progressively exposes people to
electronic simulations of their
greatest fears, such as airplane
flying, spiders, or public speaking.

When is virtual reality exposure

therapy used? When an anxietyarousing situation is too expensive,
difficult, or embarrassing to recreate.

Aversive Conditioning
A type of counterconditioning that
associates an unpleasant state such
as nausea with an unwanted
behavior such as drinking alcohol.

What is the goal of aversive

conditioning? To substitute a
negative (aversive) response for a
positive response in a harmful
situation.

Token Economy
An operant conditioning procedure in
which people earn a token of some
sort for exhibiting a desired behavior
and can later exchange the tokens
for various privileges or treats.

Where have token economies

been used the most? In institutions
such as schools, hospitals, asylums,
and prison.

Cognitive Therapy
Therapy that teaches people new,
more adaptive ways of thinking;
based on the assumption that
thoughts intervene between events

What concept are cognitive

therapies built off of? The idea
that what we are thinking affects
what we are feeling.

and our emotional reactions.

Rational-Emotive Behavior
Therapy (REBT)
A confrontational cognitive therapy
developed by Albert Ellis, that
vigorously challenges peoples
illogical, self-defeating, attitudes and
assumptions.

Who developed the RationEmotive Behavior Therapy? Albert

Ellis.

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy
(CBT)
A popular integrative therapy that
combines cognitive therapy
(changing self-defeating thinking)
with behavior therapy (changing
behavior).

What is the goal of CognitiveBehavioral Therapy? To make

people aware of their negative
thinking, replace it with a new way of
thinking, and practice the most
positive approach every day.

Group Therapy
Therapy conducted with groups
rather than individuals, permitting
therapeutic benefits from group
interaction.

What are the benefits of group

therapy? It saves therapists time
and clients money, offers a social
laboratory for exploring social
behaviors and developing skills,
enables people to see that others
share their problems, and to provide
feedback as clients try out new ways
of behaving.

Family Therapy
Therapy that treats the family as a
system. Views an individuals
unwanted behaviors as influenced
by, or directed at, other family
members.

What is the biggest difference

between family therapy and
other psychotherapies? A family
therapist works with multiple family
members to heal relationships and to
mobilize family resources.

Dr. Wells tries to help her clients by teaching them to modify the
things they do when under stress or experiencing symptoms. This
means that Dr. Wells engages in behavior therapy.
Mary Cover Jones helped a little boy named Peter overcome his fear
of rabbits by gradually moving a rabbit closer to him each day while
he was eating his snack. This was one of the first applications of
exposure therapy.
On what are token economies based? Operant Conditioning

What is considered a benefit of group therapy? It saves time and

money when compared with other forms of therapy.
Name and describe two specific types of group therapy. Family
therapy is a means of treating an entire family as an interdependent system.
Self-help groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous are groups of individuals who
share a similar problem working together to overcome that problem.
Explain what systematic desensitization is, then describe the two
major components of the therapy. Systematic desensitization is a
commonly used exposure therapy I which a patient is taught to repeatedly
relax when facing anxiety-provoking stimuli to gradually eliminate anxiety.
The two major components are the stimuli that the patient would be exposed
to (like a spider) and a method of relaxation called progressive relaxation
(when a patient relaxes one muscle group at a time until fully relaxed).

Module 72: Evaluating Psychotherapies and Prevention

Strategies
Term and Example/Application

Question and Answer

Regression Toward the Mean

The tendency for extreme or unusual
scores to fall back (regress) toward
their average.

What is the phenomenon in

which someone who is feeling
extremely depressed will
gradually return to an average
emotional level naturally?
Regression Toward the Mean.

Meta-Analysis
A procedure for statistically
combining the results of many
different research studies.

A variety of studies with a wide

variety of variables and
outcomes centralized about
sleep are compared to reach a
conclusion. What is this analysis
called? Meta-Analysis.

Evidence-Based Practice
Clinical decision making that
integrates the best available research
with clinical expertise and patient
characteristics and preferences.

What is the major organization

that supports evidence-based
practice in the field of
psychology? The American
Psychological Association.

Therapeutic Alliance
A bond of trust and mutual
understanding between a therapist
and client, who work together

What is considered a key aspect

of effective therapy? A Therapeutic
Alliance between a therapist and the
client.

constructively to overcome the

clients problem.
Resilience
The personal strengths that helps
most people cope with stress and
recover from adversity and even
trauma.

After 9/11, people who were

close to victims of the attack
were able to cope with the stress
and recover from the grief. This
is an example of what? Resilience.

What does the author of the textbook call psychologys most

powerful tool for sorting reality from wishful thinking? Control Group
What is meta-analysis? A way to combine the results from lots of studies
Which of the following is the best phrase for a bond of trust and
mutual understanding between a therapist and client who are
working to overcome the clients problem? Therapeutic Alliance
Explain the three sides of evidence-based clinical decision making.
Using the best available research evidence, clinical expertise, and using a
patients values, preferences, and circumstances.
Psychotherapies have many common ingredients. Identify three
commonly agreed-upon benefits of psychotherapies. Hope for people
who are devoid of self-esteem or feel incapable of turning things around.
People may feel armed with a believable fresh perspective and may
approach their own life with a fresh perspective. They also develop an
empathetic, trusting, and caring relationship.

Module 73: The Biomedical Therapies

Term and Example/Application
Psychopharmacology
The study of the effects of drugs on
mind and behavior.

Question and Answer

Which branch of psychology has
revolutionized the treatment of
people with severe disorders by
minimizing involuntary
hospitalization and supporting
people through community
mental health programs?
Psychotherapy

Antipsychotic Drugs
Drugs used to treat schizophrenia
and other forms of sever thought

What kind of drug is the most

help to patients experiencing
positive symptoms of

disorder, i.e. chlorpromazine.

Antianxiety Drugs
Drugs used to control anxiety and
agitation like Zanax or Ativan.

schizophrenia? Antipsychotic
Drugs.
What should be combined with
antianxiety drugs to produce the
best result? Psychological Therapy

Antidepressant Drugs
Drugs used to treat depression,
anxiety disorders, obsessivecompulsive disorder, and
posttraumatic stress disorder. One
that is widely used is a selective
serotonin reuptake inhibitorsSSRIs.

What have antidepressant drugs

commonly be used to treat due
to their agonist qualities? Anxiety
disorders, OCD, PTSD.

Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic

Simulation (rTMS)
The application of repeated pulses of
magnetic energy to the brain; used
to stimulate or suppress brain
activity.

Jeremys depression has been

resistant to drugs and normal
forms of therapy. What should
his next course of action be to
avoid seizures, memory loss, or
other serious side effects? rTMS

Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)

A biomedical therapy for severely
depressed patients in which a brief
electric current is sent through the
brain of an anesthetized patient?

What happened after three

weeks of ECT treatment to 80%
of people? Improved condition and
showed some memory loss for the
treatment period but had no
discernable brain damage.

Psychosurgery
Surgery that removes or destroys
brain tissue in an effort to change
behavior.

Which is the most dramatic and

least used biomedical
intervention for changing
behavior? Psychosurgery.

Lobotomy
A psychosurgical procedure once
used to calm uncontrollably
emotional or violent patients. The
procedure cut the nerves connecting
the frontal lobes to the emotioncontrolling centers of the inner brain.

Rosemary Kennedy was

approved of what kind of
psychosurgical procedure to
control her violent mood swings
and left her confined to a
hospital with an infantile
mentality until her death?
Lobotomy.

Which neurotransmitter is affected by antipsychotic medications?

Dopamine.

Which of the following is most effectively treated with

electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)? Depression
Which of the following was the purpose of lobotomies? To separate
the reasoning centers of the brain from the emotional centers
Identify the category of drugs used to treat schizophrenia and the
category of drugs used to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder. Then
explain what each of these two categories of drugs does inside the
brain. Antipsychotic medications are the preferred drug treatment for
schizophrenia because they work by blocking dopamine receptors.
Antidepressant medications are the preferred drug treatment for OCD
because they work by blocking the reuptake of serotonin.