Chapter 16 Lectures

Therapy

[Ready for Fall 2026]

Modified: 2026-08-03 12:15 AM CDST

• Even the GOAT needs help, sometimes (p. 549)
  • Simone Biles is recognized as the greatest gymnast of all time, for good reason.
    • Netflix trailer: Simone Biles Rising (video)
• APPROACHES TO TREATING PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDERS (p. 550)
• History of Therapy
  • Therapy of one sort or another has always been around, but its form has changed over the years
    • Classic Greece: milieu therapy
    • Early Midde Ages: monks and clergy provided humane therapy
    • Late Middle Ages: the rise of demonic possession theory and exorcism
    • 18th Century: Pinel and his reforms
    • 19th Century: Dorethea Dix
    • Early 20th Century: The large mental institution
    • Late 20th Century to present: psychoactive drugs and community-based outpatient therapy
• PSYCHOTHERAPY (p. 552)
  • Types of Therapists
    • Clinical psychologist (PhD or PsyD)
    • Counseling psychologist (Phd or PsyD)
      • Currently, some psychologists have prescription privileges in Louisiana, New Mexico, and Illinois.
    • Psychiatrist (Medical doctor, MD)
    • Psychoanalyst, MD plus training at a psychoanalytic institute)
    • Social worker (MSW or rarely, DSW)
  • Assessing Psychopathology
    • Answer three questions:
      • Does the client have a problem?
      • If yes, what is the problem?
      • How should the problem be treated?
• INTERSECTION: Clinical Psychology and Perception: Can We Predict the Therapeutic Alliance from How a Client Sounds? (p.555)
• Four features of speech were analyzed:
  • Fundamental frequency
  • Pauses
  • Speech rate
  • Jitter
• Pausing and Jitter indicated increase client stress.
• Psychoanalytic Therapy
  • Derived from Freud's approach
    • Search for repressed feelings, thoughts, and motives
    • Use free association and symbolic dream analysis
• Transference and Countertransference
  • Nature of therapy
  • Ethics of therapy
    • Transference
      • Judd Hirsh and Timothy Hutton in Ordinary People, notice how Hutton's character is screaming at Hirsch's therapist as if he were the dead brother who drowned. That's transference. Click HERE
    • Countertransference
      • Therapists are humans so they, too, develop emotional responses to their clients or patients. However, they are taught to not respond to those emotions.
• Humanistic and Client-Centered (Cognitive Therapies)
  • Clients vs patients
  • Reject medical model
  • Partnership of therapist and client
  • Client's self-understanding is key
  • Genuineness essential for human growth.
• Behavioral Therapy
  • From learning and conditioning theory
  • Attack symptoms, not causes
  • Counterconditioning
  • Systematic desensitization-works well for phobias
  • Extinction
  • Flooding
  • Implosive therapy
  • Token economies
  • Modeling
  • Aversive conditioning-client agrees to suffer bad consequences of behavior (e.g., taking antabuse, a drug that would make client vomit after imbibing alcohol.
  • Popular form of therapy today
• Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy
  • Based on Bandura's cognitive learning approach
  • Ellis' Rational-Emotive therapy
    • Irrational Beliefs
      • Both Ellis's and Beck's theories seek to disabuse clients of their automatic irrational beliefs
      • Look at the list of irrational beliefs. Do you possess any of those?
  • Beck's therapy
  • Stress inoculation
  • Social problem solving
  • Scaling-rating self on intensity of a stimulus (e.g., fear)
    • Emergency room staff might ask you to scale the level of pain you are suffering on a scale of 1 to 10
    • Note that pain is subjective, meaning that different people will report pain in their own way.

• Effectiveness of Therapy
  • Therapy works, but many factors interact:
    • diagnosis match to actual treatment
    • the therapist
    • the client
    • the therapeutic alliance
• BIOLOGICAL THERAPIES (p. 562)
  • Biotherapies
    • Psychosurgery (not commonly practiced)
    • Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)
      • Sets off a temporary seizure in the brain
    • Drug therapies
      • Lithium for bipolar disorders
• SOCIOCULTURAL APPROACHES AND ISSUES IN TREATMENT (p. 567)
  • Group therapy
    • Clients meet as a group and share personal information
    • Six factors in group therapy:
      • information
      • universality
      • altruism
      • positive group feedback
      • development of social skills
      • interpersonal learning
  • AA and Therapy
    • Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step plan
    • Worldwide
    • Creates new life structure for members
    • Meetings can be found anywhere (even in Magnolia)
      • FYI, my brother has been sober for over 40 years.
      • He attended the local meetings when visiting and was surprised that everyone at the meeting knew me. (Not because I was a member, but because Magnolia is a small town
      • He lives near Washington, DC
    • Secret AA code: "Are you a friend of Bill's?"
      • So, if a stranger asks you that question and you seem clueless, that's the end of that conversation.
      • But, if you know the code you know that the stranger is asking you about AA and needs information about meetings and the location.
      • "Bill" refers to Bill Wilson (1895-1971), the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.
• THERAPIES AND HEALTH AND WELLNESS (p. 574)