Page 241 - DEDU502_GUIDANCE_AND_COUNSELING_ENGLISH

Unit 21: Psychotherapy: Meaning and Process

21.3 Summary Notes

• Psychotherapy is a process focused on helping you heal and learn more constructive ways to
deal with the problems or issues within your life. It can also be a supportive process when
going through a difficult period or under increased stress, such as starting a new career or
going through a divorce.
• Most psychotherapy tends to focus on problem solving and is goal-oriented. That means at the
onset of treatment, yon and your therapist decide upon which specific changes you would like
to make in your life.
• Psychotherapy is most successful when the individual enters therapy on their own and has a
strong desire to change.
• Behavior Therapy
• Cognitive Therapy
• Interpersonal Therapy
• Psychodynamic Therapy
• Family Therapy
• Group Therapy
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about Psychotherapy
• Understanding Different Approaches to Psyc
• Self-Monitoring : This is the first stage of treatment. The person is asked to keep a detailed log
of all of their activities during the day. By examining the list at the next session, the therapist
can see exactly what the-person is doing.
• Cognitive therapy is beased on the theory that much of how we feel is determined by what we
think. Disorders, such as depression, are believed to be the result of faulty thoughts and beliefs.
• Dichotomous Thinking : seeing things as black and white, all or none. This is usually detected
when a person can generate only two choices in a situation.
• Selective Abstraction : focusing only on certain aspects of a situation, usually the most negative.
• Magnification-Minimization : distorting the importance of particular events.
• Identification of Emotion : Helping the person identify what their emotion is and where it is
coming from.
• The theory supporting psychodynamic therapy originated in and is informed by psychoanalytic
theory. There are four major schools of psychoanalytic theory, each of which has influenced
psychodynamic therapy. The four schools are : Freudian, Ego Psychology, Object Relations,
and Self Psychology.
• Self Psychology was founded by Heinz Kohut, M.D., in Chicago during the 1950s. Kohut
observed that the self refers to a person’s perception of his experience of his self, including the
presence or lack of a sense of self-esteem.
• Family therapy views views a person’s symptoms as taking place in the larger context of the
family.
• Increased feedback: Group therapy can provide the patient with feedback from other people.
Getting different perspectives is often helpful in promoting growth and change.

21.4 Keywords

Psychotherapy : The treatment of mental illness by discussing somebody’s problems iwth them
rather than by giving them drugs.

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