Further Information on:
Psychoanalytic
Psychoanalysis is a body of ideas developed by Austrian Physician Sigmund Freud and continued by others. It is primarily devoted to the study of human psychological functioning and behavior, although it also can be applied to societies.
Psychoanalysis has three applications:
1.) a method of investigation of the mind;
2.) a systematized set of theories about human behaviour;
3.) a method of treatment of psychological or emotional illness.
Under the broad umbrella of psychoanalysis there are at least twenty-two different theoretical orientations regarding the underlying theory of understanding of human mentation and human development. The various approaches in treatment called "psychoanalytic" vary as much as the different theories do. In addition, the term refers to a method of studying child development.
Freudian psychoanalysis refers to a specific type of treatment in which the "analysand" (analytic patient) verbalizes thoughts, including free associations, fantasies, and dreams, from which the analyst formulates the unconscious conflicts causing the patient's symptoms and character problems, and interprets them for the patient to create insight for resolution of the problems.
The specifics of the analyst's interventions typically include confronting and clarifying the patient's pathological defenses, wishes and guilt. Through the analysis of conflicts, including those contributing to resistance and those involving transference onto the analyst of distorted reactions, psychoanalytic treatment can clarify how patients unconsciously are their own worst enemies: how unconscious, symbolic reactions that have been stimulated by experience are causing symptoms.
CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy)
Cognitive behavioral therapy (or cognitive behavior therapy, CBT) is a psychotherapeutic approach that aims to influence dysfunctional emotions, behaviors and cognitions through a goal-oriented, systematic procedure. CBT can be seen as an umbrella term for a number of psychological techniques that share a theoretical basis in behavioristic learning theory and cognitive psychology.
There is empirical evidence that CBT is effective for the treatment of a variety of problems, including mood, anxiety, personality, eating, substance abuse, and psychotic disorders . Treatment is often brief, and time-limited. CBT is used in individual therapy as well as group settings, and the techniques are often adapted for self-help applications. Some CBT therapies are more orientated towards predominantly cognitive interventions, while others are more behaviorally oriented.
CBT was primarily developed through a merging of behavior therapy with cognitive therapy. While rooted in rather different theories, these two traditions found common ground in focusing on the "here and now", and on alleviating symptoms. Many CBT treatment programs for specific disorders have been evaluated for efficacy and effectiveness; the health-care trend of evidence-based treatment, where specific treatments for symptom-based diagnoses are recommended, has favored CBT over other approaches such as psychodynamic treatments. In the United Kingdom, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence recommends CBT as the treatment of choice for a number of mental health difficulties, including post-traumatic stress disorder, OCD, bulimia nervosa and clinical depression.
Psychodynamic
Psychodynamic psychotherapy is a form of depth psychology, the primary focus of which is to reveal the unconscious content of a client's psyche in an effort to alleviate psychic tension. In this way, it is similar to psychoanalysis, however, psychodynamic therapy tends to be more brief and less intensive than psychoanalysis. It also relies on the interpersonal relationship between client and therapist more than other forms of depth psychology. In terms of approach, this form of therapy also tends to be more eclectic than others, taking techniques from a variety of sources, rather than relying on a single system of intervention. It is a focus that has been used in individual psychotherapy, group psychotherapy, family therapy, and to understand and work with institutional and organizational contexts.
Existential psychotherapy
Existential psychotherapy is partly based on the existential belief that human beings are alone in the world.[citation needed] This feeling of aloneness leads to feelings of meaninglessness which can be overcome only by creating one's own values and meanings. Existential psychotherapy suggests that in making our own choices we assume full responsibility for the results and blame no one but ourselves if the result is less than what was desired. The psychotherapist helps his or her patients/clients along this path: to discover why the patient/client is overburdened by the anxieties of aloneness and meaninglessness, to find new and better ways to manage these anxieties, to make new and healthy choices, and to emerge from therapy as a free and sound human being.
Humanistic psychology
Humanistic psychology is a school of psychology that emerged in the 1950s in reaction to both behaviorism and psychoanalysis. It is explicitly concerned with the human dimension of psychology and the human context for the development of psychological theory.
Brief Therapy
Brief therapy is an umbrella term for a variety of approaches to psychotherapy. It differs from other schools of therapy in that it emphasises (1) a focus on a specific problem and (2) direct intervention. In brief therapy, the therapist takes responsibility for working more pro-actively with the client in order to treat clinical and subjective conditions faster. It also emphasizes precise observation, utilization of natural resources, and temporary suspension of disbelief to consider new perspectives and multiple viewpoints.
Rather than the formal analysis of historical causes of distress, the primary approach of brief therapy is to help the client to view the present from a wider context and to utilize more functional understandings (not necessarily at a conscious level). By becoming aware of these new understandings, successful clients will de facto undergo spontaneous and generative change.
Brief therapy is often highly strategic, exploratory, and solution-based rather than problem-oriented. It is less concerned with how a problem arose than with the current factors sustaining it and preventing change. Brief therapists do not adhere to one "correct" approach, but rather accept that there being many paths, any of which may or may not in combination turn out to be ultimately beneficial.
Systemic Therapy
Systemic therapy is a school of psychology which seeks to address people not on individual level, as had been the focus of earlier forms of therapy, but as people in relationship, dealing with the interactions of groups and their interactional patterns and dynamics.
Systemic therapy has its roots in family therapy, or more precisely family systems therapy as it later came to be known. In particular, systemic therapy traces its roots to the Milan school of Mara Selvini Palazzoli, but also derives from the work of Salvador Minuchin, Murray Bowen, Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy, as well as Virginia Satir and Jay Haley from MRI in Palo Alto. These early schools of family therapy represented therapeutic adaptations of the larger interdisciplinary field of systems theory which first originated in the fields of biology and physiology.
Early forms of systemic therapy were based on cybernetics which is the study and control of complex technical systems. In the 1970s this understanding of systems theory was central to the structural (Minuchin) and strategic (Haley, Selvini Palazzoli) schools of family therapy which would later develop into systemic therapy. In the light of postmodern critique, the notion that one could control systems or say objectively “what is” came increasingly into question. Based largely on the work of anthropologists Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead, this resulted in a shift towards what is known as “second order cybernetics” which acknowledges the influence of the subjective observer in any study, essentially applying the principles of cybernetics to cybernetics – examining the examination. As a result, the focus of systemic therapy (ca. 1980 and forward) has moved away from a modernist model of linear causality and understanding of reality as objective, to a postmodern understanding of reality as socially and linguistically constructed.
This has a direct impact on the praxis of systemic therapy which approaches problems practically rather than analytically, i.e. it does not attempt to determine past causes as does the psychoanalytic approach, nor does it assign diagnosis (who is sick, who is a victim), rather systemic therapy seeks instead to identify stagnant patterns of behavior in groups of people such as a family, and address those patterns directly, irrespective of analysis of cause. A key point here of this postmodern perspective then is not a denial of absolutes, but far more a humility and recognition on the part of the therapist that they do hold the power to change people or systems, rather the systemic therapist's roll is to help systems to change themselves by introducing creative “nudges”,
“Systemic therapy neither attempts a 'treatment of causes' nor of symptoms, rather it gives living systems nudges that help them to develop new patterns together, taking on a new organizational structure that allows growth.”
Thus systemic therapy differs from analytic forms of therapy, including psychoanalytic or psychodynamic forms of family therapy (for example the work of Horst Eberhard Richter) in systemic therapy's focus on practically addressing current relationship patterns rather than analyzing causes such as subconscious impulses or childhood trauma. Systemic therapy also differs from family systems therapy in that it addresses other living systems (i.e. groups of people) in addition to the family, for example businesses. In addition to families and business, the systemic approach is increasingly being implemented in the fields of education, politics, psychiatry, social work, and family medicine.
Transpersonal Psychology
Transpersonal psychology is a recent development of psychology called the fourth wave of psychology. It is a school of psychology that studies the transpersonal, self-transcendent or spiritual aspects of the human experience, unlike the other first three waves of psychology, "psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and humanistic psychology" which more or less deny it. Hence, because it studies the transpersonal side as well which other psychology ignores or do not have access to, it is called the most integrated complete psychology, a positive psychology par excellence. From personality to transpersonality,mind to meditation, neuroscience to Nirvana it is a complete wholesome science for all round development and treatment.
A short definition from the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology suggests that transpersonal psychology "is concerned with the study of humanity’s highest potential, and with the recognition, understanding, and realization of unitive, spiritual, and transcendent states of consciousness" (Lajoie and Shapiro, 1992:91). Issues considered in transpersonal psychology include spiritual self-development, peak experiences, mystical experiences, systemic trance and other metaphysical experiences of living.
Transpersonal psychology developed from earlier schools of psychology including psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and humanistic psychology. Transpersonal psychology attempts to describe and integrate the experience of mysticism within modern psychological theory. Types of mystical experience examined vary greatly but include religious conversion, altered states of consciousness, trance and other spiritual practices. Although Carl Jung and others explored aspects of the spiritual and transpersonal in their work, Miller (1998: 541-542) notes that Western psychology has had a tendency to ignore the spiritual dimension of the human psyche. |