Abnormal Psychology: Humanistic Theory, Behavioural Therapy, Solution Focused Brief Therapy

Humanistic Theory in Abnormal Psychology

Discuss about the Abnormal Psychology for Humanistic Theory.

The humanistic theory was first developed in the year 1950 in USA by Carl Rogers. In this type of therapy in counselling, the therapist mainly places importance on the client holding whom he believes to hold the utmost power of recovery from a current strenuous situation (Schneider, Pierson and Bugental 2014)  . This therapy suggests that clients can be helped in a better way or can be handled properly if they are encouraged in such a way so that they can focus on their current understanding of themselves. This therapy strictly discourages unconscious motives and someone’s else’s version and interpretation of the situation (Dwairy 2015).

Roger believes that an individual behave as they perceive their situation because no one else has the capability to perceive the way as the patient does. This theory believes that every climate has a remarkable ability in terms of personal growth as well as for self-healing purposes that will ultimately help the person for self-healing. Therefore, he believed in placing the entire emphasis on the current perception of then person and also depended upon the notion of the patient’s self and self-concept (Angus et al. 2015). The patient has the utmost strength to include organised, consistent set of beliefs and also perceptions about himself. By the above lines, one mainly places importance on the self-concept which can be described as the main and also the central component of the total experience that not only emphasises on the perception of world but also about oneself (Margolin 2017).

The therapist mainly acts as a friend or a guide who listens and encourages at a level equal to that of the client. By this it means, the client would consciously decide and take steps about what is wrong and thereby what could be done by her to make it right. The therapist mainly help their patients by helping their clients to achieve personal growth which would eventually lead to her self-actualize (Cooper et al. 2013).

The therapists mainly believe in congruence or genuineness. By this, it is meant that the therapies are authentic having their internal and external experience on the same level. They give the client allowance to experience them as they are unlike the behaviourists who acts as blank screen and reveal much less. Another important criterion is unconditional positive regard. It might happen that the therapist does not like some of the client’s action but will always be careful to accept the patient as they are by maintain a positive attitude towards them (Cooper et al. 2013). The third criterion is empathy that is showing compassion to the client. He should be able to understand what the clients; emotion and feelings sensitively and accurately. Therefore, the therapist by maintain the criteria can help a patient until the client can establish what is right and fulfilling for their survival.

Criteria for Humanistic Therapy

This therapy is often defined as the action based therapy (proposed by B F Skinner and Joseph Wolpe) where the behaviourist mainly looks for fostering positive changes. He tries to eradicate maladaptive or unwanted behaviour. The behaviourist mainly relies on the fact that a behaviour which is learned in the past due to some unfortunate unavoidable circumstances can be unlearned via this type of therapy (Huppert et al. 2014). It does not entirely prioritise past experience like psychoanalytic theory but uses part of it to evaluate the past situation to understand the background of the unwanted behaviour learning and thereby modify the learning through positive behaviour.

Classical condition refers to the number of techniques which are applied to bring out the best behavioural change. Flooding is the main procedure that is conducted especially in case of phobias by exposing the client to intense situation that he is afraid of so in order to make him learn that it does not result in negative effect (Dobson and Dobson 2016). Systemic desensitisation is the gradual process where the therapist usually applies relaxation techniques to a list of fearful situation to experience positive outcomes. He will the help to pair the newly experienced relaxation behaviour with that of fear inducing item to get best outcomes. The aversion theory mainly depends on the pairing of an undesirable behaviour with that of certain stimulus which are aversive. This results in reducing the attachment of the patient with the unwanted behaviour after a few days (Falloon 2015).

The other type is the operant conditioning method where the behaviourist may use the techniques of positive reinforcement, punishment and as well modelling which ultimately helps in modifying the patient’s behaviour. The first type of technique in this type is the implementation of the positive reinforcement which helps in providing tokens to the clients. This tokens are usually made to exchange for desires items when someone exhibits positive behaviour (Haiffat et al. 2012). The therapist can also go for contingency management where a written consent is exchanged among the therapist and client which contains goals, penalties and also rewards. Modelling helps the client to look for a particular individual as a role model and altering behaviours in order to match the behaviour of the role model. Extinction technique is applied by the therapist where he works by removal of any particular type of reinforcement to behaviour that is associating a negative output with a behaviour so that the client can be removed away from the situation (Burns et al. 2014).

Behavioural Therapy in Abnormal Psychology

Thereby by applying the above-mentioned techniques, a therapist can alter the behaviour of the patient towards betterment.

Solution focused brief theory is also called the SFBT theory (Proposed by Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg) . This theory is goal oriented which does not pay significance to the issues or the symptoms that are forcing the patient to undertake counselling. This therapy focuses on an individual’s present and also future circumstances in place of any sort of past experiences that have been the main causal factors of any disorder (Pichot and Dolan 2014). The concerned therapist encourages the client to form a vison for the future and at the same time also helps the m while they determine the various resources, skills as well as the client’s capabilities to win that vison successfully (Gingerich and Peterson 2013).

In this type of therapy, the therapist helps the patient in finding tools which help the patient to cope with the various barriers and the challenges that he is facing and also help to manage the symptoms and issues arising from various negative aspects of life. The therapist believe that the clients already possess the skills that they would need to bring out the positive outcome but remains unable to recognise them and implement them successfully. Here the therapist helps them to identify such skills and clarify their objective skills and goals (Bond et al. 2016). They help their clients to realise what they want for their future and then work collaboratively to bring out the best outcomes.

In this type of therapy, the practitioners ask specific types of questions like the first category being the coping questions. These questions help the client to realise the coping abilities and the different skills that he has, which he can use to bring the positive results. This is like ‘how are you managing such a difficult task for such long period of time? ‘The nest set of questions are the miracle questions which help the patients to visualise a future which are free from any negative effects that the client is facing now (Murphy 2015). This would help the person to realise how their lives would have been different if such issues never existed in the client’s life. This can be like ‘what would have been your life like if this situation never arose?’ The other category is the scaling questions which helps the client to assess her present conditions and what changes would she like to have. This makes the client regain back her wishes, being hopeful with motivation and confidence to turn around and try to make life a happy place (Guterman 2014).

Techniques of Behavioural Therapy

I love my work as a care practitioner and is practicing my skills for about a year. During my practicing period, I have come across a various number of clients with different number of issues. I have been glad to handle them with my critical thinking ability and my knowledge of the different therapies that I have applied in my counselling techniques.

Most of the patient who visit my Clinique are mostly clients suffering from acute depression and mood swings through bipolar disorder. Mental patients are more in number than other patients who come for finding solutions. There are also patients who have faced severe violence, abuse or suffering from depression due to separation and similar instances of personal issues. While listening to the patients and treating them with my expertise, I have found that out of the different theories, the solution focused brief theory is found to be the most helpful in many cases.

I usually prefer the solution focused brief theory for a number of reasons which I need to discuss. First reason being that the other two theories like the humanistic theory and the behavioural theory are both time consuming. Both the theories engage the clients for a long period of time and the patients ‘condition seem to deteriorate more within the time period. Moreover, the first therapy depends solely on the clients ‘inner strength to realise situations which takes a long period of time and may not give successful results who have been timid through their livelihood. To gain back their confidence through self-realisation and self-regulation is very difficult.

The behavioural therapy is also not preferred by me because the time required for successful modification as well as implementation of positive behaviour takes a long time and clients often become restless. The time frame for this approach is also quite long and variable that questions on the ability of the therapy to provide successful result to the client.

The resources that are wasted by the therapies are not profitable in sense that it does not yield a better result to the patient as the resources allocated is used for. Therefore, I prefer the solution focused brief therapy as I have seen this therapy to provide the best results within a very short span of time. Moreover, resources utilised are also much restricted that makes this process more helpful. Besides, this therapy dwells little in the past giving very few chances to the client to feel depressed or hyper. In this therapy, I prefer the category of coping questions as this makes the client fill refreshed and also help to gather self-esteem to cope with present situations. I also like the scaling category questions as it is very accurate and helps the client to realise the different positive aspects separately. However, I do not prefer the miracle category questions like ‘what would you like to change in your life to help yourselves’? This sometimes make the person sad thinking his or her life is dreadful to live where there is nothing she can do about it.

Therefore, as the practitioner I like the SFBT and try to implement this in my technique

References:

Angus, L., Watson, J.C., Elliott, R., Schneider, K. and Timulak, L., 2015. Humanistic psychotherapy research 1990–2015: From methodological innovation to evidence-supported treatment outcomes and beyond. Psychotherapy Research, 25(3), pp.330-347.

Bond, C., Woods, K., Humphrey, N., Symes, W. and Green, L., 2013. Practitioner review: The effectiveness of solution focused brief therapy with children and families: A systematic and critical evaluation of the literature from 1990–2010. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 54(7), pp.707-723.

Burns, A.M., Erickson, D.H. and Brenner, C.A., 2014. Cognitive-behavioral therapy for medication-resistant psychosis: a meta-analytic review. Psychiatric Services, 65(7), pp.874-880.

Cooper, M., O’Hara, M., Schmid, P.F. and Bohart, A. eds., 2013. The handbook of person-centred psychotherapy and counselling. Palgrave Macmillan.

Dobson, D. and Dobson, K.S., 2016. Evidence-based practice of cognitive-behavioral therapy. Guilford Publications.

Dwairy, M., 2015. Culture Analysis. In From Psycho-Analysis to Culture-Analysis (pp. 42-61). Palgrave Macmillan UK.

Falloon, I.R. ed., 2015. Handbook of behavioural family therapy. Routledge.

Gingerich, W.J. and Peterson, L.T., 2013. Effectiveness of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy A Systematic Qualitative Review of Controlled Outcome Studies. Research on Social Work Practice, 23(3), pp.266-283.

Guterman, J.T., 2014. Mastering the art of solution-focused counseling. John Wiley & Sons.

Høifødt, R.S., Lillevoll, K.R., Griffiths, K.M., Wilsgaard, T., Eisemann, M., Waterloo, K. and Kolstrup, N., 2013. The clinical effectiveness of web-based cognitive behavioral therapy with face-to-face therapist support for depressed primary care patients: randomized controlled trial. Journal of medical Internet research, 15(8), p.e153.

Huppert, J.D., Kivity, Y., Barlow, D.H., Gorman, J.M., Shear, M.K. and Woods, S.W., 2014. Therapist effects and the outcome–alliance correlation in cognitive behavioral therapy for panic disorder with agoraphobia. Behaviour research and therapy, 52, pp.26-34.

Margolin, L., 2017. Rogerian Psychotherapy and the Problem of Power: A Foucauldian Interpretation. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, p.0022167816687640.

Murphy, J.J., 2015. Solution-focused counseling in schools. John Wiley & Sons.

Pichot, T. and Dolan, Y.M., 2014. Solution-focused brief therapy: Its effective use in agency settings. Routledge.

Schneider, K.J., Pierson, J.F. and Bugental, J.F. eds., 2014. The handbook of humanistic psychology: Theory, research, and practice. Sage Publications.