Psychotherapy is the use of psychological methods, particularly when based on regular personal interaction, to help a person change behavior, increase happiness, and overcome problems. Psychotherapy aims to improve an individual's well-being and mental health, to resolve or mitigate troublesome behaviors, beliefs, compulsions, thoughts, or emotions, and to improve relationships and social skills. Numerous types of psychotherapy have been designed either for individual adults, families, or children and adolescents. Certain types of psychotherapy are considered evidence-based for treating some diagnosed mental disorders; other types have been criticized as pseudoscience.
Transactional analysis is a psychoanalytic theory and method of therapy wherein social interactions are analyzed to determine the ego state of the communicator as a basis for understanding behavior. In transactional analysis, the communicator is taught to alter the ego state as a way to solve emotional problems. The method deviates from Freudian psychoanalysis, which focuses on increasing awareness of the contents of subconsciously held ideas. Eric Berne developed the concept and paradigm of transactional analysis in the late 1950s.
Psychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the scientific study of human mental functions and behavior. Occasionally, in addition or opposition to employing the scientific method, it also relies on symbolic interpretation and critical analysis, although these traditions have tended to be less pronounced than in other social sciences, such as sociology. Psychologists study phenomena such as perception, cognition, emotion, personality, behavior, and interpersonal relationships. Some, especially depth psychologists, also study the unconscious mind.
Psychosynthesis is an approach to psychology that expands the boundaries of the field by identifying a deeper center of identity, which is the postulate of the Self. It considers each individual unique in terms of purpose in life, and places value on the exploration of human potential. The approach combines spiritual development with psychological healing by including the life journey of an individual or their unique path to self-realization.
Rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT), previously called rational therapy and rational emotive therapy, is an active-directive, philosophically and empirically based psychotherapy, the aim of which is to resolve emotional and behavioral problems and disturbances and to help people to lead happier and more fulfilling lives.
A dysfunctional family is a family in which conflict, misbehavior and often child neglect or abuse on the part of individual parents occur continuously and regularly. Children that grow up in such families may think such a situation is normal. Dysfunctional families are primarily a result of two adults, one typically overtly abusive and the other codependent, and may also be affected by substance abuse or other forms of addiction, or sometimes by an untreated mental illness. Parents having grown up in a dysfunctional family may over-correct or emulate their own parents. In some cases, the dominant parent will abuse or neglect their children and the other parent will not object, misleading a child to assume blame.
The Internal Family Systems Model (IFS) is an integrative approach to individual psychotherapy developed by Richard C. Schwartz in the 1980s. It combines systems thinking with the view that the mind is made up of relatively discrete subpersonalities, each with its own unique viewpoint and qualities. IFS uses systems psychology, particularly as developed for family therapy, to understand how these collections of subpersonalities are organized.
Covert incest is a form of non-physical sexual abuse. The term could also refer to enmeshment, although the failure to separate the two have been pointed out as problematic.
Cognitive therapy (CT) is a type of psychotherapy developed by American psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck. CT is one therapeutic approach within the larger group of cognitive behavioral therapies (CBT) and was first expounded by Beck in the 1960s. Cognitive therapy is based on the cognitive model, which states that thoughts, feelings and behavior are all connected, and that individuals can move toward overcoming difficulties and meeting their goals by identifying and changing unhelpful or inaccurate thinking, problematic behavior, and distressing emotional responses. This involves the individual working with the therapist to develop skills for testing and changing beliefs, identifying distorted thinking, relating to others in different ways, and changing behaviors. A cognitive case conceptualization is developed by the cognitive therapist as a guide to understand the individual's internal reality, select appropriate interventions and identify areas of distress.
The developmental needs meeting strategy (DNMS) is a psychotherapy approach developed by Shirley Jean Schmidt. It is designed to treat adults with psychological trauma wounds and with attachment wounds. The DNMS is an ego state therapy based on the assumption that the degree to which developmental needs were not adequately met is the degree to which a client may be stuck in childhood. This model aims to identify ego states that are stuck in the past and help them get unstuck by remediating those unmet developmental needs. The processing starts with the DNMS therapist guiding a patient to mobilize three internal Resource ego states: a Nurturing Adult Self, a Protective Adult Self, and a Spiritual Core Self. The therapist then guides these three Resources to gently help wounded child ego states get unstuck from the past by meeting their unmet developmental needs, helping them process through painful emotions, and by establishing an emotional bond. The relationship wounded child parts have with these Resources is considered the primary agent for change.
Emotionally focused therapy and emotion-focused therapy (EFT) are related humanistic approaches to psychotherapy that aim to resolve emotional and relationship issues with individuals, couples, and families. These therapies combine experiential therapy techniques, including person-centered and Gestalt therapies, with systemic therapy and attachment theory. The central premise is that emotions influence cognition, motivate behavior, and are strongly linked to needs. The goals of treatment include transforming maladaptive behaviors, such as emotional avoidance, and developing awareness, acceptance, expression, and regulation of emotion and understanding of relationships. EFT is usually a short-term treatment.
Attachment-based psychotherapy is a psychoanalytic psychotherapy that is informed by attachment theory.
The self-schema refers to a long lasting and stable set of memories that summarize a person's beliefs, experiences and generalizations about the self, in specific behavioral domains. A person may have a self-schema based on any aspect of themselves as a person, including physical characteristics, personality traits and interests, as long as they consider that aspect of their self to be important to their own self-definition. When someone has a schema about themselves they hyper focus on a trait about themselves and believe what they say to themselves about that specific trait. A self schema can be good or bad depending on what that person talks to themselves about and in what kind of tone.
A subpersonality is, in humanistic psychology, transpersonal psychology and ego psychology, a personality mode that activates to allow a person to cope with certain types of psychosocial situations. Similar to a complex, the mode may include thoughts, feelings, actions, physiology and other elements of human behavior to self-present a particular mode that works to negate particular psychosocial situations. American transpersonal philosopher Ken Wilber and English humanistic psychologist John Rowan suggested that the average person has about a dozen subpersonalities.
Identified patient (IP) is a clinical term often used in family therapy discussion. It describes one family member in a dysfunctional family who is used as an expression of the family's authentic inner conflicts. As a family system is dynamic, the overt symptoms of an identified patient draw attention away from the "elephants in the living room no one can talk about" which need to be discussed. If covert abuse occurs between family members, the overt symptoms can draw attention away from the perpetrators.
Schema therapy was developed by Jeffrey E. Young for use in treatment of personality disorders and chronic DSM Axis I disorders, such as when patients fail to respond or relapse after having been through other therapies. Schema therapy is an integrative psychotherapy combining theory and techniques from previously existing therapies, including cognitive behavioral therapy, psychoanalytic object relations theory, attachment theory, and Gestalt therapy.
The inner critic or critical inner voice is a concept used in popular psychology and psychotherapy to refer to a subpersonality that judges and demeans a person.
Enmeshment is a concept in psychology and psychotherapy introduced by Salvador Minuchin to describe families where personal boundaries are diffused, sub-systems undifferentiated, and over-concern for others leads to a loss of autonomous development. According to this hypothesis, by being enmeshed in parental needs, trapped in a discrepant role function, a child may lose their capacity for self-direction; their own distinctiveness, under the weight of "psychic incest"; and, if family pressures increase, may end up becoming the identified patient or family scapegoat.
Lucia Capacchione was an Italian-American psychologist, art therapist, former graphic designer and a writer who has been bestseller of twenty-two books based on child therapy and self-help, including The Creative Journal (1979) and Recovery of Your Inner Child (1991). She discovered the use of 'writing and drawing with the non-dominant hand' method in art therapy, which she first mentioned it in her work The Power of Your Other Hand (1988). She was the director of Head Start program during the period of President Johnson's war on poverty. A long-time member of American Art Therapy Association and International Expressive Arts Therapy Association, she was also a consultant to Walt Disney Imagineering from 1983 till 1993. Due to medical complications that lead to neurological imbalance Lucia died by suicide on November 28, 2022.
