Psychology is the study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both conscious and unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feelings, and motives. Psychology is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between the natural and social sciences. Biological psychologists seek an understanding of the emergent properties of brains, linking the discipline to neuroscience. As social scientists, psychologists aim to understand the behavior of individuals and groups.
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.
Clinical psychology is an integration of human science, behavioral science, theory, and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically-based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well-being and personal development. Central to its practice are psychological assessment, clinical formulation, and psychotherapy, although clinical psychologists also engage in research, teaching, consultation, forensic testimony, and program development and administration. In many countries, clinical psychology is a regulated mental health profession.
Integrative psychotherapy is the integration of elements from different schools of psychotherapy in the treatment of a client. Integrative psychotherapy may also refer to the psychotherapeutic process of integrating the personality: uniting the "affective, cognitive, behavioral, and physiological systems within a person".
Person-centered therapy, also known as person-centered psychotherapy, person-centered counseling, client-centered therapy and Rogerian psychotherapy, is a form of psychotherapy developed by psychologist Carl Rogers and colleagues beginning in the 1940s and extending into the 1980s. Person-centered therapy seeks to facilitate a client's actualizing tendency, "an inbuilt proclivity toward growth and fulfillment", via acceptance, therapist congruence (genuineness), and empathic understanding.
The transtheoretical model of behavior change is an integrative theory of therapy that assesses an individual's readiness to act on a new healthier behavior, and provides strategies, or processes of change to guide the individual. The model is composed of constructs such as: stages of change, processes of change, levels of change, self-efficacy, and decisional balance.
Leslie Samuel Greenberg is a Canadian psychologist born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and is one of the originators and primary developers of Emotion-Focused Therapy for individuals and couples. He is a professor emeritus of psychology at York University in Toronto, and also director of the Emotion-Focused Therapy Clinic in Toronto. His research has addressed questions regarding empathy, psychotherapy process, the therapeutic alliance, and emotion in human functioning.
Although modern, scientific psychology is often dated from the 1879 opening of the first psychological clinic by Wilhelm Wundt, attempts to create methods for assessing and treating mental distress existed long before. The earliest recorded approaches were a combination of religious, magical and/or medical perspectives. Early examples of such psychological thinkers included Patañjali, Padmasambhava, Rhazes, Avicenna and Rumi.
Emotionally focused therapy and emotion-focused therapy (EFT) are a set of related approaches to psychotherapy with individuals, couples, or families. EFT approaches include elements of experiential therapy, systemic therapy, and attachment theory. EFT is usually a short-term treatment. EFT approaches are based on the premise that human emotions are connected to human needs, and therefore emotions have an innately adaptive potential that, if activated and worked through, can help people change problematic emotional states and interpersonal relationships. Emotion-focused therapy for individuals was originally known as process-experiential therapy, and it is still sometimes called by that name.
A clinical formulation, also known as case formulation and problem formulation, is a theoretically-based explanation or conceptualisation of the information obtained from a clinical assessment. It offers a hypothesis about the cause and nature of the presenting problems and is considered an adjunct or alternative approach to the more categorical approach of psychiatric diagnosis. In clinical practice, formulations are used to communicate a hypothesis and provide framework for developing the most suitable treatment approach. It is most commonly used by clinical psychologists and is deemed to be a core component of that profession. Mental health nurses, social workers, and some psychiatrists may also use formulations.
Common factors theory, a theory guiding some research in clinical psychology and counseling psychology, proposes that different approaches and evidence-based practices in psychotherapy and counseling share common factors that account for much of the effectiveness of a psychological treatment. This is in contrast to the view that the effectiveness of psychotherapy and counseling is best explained by specific or unique factors that are suited to treatment of particular problems.
Future-oriented therapy (FOT) and future-directed therapy (FDT) are approaches to psychotherapy that place greater emphasis on the future than on the past or present.
Jefferson Morris Fish is a professor emeritus of psychology at St. John's University in New York City, where he previously served as Chair of the Department of Psychology and as Director of the PhD Program in Clinical Psychology.
James O. Prochaska was professor of psychology at the University of Rhode Island. He was the lead developer of the Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change (TTM) beginning in 1983.
The Partners for Change Outcome Management System (PCOMS) is a behavioral health outcomes management system for counseling and therapy services developed by Barry Duncan and Scott Miller. The therapeutic approach was inspired by Michael J. Lambert’s research regarding the use of consumer feedback during the therapeutic process with the Outcome Questionnaire 45.2 (OQ) and is designed to be a briefer method to measure therapeutic outcome.
A decisional balance sheet or decision balance sheet is a tabular method for representing the pros and cons of different choices and for helping someone decide what to do in a certain circumstance. It is often used in working with ambivalence in people who are engaged in behaviours that are harmful to their health, as part of psychological approaches such as those based on the transtheoretical model of change, and in certain circumstances in motivational interviewing.
Carol D. Goodheart is an American psychologist and a past president of the American Psychological Association (APA). Goodheart worked as a nurse before entering psychology. She completed a doctorate in counseling psychology from Rutgers University. While serving as the 2010 APA president, Goodheart supported the Presidential Task Force on Advancing Practice and the Presidential Task Force on Caregivers. Goodheart is in private practice in Princeton, New Jersey.
Gerald Paul Koocher is an American psychologist and past president of the American Psychological Association (APA). His interests include ethics, clinical child psychology and the study of scientific misconduct. He is Dean Emeritus Simmons University and also holds an academic appointment at Harvard Medical School. Koocher has over 300 publications including 16 books and has edited three scholarly journals including Ethics & Behavior which he founded. Koocher was implicated as an author of the so-called "torture memos" that allowed psychologists to participate in torture during interrogations in the Hoffman Report, an APA investigation into psychologists' involvement in interrogation at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Jay Lebow is an American family psychologist who is senior scholar at the Family Institute at Northwestern University, clinical professor at Northwestern University and is editor-in-chief of the journal Family Process. He is board certified by the American Board of Professional Psychology. Lebow is known for his publications and presentations about the practice of couple and family therapy, integrative psychotherapy, the relationship of research and psychotherapy practice, and psychotherapy in difficult divorce, as well as for his role as an editor in the fields of couple and family therapy and family science. He is the author or editor of 13 books and has written 200 journal articles and book chapters.
Beverly Greene is a professor in the Department of Psychology at St. John's University. She is a clinical psychologist known for her work on sexism, racism, and analyzing the intersectionality of social identities. As a specialist in the psychology of women and of gender and racial issues in the practice of psychotherapy, Greene has also created many public health frameworks for understanding mental health in marginalized communities. She is the author of close to 100 psychological literature publications. Greene is involved with the Association for Women in Psychology and the Society for the Psychology of Women. She is one of sixteen women to have received the Distinguished Publication Award (DPA) from the Association for Women in Psychology in 2008.
