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Here is an essay on ‘Psychotherapy’ for class 11 and 12. Find paragraphs, long and short essays on ‘Psychotherapy’ especially written for school and college students.
Essay on Psychotherapy
Essay Contents:
- Essay on the Definition of Psychotherapy
- Essay on the Features of Psychotherapies
- Essay on the Types of Psychotherapy
- Essay on the Forms of Psychotherapy
Essay # 1. Definition of Psychotherapy:
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Psychotherapy is the development of a trusting relationship, which allows free communication and leads to understanding, integration and acceptance of self. Meltzoff and Kornreich (1970) defined psychotherapy as, “the informed and painful application of techniques derived from established psychological principles by persons qualified through training and experience to understand these principles and to apply these techniques with the intention of assisting individuals to modify such personal characteristics as feelings, values, attitudes and behaviours which are judged by the therapist to be maladaptive.”
Essay # 2. Features of Psychotherapies:
Common Features of Psychotherapies:
a) An intense, emotionally charged relationship, with a person or group.
b) A rationale or myth explaining the distress and methods of dealing with it.
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c) Provision of new information about the future, the source of problem and possible alternatives which hold a hope of relief.
d) Non-specific methods of boosting self- esteem.
e) Provision of successful experiences.
f) Facilitation of emotion arousal
g) It takes place in a locale designated as a place of healing.
1. Common goals:
(a) ‘To enable people to satisfy their legitimate needs for affection, recognition, sense of mastery etc. through helping them to correct maladaptive attitudes and behaviour which impede the attainment of such satisfactions’.
(b) ‘To improve social interactions and reduce distress while at the same time helping people to accept the suffering that is an inevitable aspect of life and when possible to use it in the service of personal growth.’
2. Common factors:
(a) ‘ An intense, emotionally charged, confiding relationship with a helping person’
(b) A healing setting with the presence of symbols of healing.
(c) A rationale or conceptual scheme planning the cause of the patient’s symptoms.
(d) A procedure requiring active participation of both patient and therapist believed by both to be the means for restoring the patient’s health.
3. Shared functions of psychotherapeutic rationales or procedures:
(a) They strengthen the therapeutic relationship
(b) They promote ‘hope for help’ in the patient
(c) They promote cognitive and experimental learning and provide the patient with new ways of understanding his problems and dealing with them.
(d) They facilitate emotional arousal
(e) They give the patient a sense of mastery and success.
(f) They help the patient to work through practice and generalise what he has learnt.
Essay # 3. Types of Psychotherapy:
Psychotherapies are classified according to (Table 34.2):
(a) Depth of Probing in the Unconscious Mind.
I. Superficial or short-term (also known as supportive psychotherapy).
II. Deep or long-term (also known as analytic psychotherapy).
III. Educative (also known as counselling) e.g., group discussions with parents of mentally retarded children.
(b) Number of Patients Treated in any Therapeutic Session:
i. Individual Psychotherapy:
One therapist treats one patient in every session.
ii. Group Psychotherapy:
One therapist treats a group of patients (10 to 12) in every session.
III. Family therapy:
The patient and his family is taken as a unit and the entire family is treated.
(c) Theoretical Formulations Used in Psychotherapy:
(See Table 34.2).
Unwanted Effects of Psychotherapy:
I. Patients may become excessively dependent on therapy or the therapist.
II. Intensive psychotherapy may be distressing to the patient and result in exacerbation of symptoms and deterioration in relationships.
III. Disorders for which physical treatments would be more appropriate e.g., psychotic states or physical illness presenting with mental symptoms, may be missed.
IV. Ineffective psychotherapy wastes time and money, and damages patients morale.
Contraindications:
i. Psychotic patients with severe behaviour disturbances like excitement, assaultive and destructive behaviour, negativism etc. In these patients, psychotherapy may be given after the patient has improved.
ii. Organic psychoses (in acute phase).
iii. Patients who are unmotivated and unwilling to accept it.
iv. Group psychotherapy in hysteria, hypochondriasis etc.
v. Patients who are unlikely to respond e.g., personality disorders (especially antisocial type), malingering etc.
Essay # 4. Forms of Psychotherapy:
i. Supportive Psychotherapy:
It is a form of psychological treatment given to patients with chronic and disabling psychiatric conditions for whom basic change is not seen as a realistic goal. It aims to help the patient maintain or reestablish his or her best possible level of functioning given the limitations of the patient’s illness, personality, native ability and life circumstances.
The main characteristics of supportive psychotherapy are given in Table 34.3.
Indications (Selection Criteria):
The main indications of supportive psychotherapy include:
i. The ‘healthy’ individual faced with overwhelming stress or crises-particularly in the face of trauma or disasters. The relatively healthy candidate for supportive psychotherapy is a well- adapted individual with good social supports and interpersonal relations, flexible defenses and good reality testing who is in acute crisis.
ii. Patient with ego-deficits:
The more typical candidate for supportive psychotherapy has significant deficits in ego functioning (e.g., in psychoses) including:
a. Poor reality testing:
Patient shows an inability to separate fact from fantasy and to reorganize boundaries between the self and others.
b. Poor impulse control:
Such patients need to promptly discharge affects through action which is often destructive to themselves or others.
c. Poor interpersonal relations.
d. Poor balance of affects:
Patients who are overwhelmed by anger or anxiety and those who experience little or no affect of any sort.
e. Lack of ability to sublimate:
These patients are unable to channel energy into creative and socially useful activities.
f. Low capacity for introspection.
g. Low verbal ability.
iii. Other Indications:
Other Indications e.g., Alexithymic patients (those with a striking inability to find words to describe their emotions and a tendency to describe endless situational details or symptoms instead of feelings), Passive patients (who lack the conviction that their efforts, are effective).
Those who derive significant practical benefit (financial or emotional support i.e., secondary gain), patients who are able to relate to the therapist, have past history of good interpersonal relationship, word and educational performance and use leisure time are better suited for supportive therapy.
Techniques:
The important key elements of supportive psychotherapy include:
i. The Interview:
The interview itself can exercise a psychotherapeutic effect that the mere act of a doctor listening carefully to what the patient is saying, picking up verbal and non-verbal cues and enabling the patient to give a full account of his situation and problems can result in a significant improvement.
The important therapeutic factors in the interview technique include the therapist’s ability:
a) To note verbal and nonverbal cues.
b) To avoid using too many direct questions.
c) To ask questions in a sequence from open to closed.
d) To emphasize the importance of understanding the here and now situation.
ii. Reassurance:
Reassurance provided by a therapist equipped to use the therapeutic relationship constructively, able to be both detached and compassionate and skilled in listening and providing information simply and comprehensively is one of the basic elements of the supportive psychotherapy.
Reassurance can be used to good effect to relieve fears, boost self-confidence and promote hope (but to promote a patient’s hopes unreasonably by providing false assurance, or to intervene prematurely before the patient has explained his situation fully should be avoided).
iii. Explanation (Interpretative Comments):
The therapist encourages the provision of explanations of such diverse matters as the nature of the patient’s symptoms, the choice of treatment and the likely outcome.
iv. Guidance and Suggestion:
It involves the provision of direct and indirect advice. The patient is taught how and when to ask for help. Advice may be necessary with regard to particular problems, such as optimal ways of relating to particularly difficult relative or handling a job interview or to general issues such as making contact with members of the opposite sex.
v. Ventilation:
The value of ventilation of feelings within the psychotherapeutic is well accepted. It does seem useful for patients to be able to express emotions such as anger, frustration and despair openly.
vi. Psychodynamic Life Narrative:
It can be used as a supportive interpretation. The narrative is a formulation of the patient’s current difficulties (often a life crisis) as the inevitable product of previous life experiences. It serves to give the patient a sense of control through understanding, to help him or her accept his/her own emotional responses as justifiable and inevitable and to strengthen the patient’s alliance with the therapist.
ii. Re-Educative:
a. In these forms of psychotherapy, deliberate efforts are made, aimed at adjustment, the modification of goals, the relearning of habits and unlearning of habits and attitudes without a direct effort being made to achieve insight into conscious or so-called unconscious conflicts. Such approaches involve an actual remodelling of the patient’s attitudes and behaviour.
b. There is less emphasis on searching for causes than on promoting new and more adaptive forms of behaviour.
c. The objective is the modification of behaviour directly through positive and negative reinforcers with deliberate efforts at environmental readjustment, the liberation of the patient’s own creative potentialities and the promotion of self-development.