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Objectives
• Introduction to psychotherapy
• Psychological Defense Mechanisms
• Understanding transference, countertransference and therapeutic alliance
• Review of common psychotherapies
INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOTHERAPY
Why do psychotherapy?
What is Psychotherapy ?
“The attempt to relieve suffering and psychological disability by inducing changes in patients’ attitudes and behavior”
Frank JD, Frank JB Persuasion and Healing; a comparative study of psychotherapy, 1991
Emotion
• Emotions move us to action, communicate to others and provide us with important information about ourselves
• Emotions result in suffering and psychological disability when they are intense, long lasting or result in behaviours that are contrary to our goals.
• Example: test anxiety
How Does Psychotherapy Work?
• Therapists capitalize on brain plasticity to produce change at the neural level.
• Therapists train the brain to develop new neural associative networks that help the individual respond in ways that are more adaptive and healthy.
Psychotherapy: Essential Ingredients
1. Diagnostic assessment: Clarify symptoms and problems. Assess the context (biological, psychological and social) in which symptoms are occurring.
2. Understanding: Theory underlying the therapy must provide a way to understand why the patient has developed these symptoms now.
3. Build hope/increase motivation: Alleviate the patient’s sense of powerlessness to change themselves or their environment
4. Facilitate experiences of success and mastery
Objective # 5245
Describe the general psychiatric indications for psychotherapy
Psychotherapy Indications• Most axis I and II disorders either as a stand alone
treatment or in combination with medications• Alone or in combination with medications
– Depression, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, sexual disorders, dissociative disorders, paraphilias, addictions, personality disorders
• In combination with medications– Schizophrenia, bipolar disorder
• Contraindications: – delirium, dementia, psychopathy
Effectiveness of Psychotherapy
• Most psychotherapies have RCT’s demonstrating that they are more effective than treatment as usual
• Psychotherapy versus no treatment: ES 0.67 – 0.85
• Many psychotherapies have been compared to pharmacotherapies and found to be equal (ST) or superior (LT) to treatment with medications
• Many have documented changes in brain function (PET scans)
Objective 5246
List the general characteristics that are associated with good outcomes in psychotherapy
Effectiveness of psychotherapy
• Patient factors 40% : motivation, capacity for relationships
• Relationship factors 30% : therapeutic alliance
• Technical factors 15%: approach• Placebo, hope, expectations 15%:
patient’s expectation that they will receive help or recover
Miller 1997
Patient factors
• Disorder is suitable for psychotherapy
• Patient sees the problem in themselves
• Patient believes that change is possible and is ready to make changes
• Patient is able to participate in treatment
• Patient is able to be self-observant
• Patient’s environment supports change
Therapeutic Alliance
Collaborative alliance between patient and therapist, depends on three factors
1.Patient –therapist agreement on goals
2.Patient – therapist agreement on tasks that each person is to perform
3.Strength of attachment
Therapeutic Alliance: Empathy
Carl Rogers 1980
“Perceiving the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person but without ever losing the “as if” condition”
Objective #5247
Describe boundary issues that may come up in the course of
psychotherapy
Boundary Issues: Setting Boundaries
• Creating an atmosphere of safety and predictability
• 3 tasks: 1.Establish and maintain a treatment frame
2.Establish and maintain a professional relationship
• responsibility of the clinician to maintain boundaries, even if a patient requests, demands or provokes a boundary violation
3.Protect patient privacy and confidentiality
Boundary Definition
• Usually describe boundaries in terms of our roles (behaviour): What is and what isn’t okay to do with a patient.
• Boundary violation: A boundary violation occurs when a patient is clearly harmed or feels exploited
• Example: sexual relationship with a patient
Harm to patients
• Doctor-Patient sexual relationships
• Similar to incest in nature of relationship and patient response– Shame, guilt, depression, PTSD, suicide,
substance and alcohol use disorders, relationship break up, loss of employment, difficulty trusting physicians, future health is compromised
Behaviour that is clearly acceptable to everyone
Behaviour that is acceptable in some circumstance and not othersdepends on situation: personal comfort, location, nature of practice:
-using first names-attending patient funeral-disclosing personal information-hiring patient to do work on your house-accepting gifts from patients-attending events where patients will be present
Behaviour that is harmful or exploitativesexual behaviour with a patient
Boundary CrossingBoundary Violation
Boundary Crossing in Psychotherapy
• Behaviours that do not cause patient harm and are often helpful
• Example: in psychotherapy therapists do not usually touch patients. A patient stumbles as she leaves the office, the therapist helps the patient up
• Example: therapists do not usually disclose personal information about themselves: patient asks if the therapist has children, the therapist responds that they do and asks” why do you ask?”
Preventing Boundary Violations
1. Recognize and understand the impact on patients of boundary violations
2. Recognition amongst physicians that we all have potential to do this behaviour when under stress with insufficient emotional support
3. Teaching physicians to be aware of when boundary crossings are helpful and when they are not
4. Improve MD access to psychological health and supports
Two Main Strategies in Psychotherapy
Validation/acceptance Change
Change Strategies
• 4 potential solutions to problems causing painful emotions
1. Change the problem
2. Change how you feel about the problem
3. Choose to accept both the problem and how you feel about it
4. Stay miserable
In psychotherapy which of the following are true?
a) Diagnosis is unimportant so you do not have to worry about doing a diagnostic assessment
b) Theories in psychotherapy provide a way of understanding why a patient has developed these symptoms now.
c) Patients must be hopeful and motivated prior to entering therapy for therapy to be successful
d) Since therapy primarily involves talking one does not pay attention to the patient's experiences outside of therapy.
Psychotherapy is contraindicated in which of the following disorders?
a) depression
b) paranoid personality disorder
c) psychopathy
d) schizophrenia
The therapeutic alliance depends on
the following except:
a) The patient and therapist agree on goals
b) The type of psychotherapy being provided
c) The patient and therapist agree on tasks that each person is to perform
d) Strength of attachment
Setting boundaries refers to all of the following except:a) Creating an atmosphere of safety and
predictability
b) Establishing and maintaining a professional relationship
c) Ensuring the patient is aware of therapist boundaries so that the therapist no longer has to worry about them
d) Protecting patient privacy and confidentiality
TYPES OF PSYCHOTHERAPIES
Psychodynamic
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
Supportive
Objective # 5248
Define the purpose of a psychological defense mechanism and describe: denial, splitting, projection, reaction
formation, rationalization, dissociation
Objective # 5250
Briefly Describe the following Psychotherapies: Psychodynamic, Cognitive therapy and Supportive
therapy
Glenn O Gabbard
Peter Fonagy
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy: Principles
• Problematic interactions derive from early relationship difficulty
• “how to” of relationships is learned in early life, and repeated over and over again throughout life (repetition compulsion)
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
• Balance between here and now relationships and early relationships
• Once per week
• Face to face
• 6 months to several years
• Anxiety and depression, personality disorders, somatoform disorders, sexual dysfunction
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
• 3 areas addressed • Ego psychology: Drive gratification (desire
and aggression) Freud
• Object relations: How we perceive our relationships Klein, Fairburn, Winnicott
• Attachment theory: Basic need for affirmation, safety, reassurance and self esteem Bowlby, Mahler, Fonagy
Understanding Psychological Defense mechanisms
• Core Concepts: – Conscious, unconscious– Defenses
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Core Concepts
Conscious: material that is in our awareness
Preconscious: can be aware of this information by shifting attention
Unconscious: material that is not brought into awareness easily because it causes distress
Is there an Unconscious?
Memories are explicit or implicit
• Explicit : with conscious awareness
• Implicit: without conscious awareness
Procedural memory: “how to” /skills
Declarative memory: “knowledge of”/facts
Structural Model
“Drive Theory”
• ID (basic drives: “I want what I want!”)
• In conflict with
• SUPEREGO (society: I want you to do what I want!)
• Results in anxiety
• Ego produces defenses: a compromise (usually unconscious) between the id and the superego
Defense Mechanisms
Less Effective (immature)• Denial • Projection• Regression• Splitting• Reaction Formation • Intellectualization• Displacement• Rationalization• Dissociation
Healthy• Sublimation• Religiousness/asceticism• Humor• Altruism• Suppression• anticipation
• Denial: ignoring an undesirable situation or information and believing as though it did not exist
• Projection: attributing to others unwanted ideas or feelings that are experienced within oneself
• Splitting: seeing things as all good or all bad• Reaction Formation: transforming an
unacceptable wish or impulse into it’s opposite• Intellectualization: Using excessive, abstract
thinking to avoid painful emotions
Less Effective Defense Mechanisms
Less Effective Defense Mechanisms
• Rationalization: Justification of unacceptable attitudes, beliefs or behaviours to make them acceptable to oneself
• Dissociation: Disrupting one’s sense of continuity in the areas of identity, memory or consciousness.
Healthy Defense Mechanisms
• Sublimation: Transforming socially or internally objectionable aims into socially acceptable ones.
• Asceticism/Religiousness: Attempting to eliminate pleasurable aspects of an experience due to internal conflicts produced by that pleasure
• Humor: Finding comic/ironic elements in difficult situations
• Altruism: Committing oneself to the needs of others over and above one’s own needs
• Suppression: Consciously deciding not to attend to a particular feeling or impulse.
• Anticipation: Delaying of immediate gratification by planning and thinking about future accomplishments
•inflexible
• may have been adaptive in the past, but is not adaptive in the present
• severely distorts understanding of the present situation
• causes significant problems in relationships, functioning, and enjoyment of life
What makes a defense pathological?
Objective 5249
Describe what is meant by transference, countertransference
and therapeutic alliance
Transference
Freud: “stereotype plate”- sexual desires from childhood are directed at the therapist
Current view: Patient’s perception of the therapist is a mixture of the real characteristics of the therapist and aspects of figures from the patient’s past
Countertransference
Freud• therapist unconsciously experiences the patient as
someone from her past. • interferes with treatmentCurrent• Therapists are human beings with conflicts and
emotional struggles of their own• Therapist’s “total” emotional reaction to the patient
(based on current and past learning)• Important source of information regarding the patient’s
effects on others, particularly if the therapists responses are normative
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
Cognitive - Behavioural Therapy
Two central premises1. Thoughts have a controlling influence on
behaviour and emotions
2. How we behave can strongly affect our thought patterns
CBT
CBT: Social Phobia
Objective # 5251
Describe the important elements of cognitive therapy
CBT: Cognitive Errors• Habitual ways of thinking in response to
internal and external events
• influence how we see ourselves, our world and our future (negative cognitive triad)
• arise in the context of mental illness and perpetuate the illness
a.Cognitive distortions: “black and white thinking”
b.Schemas: “I am unlovable”
CBT : Behavioural Methods
• Break patterns of avoidance or helplessness – behavioural activation
• Gradually face feared situations – systematic desensitization
• Build coping skills – graded task assignments
• Reduce painful emotions and physiological arousal – breathing and relaxation training
Case Study: Gina
• Presents for treatment of anxiety
• Always worried
• Panic attacks, increased since episode of fainting several months ago
• Panic attacks in crowds, driving, on elevators, eating in the cafeteria
• Avoiding these activities
CBT
• Length: 5-20 sessions
• Focus is on the here and now
• Primary treatment for depression, anxiety, eating disorders
• Combined treatment for severe or treatment resistant depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder
All of the following are true regarding cognitive behavioral therapy except:
a) The two central premises of CBT are:
1) Thoughts have a controlling influence on behaviour and emotions
2) How we behave can strongly affect our thought patterns
b) cognitive errors have a negative influence how we see ourselves, our world and our future
c) Cognitive errors occur prior to the onset of mental illness and are responsible for causing mental illness
d) Systematic desensitization refers to gradually facing feared situations.
Supportive Psychotherapy
Supportive Psychotherapy
• Reduction in anxiety through empathy, concern and understanding
• Strengthen “healthy” or effective mechanisms of coping
• Helpful for most psychiatric disorders
• Often used in conjunction with other treatments
ALEXPsychodynamic Psychotherapy Case Study
Patient factors
• Disorder is suitable for psychotherapy
• Patient sees the problem in themselves
• Patient believes that change is possible and is ready to make changes
• Patient is able to participate in treatment
• Patient is able to be self-observant
• Patient’s environment supports change
Therapeutic Alliance
Collaborative alliance between patient and therapist, depends on three factors
1.Patient –therapist agreement on goals
2.Patient – therapist agreement on tasks that each person is to perform
3.Strength of attachment
Countertransference
Current• Therapists are human beings with conflicts and
emotional struggles of their own• Therapist’s “total” emotional reaction to the patient
(current and based on past learning)• Important source of information regarding the patient’s
effects on others, particularly if the therapists responses are normative
• Denial: ignoring an undesirable situation or information and believing as though it did not exist
• Projection: attributing to others unwanted ideas or feelings that are experienced within oneself
• Splitting: seeing things as all good or all bad• Reaction Formation: transforming an
unacceptable wish or impulse into it’s opposite• Intellectualization: Using excessive, abstract
thinking to avoid painful emotions
Less Effective Defense Mechanisms
Which is true regarding defences ?
a) Defences are problematic when they are inflexible and when they severely distort the understanding of the present situation
b) Defences are thought to be a compromise between the superego , representing basic drives and desires and the ego representing societal wishes
c) Maladaptive defences include: denial, splitting, reaction formation and altruism
d) In psychodynamic psychotherapy defences are considered unchangeable and are therefore ignored.
References
• Persuasion and Healing, JD Frank and JB Frank 1991
• Long Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy: A Basic Text, Glen Gabbard 2004
• Learning Cognitive-Behavior Therapy: An illustrated guide, Jesse E Wight 2005