NSG 527-Midterm Exam Study Guide Latest 2024/2025
The midterm exam consists of 50 multiple choice questions and covers modules 1-6.
Exam Topics:
Existential Psychotherapy
Gestalt Therapy
Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy
Relational Cultural Psychotherapy
Transtheoretical Model of Change
Motivational Interviewing
Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
Deep Brain Stimulation
Module I: Existential Psychotherapy
• Key themes and principles - Central focus is on a person’s experience, helping people
come to terms with their issues in life, experiential and relational approach, patients can
make their own choices and stress freedom and personal awareness; the therapist tries
to understand the patient’s world
• Founders - Rollo May and Irvin Yalom in the US, Emmy van Deurzen-Smith in the UK.
• The existential therapist and the subjective world
• Anxiety in existential therapy – normal anxiety is an unavoidable part of the human
condition; Anxiety arises from our personal need to survive, to preserve our being, and to
assert our being; can be neurotic or normal
• Guilt in existential therapy – Similar to anxiety, can be neurotic, normal, or towards
ourselves for not living up to our potential; Neurotic guilt feelings (generally called guilt)
often arise out of fantasized transgressions. Other forms of guilt, which we call normal
guilt, sensitize us to the ethical aspects of our behavior
• The “Givens” of existence – death, freedom, meaningless, and isolation per Yalom
The three forms of the world- “being in the world” - Umwelt (Natural world), the
Mitwelt (Public world), and the Eigenwelt (Private world), and Uberwelt (ideal world)
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• Existential approach and philosophy
Module II: Gestalt Therapy
• Key themes and principles – Focus on the here and now and encourage patients to be
more aware and move from an area of environmental support to self-support.
Phenomenology (awareness of what is felt subjectively right in that moment), learning to
be aware, dealing with an impasse, and accepting personal responsibility; commitment
to dialogue, inclusion, and presence; there are no ‘shoulds’, only independence and self-
determination
• Founder – Frederick and Laura Perls
• Awareness in Gestalt – only goal in Gestalt therapy is awareness; awareness as
content and awareness as a process
• “Here and Now” – ‘now’ is the current awareness of the client; ‘now’ is applied to the
present moment, not past happenings
• Impasse – if a patient meets an impasse it means they are challenged to connect to
their feelings, have few external supports, and feel paralyzed; important to work through
an impasse and have patients experience their feelings
• Dialogue – existential dialogue, based on genuineness and responsibility; the
therapeutic relationship accentuates four attributes: inclusion, presence, commitment to
dialogue, and dialogue is lived
• Goals of Gestalt – the only goal is awareness and self-determination
• Empty chair – goal is to ‘address unfinished business’ by sitting across from an empty
chair and having a dialogue with whatever ‘person’ the patient needs to talk to
(parent, partner, boss, etc)
Module III: Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy
• Key themes and principles – attachment based, experiential and family focused; made
solely to help kids with trauma; focuses on the safety and security of children and those
in foster care that need attachment; works to ensure a trusting relationship with
caregivers
• Founder – Daniel Hughes
• Maslow’s hierarchy