A 14 Page Summary of the 7 Therapeutic Methods for the PYC4809 Exam. I got a distinction (86%) by Only studying these notes. I have put together a comprehensive summary of the 7 types of therapeutic methods (Existential, Person-Centred, Gestalt, Behaviour, CBT, Choice/Reality,Postmodern) that we ne...
Summary of the 5 Therapeutic Methods that we need to know for the 2020 Exam:
EXISTENTIAL: (Frankl, Sartre)
• NOT a separate school of therapy.
• A philosophical discussion/approach.
• Does NOT have a standard/ specific set of techniques.
• Aims to remove obstacles that prevent meaningful living and helping clients assume
responsibility for their actions.
• Humans are free and thus responsible for our own choices + actions.
• Humans are capable of self-awareness which allows one to reflect and to make
decisions.
• The decision to expand one’s self-awareness is fundamental to human growth.
• We influence our own destiny.
• Part of the human condition: experience of aloneness.
• You alone must give meaning to your life.
• Humans depend on relationships with others.
• Awareness of freedom + responsibility gives rise to anxiety.
• Existence: never fixed. We continually recreate ourselves.
• Humans are in a constant state of transition/becoming as a result of conflicts.
• THERAPEUTIC GOALS/AIMS:
• * Main Goal: Increased awareness is the central goal of existential therapy.
• To explore clients values & beliefs.
• Face difficulties of life with courage rather than avoiding life’s struggles.
• Assist clients in discovering how they are avoiding freedom and encourage them to risk
using it.
• Teach clients that they can consciously accept that they have choices.
• Challenging clients to examine the ways in which they have lost touch with their identity.
• Help provide conceptual framework for helping clients challenge the meaning in their
lives.
• Help clients move toward authenticity and learning to recognize when they are deceiving
themselves.
• Help clients face anxiety and act authentically.
• Help clients become more present to themselves and others.
• Identifying ways clients block themselves from fuller presence.
• Assume responsibility for designing their present lives.
• To choose more expanded ways of being.
• THERAPIST’S TASKS:
• TASK: inviting clients to recognize how they have allowed others to decide for them.
• TASK: encouraging clients to take steps towards choosing for themselves.
• TASK: help clients create a value system based on a way of living consistent with their
way of being.
• TASK: teaching clients what they already know about themselves.
• THERAPIST’S FUNCTION & ROLE:
• Help clients see the ways in which they restrict awareness.
• Invite clients to accept personal responsibility.
• THERAPIST-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP:
• *Similar to Person-centred also person-to-person encounter and belief that attitude
towards client and therapist’s personal characteristics of honesty, integrity etc. are
important to create a positive relationship.
• Relating in an I/Thou fashion that implies direct, mutual and present interaction.
• Create caring and intimate relationships with clients.
• Therapist’s presence is both a condition and a goal of therapeutic change.
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, • The quality of client-therapist relationship is important.
• Basic dimensions of human condition:
• 1.) Capacity for self-awareness
• 2.) Freedom + responsibility
• 3.) Creating one’s identity and establishing meaningful relationships with others.
• 4.) Search for meaning.
• 5.) Anxiety as a condition of living.
• 6.) Awareness of death + nonbeing.
• Embraces 3 values:
• 1.) Freedom to become
• 2.) Capacity to reflect
• 3.) Capacity to act
• Inauthenticity: not accepting/lacking awareness of personal responsibility and passively
assuming that our existence is largely controlled by external forces.
• Freedom: implies we are responsible for our lives.
• Existential Guilt: being aware of having evaded a commitment, choosing not to choose
or allowing others to define us/make decisions for us.
• Existential Anxiety: unavoidable result of being confronted with the “givens of
existence.”
• Anxiety = seen as potential source of growth = invitation to freedom.
• Neurotic Anxiety: failure to move through “normal” anxiety results in neurotic anxiety.
• Authenticity: the courage to be who we are.
• Sartre: “We are our choices.”
• Being Free = Being human.
• Death = basic human condition that gives significance to living.
• Good to have a healthy awareness of death.
• Sartre: “We are condemned to freedom.”
• Frankl: “Freedom is bound by certain limitations.”
• According to Frankl the feeling of meaninglessness is the existential neurosis of modern
life which can then lead to an existential vacuum.
• Logotherapy: designed to help clients find meaning in life.
• Frankl: one can create meaning even in suffering.
• PROBLEMS IN THERAPY:
• 1.) Clients may discard old values without replacing them with suitable ones.
• FROM MULTICULTURAL PERSPECTIVE:
• Strengths:
• 1.) Broad perspective
• 2.) Focus on universal issues (love, death etc.)
• 3.) Emphasize presence.
• 4.) Focus on universality and similarities.
• 5.) Focus on subjective experience.
• 6.) Challenge clients to examine degree their behaviour is influenced by social and
cultural conditioning.
• 7.) Wide ranging international interest = wide appeal for diverse populations.
• Shortcomings:
• 1.) Individualistic and ignore social factors.
• 2.) clients may feel they have little choice because environmental circumstances restrict
their ability to influence their lives.
• 3.) May experience feelings of frustration and powerlessness when having to make
changes outside of themselves.
• 4.) May feel patronized and misunderstood.
• 5.) May not take into account complex factors that oppressed deal with.
• 6.) Not a structured problem-oriented approach.
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