Types of Therapy, Schools of Therapy

Below is a brief outline of theories developed over the last century. Hopefully, your therapist is trained in a variety of
techniques and can select what will most suit you.

Behavior therapy

Behavior therapy focuses on changing unwanted or unhealthy behaviors, typically using a system of rewards, reinforcements of
positive behavior and desensitization. Desensitization is a process of confronting something that causes anxiety, fear or
discomfort and overcoming those responses. If one has a fear of germs that triggers excessive hand washing, for instance, they are
taught techniques to stop your excessive washing.

Cognitive therapy

Cognitive therapy is based on the belief that faulty thinking patterns and belief systems cause psychological problems and that
changing our thoughts improves our mental and emotional health and results in changes in behavior. Cognitive therapy is
designed to help you identify and change distorted thought (cognitive) patterns that can lead to feelings and behaviors that are
troublesome, self-defeating or self-destructive. It's based on the premise that how you interpret your experiences in life
determines the way you feel and behave. Like behavior therapy, cognitive therapy focuses on your current problem, rather than
addressing underlying or past issues or conflicts. Unlike behavior therapy, however, your experiences are an important part of
the cognitive therapy process. Often cognitive therapy will work in conjunction with behavioral therapy and you may see the
term "Cognitive-Behavioral".

Cognitive-Behavior therapy

Cognitive-Behavior therapy combines features of both cognitive and behavioral therapies. Negative beliefs and behaviors are
replaced with healthy positive ones. The treatment is based on the premise that ones own thoughts, rather than external
situations determine their behavior.

Use of electronic systems to monitor internal processes such as heart rate, brain waves, or perspiration to help an individual
become aware of their physiological responses and learn to have more control over them.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), also known as electroshock, is a treatment in which seizures are electrically induced in
anesthetized patients for therapeutic effect. Today, ECT is most often used as a treatment for major depression which has
not responded to other treatment, and is also used in the treatment of mania and other disorders. First introduced in the
1930s , it gained widespread use as a form of treatment in the 1940s and 50s. Today, an estimated 1 million people worldwide
receive ECT every year, usually in a course of 6-12 treatments administered 2 or 3 times a week.

Technique of restructuring thought patterns and associations related to traumatic events and memories and other sources
of emotional distress. Francine Shapiro developed EMDR when she discovered that rapid-eye movements combined with
focusing on disturbing thoughts and memories produced a "working through" of the underlying emotional disturbance.

Exposure therapy

Exposure therapy is a form of behavior therapy that deliberately exposes you to the very thing that you find upsetting
or disturbing. It's especially useful for people with obsessive-compulsive disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder.
Under controlled circumstances, exposure to the event or things that trigger your obsessive thoughts or traumatic reactions
can help you learn to cope with them effectively.

Family systems looks at the entire family as a complex system having its own language, roles, rules, beliefs, needs,
and patterns. Each family member plays a part in the system and family systems therapy helps an individual discover how
his or her family operated, that person’s role in the system, and how it affects the individual’s relationship with the current
family and relationships outside the family. Within this category there are various theories and approaches to family therapy.

Treatment methods for adults are aimed at uncovering the hidden purpose of symptoms using the therapeutic functions
of insight and meaning. Adler was concerned with the overcoming of the superiority/inferiority dynamic and was one of
the first psychotherapists to discard the analytic couch in favor of two chairs. This allows the clinician and patient to sit
together more or less as equals. Therapeutic methods were not limited to treatment after-the-fact but extend to the realm of
prevention by preempting future problems in the child. Prevention strategies include encouraging and promoting social
interest, belonging, and a cultural shift within families and communities that leads to the eradication of pampering, neglect,
and especially corporal punishment.

The focus of therapy is to help individuals access more of their inner world (unconscious) and develop greater self-realization
and individuation. Carl. G. Jung's theory is psychoanalytic, but differs from traditional Freudian theory in that Jung added the
concepts of individuation (human potential), which includes transcendence and spirituality. People are seen in a positive light
and therapy considers the soul, which seeks to be nurtured by something larger than the self.

Psychoanalysis is a long-term, intensive therapy that often involves several sessions a week with a psychoanalyst for several
years. Based on the belief that true change and growth comes from bringing unconscious thoughts, motivations, feelings,
and experiences into consciousness so that behavior and thought is based on current reality. Key concepts are that behavior is
determined by unconscious motivations, irrational forces, instinctual drives, and psychosexual events occurring during the
first 6 years of life. Classical psychoanalysis is an intensive and long term process with a focus on transference (transferring
feelings about and reactions to past significant others onto the therapist) and uncovering unconscious material through dream
analysis and free association.

Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

Psychodynamic psychotherapy, based on psychoanalytic theory, focuses on increasing awareness of unconscious thoughts
and behaviors, developing new insights into your motivations, and resolving neurotic conflict. It's less intense and less
frequent than psychoanalysis and is usually done sitting face to face with a therapist.

Psychodynamic psychotherapy includes a variety of therapeutic techniques, such as exploring the past, confronting beliefs and
actions, and supportive exploration of thoughts and behavior. Awareness of the link between a feeling, thought, symptom or
behavior and an unconscious meaning or motivator leads to modification of unwanted behavior or thoughts.

In the latter half of the 20th century, research into new psychopharmacologic drugs exploded, with many new drugs being
discovered, created, and tested. Many once-popular drugs are now out of favor, and there are fashions in psychiatric drugs as
with any other kind of drug.

Only since the 1950s has the use of psychiatric drugs to restore mental health or at least limit aberrant behavior, been a part of
medical therapeutics, when a number of new classes of pharmacological agents were discovered, notably tranquillizers and
antidepressants.

RET is based on the assumption that our emotions result from our beliefs, interpretations, and reactions to life events. It
remains a type of cognitive therapy based more on thinking and doing than with the expression of feelings.

Clients are believed to be in the best position to resolve their issues if the therapist can establish a warm, accepting, and
safe environment in which the individual feels free to talk about his/her issues and can gain insight into them. This type of
therapy is non-directive because the therapist typically does not give advice or make interpretations.

Based on Freudian and Jungian psychology, Heinz Kohut, its founder, postulated that narcissism and grandiosity in the
infant is healthily managed by “self object” experiences which can be idealizing, mirroring, or twinning experiences. The
experience of the infant is the most important and it is the primary caretaker’s responsibility to respond to the infant in an
affirming and validating manner. The relationship between client and therapist is most important, like that of mother and
child, and the healing comes with the resolution, understanding and working through of that relationship.

Solution-focused treatment presumes that most psychological problems are present only intermittently. Solution-focused
therapy helps the patient notice when symptoms are diminished or absent and use this knowledge as a foundation for
recovery. If a patient insists that the symptoms are constant and unrelieved, the therapist works with him or her to find
exceptions and make the exceptions more frequent, predictable, and controllable. Therapy builds on solutions already
available to the patient.