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Psychotherapy and Counselling

March 19, 2011 By

Psychotherapy or counselling is a form of treatment used by psychologists which is designed to improve the patient’s mental health. The method involves creating a relationship between the therapist and the patient and then using mainly talking therapy in the form of regular conversations, although other methods such as music, art and role-play may be used, particularly in counselling involving children. As well as psychotherapy between the therapist and an individual, it is also possible to use the techniques in group therapy, or with couples or families in relationship and family counselling.

Counselling is more often used to describe the form of psychotherapy that treats more everyday problems, rather than mental health issues, such as divorce and relationship problems, bereavement counselling and parenting help. There is a clear structure to the therapy sessions, and psychotherapists are ethically and legally bound to keep complete patient confidentiality. Over a period of sessions, which may last weeks or maybe months, the patient is encouraged to come to terms with their situation and to learn to manage it. They should find the treatment helps them become more self-aware, to alter their behaviour and change their actions if necessary. In the case of bereavement counselling, the bereaved patient will be helped to accept and deal with their grief. It is not a way of making the grief go away, but the psychotherapist is able to help the patient learn to move through the process. With divorce counselling, it is the therapist’s role to help the couple make the right decision for them and if divorce is inevitable, then to help them through the experience with the minimum of trauma.

In some situations,  psychotherapy is used to treat patients with mental health disorders, in conjunction with medical treatment from the psychiatrist. The talking therapy can be beneficial in helping the patient deal with their illness and treat the psychological aspect, whilst the medicine can help with the physiological. In some cases the therapy can actually help the medical treatment to work.

Psychotherapists should belong to an official professional body and an individual seeking a therapist with no reference from another medical practitioner should keep this in mind. The main three bodies are The UK Council for Psychotherapy, The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and the British Psychoanalytic Council and there are other smaller associations for more specialised forms of psychotherapy.

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Picoeconomics

March 1, 2011 By

In the early 1900s, George W. Ainslie, a psychologist, psychiatrist and behavioural economist from America, developed the theory of picoeconomics. Where microeconomics is used to describe the negotiation for resources between individuals, picoeconomics (or micro-micro-economics) describes a similar process but within an individual himself, helping define different aspects of his behaviour. This is shown in many of Ainslie’s experiments, with both animals and humans, that an individual is more likely to want quicker gratification with a smaller reward then wait a specified time for a larger reward. The information that the later reward is larger, has little affect on the decision made and in fact, the longer the delay the more likely it is that the individual will ignore the size of that reward. Conversely, if the reward periods are closer together, the individual is more prepared to wait. The data produced from these experiments can be demonstrated in a hyperbolic curve, rather than the expected exponential curve, and is known as hyperbolic discounting.

It seems that the sooner the better is the way most people and animals are programmed to respond, despite it not always being the logical choice. George Ainslie explored this and tried to explain this in his book “Picoeconomics” published in 1992, having spent the previous twenty years conducting research and publishing papers on his findings in scientific journals. The science of behavioural economics has developed since Ainslie’s theory was published and other scientists have taken it further and shown that picoeconomics is a plausible opposing view from the theory of rational choice theory that was in the forefront of the field at that point. Rational choice theory says that an individual makes decisions based on the cost of that decision weighed against the benefit to result in the best advantage to themselves. However this does not take into account the moral and ethical feelings of the individual; behavioural economics such as Ainslie’s theory helps explain the individual’s behaviour more clearly.

George Ainslie has been unusual in combining the fields of psychology and psychiatry with behavioural science and also in conducting experiments on animals rather than human subjects, but his theory has proved to be an important step in the late 20th century move forward in understanding behaviour.

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