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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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Freud and Psychoanalysis

February 24, 2011 By

Sigmund Freud was a nineteenth century neurologist who was born in Austria in 1856, and is best known for developing psychoanalysis, also known as Freudian psychology. Psychoanalysis is mainly about human behaviour and can be divided into three areas – it’s a method of investigation into the human mind and the way it works, it’s a set of theories about human behaviour and it is also a method of treatment. The treatment involves an opportunity for the patient to talk freely about his thoughts, dreams and fantasies. The analyst then interprets these, often connecting them with the patient’s unconscious desires and fears, and allows this new insight to help the patient deal with the problems and recover.

This area of psychology became controversial, not least because it discussed topics that were taboo in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, such as sexuality and repression. Freud’s theory that dreams were a manifestation of the unconscious wishes of the patient and were directly related to what had happened in their life, is particularly well known. This area of his work is often portrayed in the media as being all about sexual desire and repression, yet Freud himself pointed out that at no point in his book on the subject, “The Interpretation of Dreams”, did that subject matter arise and in fact was contrary to his views expressed in there.

The mainstay of psychoanalysis is the treatment that requires the patient to talk through his problems. The theory stated that by talking, the patient began to connect with emotions previously denied or repressed. Freud believed that allowing these feelings to remain in the unconscious was detrimental to the mind and possibly even to the body as well. The “talking cure” as it became known, is widely practised today although psychoanalysis itself has evolved during the twentieth century and spread into separate new streams of psychological theory. Freud’s other well known theory, that personality is affected by the experiences during childhood, is also widely accepted.

Whilst some critics have labelled his work as “pseudo-science”, others working in the closely related field of neuro-psychoanalysis have found evidence in the brain of the existence of libido, the unconscious and repression. Freud made a large impact on the study of psychology and despite the controversy his work has helped scientists move further forward in the understanding of the human mind.

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About Psychology

February 19, 2011 By

Psychology is the study of the human mind and behaviour. Practitioners of psychology are called psychologists, and whilst not medically trained like psychiatrists, have to undergo many years of training.  The word comes from the Greek for soul or mind, and study. The main role of the psychologist is to treat the patient by analysing and altering their behaviour patterns, primarily through therapy and counselling. They might work alongside psychiatrists if the patient is in need of medical treatment for their condition.

Whilst the majority of work involves treating patients, there is also work to be done in research and applying knowledge to a wide range of areas such as law, forensics, education and the workplace. There are many areas to be studied, including cognition, emotion, behaviour, perception, motivation and development, as well as the unconscious mind. The typical image of the psychologist sitting in an armchair whilst his patient lies on the couch, talking about his childhood, is one of clinical psychology and psychotherapy, where the practitioner is using his knowledge of the subject to understand his patient, and to relieve him of his problems by encouraging him to explore his feelings and find new ways to deal with those feelings and thus alter his behaviour.

However, there are many other branches of psychology that are not as well known. Biological psychology studies behaviour at a cellular and genetic level, looking at the way these affect learning and emotional responses, and the way disease can alter the brain as well. Cognitive psychology studies our mental processes including how we reason and learn, our emotions and perception and language. Comparative psychology studies animals other than humans, looking at evolutionary patterns and possibly using the information gathered as another viewpoint on human psychology. As well as educational psychology, which studies how we learn and helps to promote the best educational environment from the research findings, there is also developmental psychology which looks at how humans develop over their lifespan both socially, intellectually and morally. The key areas here are childhood, adolescence and the elderly. Personality psychology is about the individual and their behaviour, thoughts and emotions. There are various theories on the way personality develops and the importance of childhood experiences and other external factors, balanced with internal ones such as the unconscious. Social psychology studies the way a society works, and how people think and react with each other in a group. It covers group dynamics, conformity and stereotypes as well as belief systems.

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What is Psychiatry?

February 16, 2011 By

Psychiatry is a branch of medicine which studies and treats mental disorders. The word originates from the Greek words for mind or soul (psyche) and heal or medical treatment (-iatry). A practitioner of psychiatry is known as a psychiatrist and is a trained medical doctor who has chosen this field in which to specialise, requiring several years’ further training. They are not to be confused with psychologists who are not medically trained and study human behaviour, although the two professions can work closely together.

Before a psychiatric diagnosis can be made, a patient must undergo a thorough biological assessment to rule out other possibilities first, such as a brain scan for tumours and blood tests. The patient will be interviewed and information may also be gathered from other external sources such as relatives of the patient and other medical professionals. Mental illness is seen to be a disorder of the brain itself, with the circuits of the brain affected by genetic factors or by the life experiences of the patient.

There are many branches of psychiatric illness, which are grouped into four areas – cognitive, affective, perceptual and behavioural. Cognitive processes are involved in the way we gather information on the world, such as language, memory and problem solving, and can be severely affected by dementia. Affective disorders are those connected with feelings and emotion. Perception is how someone understands and is aware of the world around them and behaviour is the response a person makes to his environment, whether subconscious or conscious.

A psychiatric disorder may be treated with medicine, for instance bi-polar disorder can be made more manageable by taking lithium salts, which acts a mood-stabiliser, helping with both the depression and the mania. There are other treatments such as electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, which has been in use since the 1930s although not without controversy as to its efficacy. It involves inducing an artificial seizure in the patient and can be useful in treating severe depression or mania, particularly where a patient has failed to respond to earlier medication.

The history of psychiatry has evolved over many centuries, from the ancient Greeks and the Middle Ages, to a much greater understanding that began in Victorian times. Over that period, the way mental disorders are viewed has changed dramatically and now it is thought that problems such as addiction which were previously seen as moral weakness are now classed as mental illnesses and therefore have to be treated as such.

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What is Psychology?

February 10, 2011 By

The role of a psychologists is to find out why people do behave like they do, think like they do and feel like they do. Different psychologists will use different types of psychology to find out this information. These techniques involve counselling patients and some psychologists will focus on how the humans mind will develop.

The first lab which main focus was on psychology was founded by Wihelm Wundt all the way back in 1879, Germany. You will find that there are a lot of different sub-disciplines of psychology, all use different ways of understanding the mind, Social Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Cognitive Psychology and Occupational Health are all examples of sub-disciplines.

The typical image of psychology is the patient reclined on a couch, telling his therapist about his life, but there are a lot more things a psychologists will do. One type of psychologist will have the job helping professional investigators, investigate child abuse, this is a forensic psychologist. Another type is a legal psychologist; these will advise judges and act as a trail consultant, there are even psychologists that will work with professional sport players to help them enhance performance or improve and overcome barriers.

The type of psychology which main aim is to establish facts on the mind is known as a research psychologists, whereas an applied psychologists is the type that will help individuals with their problems.

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