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Introduction

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A Little Help from My Friends
Dr. Julie B. Hanauer, Suffolk County Community College
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Your Situation
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Panic attack
Sudden, extreme fear or discomfort that escalates quickly, often with no obvious trigger, and includes symptoms such as increased heart rate, sweating, shortness of breath, chest pain, nausea, lightheadedness, and fear of dying.
Psychoanalysis
Freud’s views regarding personality as well as his system of psychotherapy and tools for the exploration of the unconscious.
Psychodynamic theory
A type of insight therapy that incorporates core psychoanalytic themes, including the importance of unconscious conflicts and experiences from the past.
Consciousness
The state of being aware of oneself, one’s thoughts, and/or the environment; includes various levels of conscious awareness.
Preconsciousness
According to Freud, the mental activity that can be brought easily to awareness.
Unconscious
According to Freud, the level of consciousness outside of awareness, which is difficult to access without effort or therapy.
Dream interpretation
According to Freud, dreams are the “royal road to the unconscious.” Therefore, a basic mechanism of psychoanalysis is attempting to discover the underlying meaning of a client’s dream.
Free association
A psychoanalytic technique in which a patient says anything that comes to mind.
Resistance
A patient’s unwillingness to cooperate in therapy; a sign of unconscious conflict.
Transference
A type of resistance that occurs when a patient reacts to a therapist as if dealing with parents or other caregivers from childhood.
Behavior therapies
A type of therapy that focuses on behavioral change.
Classical conditioning
Learning process in which two stimuli become associated with each other; when an originally neutral stimulus is conditioned to elicit an involuntary response.
Operant conditioning
Learning that occurs when voluntary actions become associated with their consequences.
Negative reinforcement
The removal of an unpleasant stimulus following a target behavior, which increases the likelihood of it occurring again.
Systematic desensitization
A treatment that combines anxiety hierarchies with relaxation techniques.
Flooding
A treatment in which the individual is exposed to the feared stimulus all at once.
Spontaneous recovery
The reappearance of a conditioned response following its extinction.
Cognitive therapy
A type of therapy aimed at addressing the maladaptive thinking that leads to maladaptive behaviors and feelings.
Major depressive disorder
A psychological disorder that includes at least one major depressive episode, with symptoms such as depressed mood, problems with sleep, and loss of energy.
Panic disorder
A psychological disorder that includes recurrent, unexpected panic attacks and fear that can cause significant changes in behavior.
Generalized anxiety disorder
A psychological disorder characterized by an excessive amount of worry and anxiety about activities relating to family, health, school, and other aspects of daily life.
Social anxiety disorder
A psychological disorder characterized by the fear of being criticized and judged by and/or humiliating oneself in front of others.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
A psychological disorder characterized by obsessions and/or compulsions that are time-consuming and cause a great deal of distress.
Eating disorders
A group of psychological disorders, including anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge-eating disorder, in which the main focus of psychological distress and dysfunction focuses around food.
Humanistic therapy
A type of insight therapy that emphasizes the positive nature of humankind.
Therapeutic alliance
A warm and accepting client–therapist relationship that serves as a safe place for self-exploration.
Operationalized
Based on the model of operational definition: The precise manner in which a variable of interest is defined and measured. In humanistic therapy, Rogers promotes “unconditional positive regard,” but that is very difficult to measure (e.g., how do we measure the amount of love on an objective scale?) and therefore makes this model of therapy difficult to evaluate scientifically.
Anxiety hierarchy
The ranking of a client’s fears from least fearful to most fearful. This is used within the therapeutic intervention of systematic desensitization.
Blurred university student running in corridor with textbooks
Clerkenwell / Getty Images

Your professor announces that everyone will need to present on a specific topic in class in 3 weeks. The presentation will replace your research paper and will be worth 50% of your final grade. As she finishes the announcement, you begin to experience a panic attack: hyperventilating, sweating, and experiencing incredible chest pain. You think: “I’m going to be sick. I feel like I’m going to die!” You rush out of the classroom, thinking that you’re done with life as a college student. Thankfully, a friend from your class follows you out to make sure that you’re OK. She gets you some water and a wet towel and sits down on the stairs with you. You say, “I can’t do this presentation. I just can’t do it… or I’m going to die.”

Dugas, M. J., Brillon, P., Savard, P., Turcotte, J., Gaudet, A., Ladouceur, R., and Gervais, N. J. (2010). A randomized clinical trial of cognitive-behavioral therapy and applied relaxation for adults with generalized anxiety disorder. Behavioral Therapies, 41, 46–58.

Leichsenring, F., Abbass, A., Gottdiener, W., Hilsenroth, M., Keefe, J. R., Luyten, P., and Steinert, C. (2016). Psychodynamic therapy: A well-defined concept with increasing evidence. Evidence Based Mental Health, 19. doi: 10.1136/eb-2016-102372

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Chapter 14. Treatment of Psychological Disorders “A Little Help from My Friends”