ACTIVITY
Write 300 words to respond to articles 1 and 2 and 200 words to respond to article 3, making comments and asking questions using an academic tone and backing up the ideas with APA referencing.
Answer question 1 and 2 (write 150 words for each question)
Discuss drawbacks and limitations of measuring intelligence to agree or disagree with the different articles.
Critically evaluate approaches to the theory of measurement of individual differences.
Make explicit reference to the debate and critically evaluate genetic and environmental influences on human behaviour.
Article 1
Although both psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioural therapy require patients to engage in talk therapy to address their mental health, their historical factors and treatment techniques differ tremendously. This post will focus on those differences.
Psychodynamic theory is based on Sigmund Freuds psychoanalytic theory of understanding human behaviour by taking a person’s early childhood experiences into account while interpreting the unconscious processes of emotions and drives which shapes a person’s adult personality and their late life choices (Richard and Huprich, 2008).
A person’s early childhood experiences become the template for their future relationships, behaviours, and perceptions of the world they live in as they interact within their environments (Deal, 2007). Branching out on the importance of early childhood experiences is the Bobo Doll experiment conducted by Bandura in the early 1960’s, who has portrayed how children imitate behaviour by observational learning (Artino, 2007) These learnt behaviours are often outside of the individual’s awareness and play an important role in the development and continuity of psychopathology (Rutter & Sroufe, 2000)
While psychodynamic theory focuses on emotions and the unconscious mind. Cognitive-Behavioural Theory (CBT) focuses on a person’s conscious thoughts and how their thoughts after their feelings and behaviour (Hersen & Gross, 2008). CBT is the integration of cognitive and behavioural therapy as it examines how a person thinks as well as how they behave.
Thoma et al. (2015) elaborates that Aaron Beck, founding father of CBT, witnessed how patients suffered as a result of the exaggerated negative perceptions they had of themselves and of their environments. These negative thoughts impact a person’s behaviour as can be seen in experiments of operant conditioning such as the Little Albert experiment whereby a person develops negative responses to associational parings (Fridlund et al., 2012) as well as in the Skinner Box experiment which portrays how people are able to change their behaviour by means of punishments and rewards (Thoma et al., 2015)
Just as Beck set out to collaborate with his patient’s experiencing depression as a result of their distort thinking, his short-term, talk therapy treatments consisted of reinstating their negative thoughts with logical and positive perspectives. CBT further aids a depressed person with problem solving techniques which allows them to take ownership of their thoughts in order to change their feelings and behaviours (Hersen & Gross, 2008). These self-regulation techniques supports the patient in relieving their symptoms associated with depression such as sadness, hopelessness, and lack of energy (Rahim & Rashid, 2017).
In contrast to this is, the long-term treatment methods for depression from a psychodynamic perspective. Patients are encouraged to engage in free association which is an uncensored manner of talking about their thoughts and emotions which often allows the unconscious to become conscious (Feltham et al., 2017) Psychodynamic treatment further focuses on the persons self-awareness as a whole and instead of focusing on the symptoms of depression, they want to understand how a person’s depression came into existence by means of evaluating how developmental perspectives of early childhood has influenced present behaviour.
In conclusion, CBT engages in cognitive restructuring of the conscious mind by considering a person’s thoughts and behavioural patterns while psychodynamic theory focuses on the unconscious mind and emotions by considering a person’s past experience in order to understand their present behaviours.
Article 2
Murphy (2019), explains that when conflict arises within one’s mental state, it is followed by experiences of anguish that may reduce one’s level of ability. This invisible illness is burdened with its own stigma and feeling of isolation.
For every four individuals, one of them will battle mental illness (Murphy, 2019). Psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioural theories are two well-known, well-researched approaches to therapy (Bernstein, 2016) Are they both equality effective though?
Psychodynamic psychotherapy has evolved from the early works of Freud’s psychoanalysis, which assists clients in understanding personal subconscious desires (Bernstein, 2016) This exploration involves “free association, dream analysis, and psychoanalytical interpretation by the analyst to uncover the problems located in the patients unconscious” (Maltby et al., 2017, p. 1002).
Leichsenring and Rabung (2008), set out to investigate the effectiveness of psychodynamic therapy over a long-term period (at least 1 year or around 50 sessions). The pair revisited this concept in 2011 confirming that “the emphasis that psychodynamic psychotherapy puts on the relational aspects of transference is a key technical difference from cognitive-behaviour therapies (p.16). Additionally, long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy (LTPP) requires more investment of time and resources compared to cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), however, findings show that LTPP produces superior results to short-term treatments (Leichsenring and Rabung, 2011).
CBT originated from the works of John B. Watson, Ivan Pavlov, among others from the 1920s, and then later from studies done on benefit vs suffering and the impact thereof by B.F. Skinner (Bernstein, 2016). CBT is thought to be known as “the most well-established evidence-based psychotherapy” (Dobson & Dozois, 2021, p. 114) and is structured around three concepts. Firstly, one’s thoughts have an effect on behaviour.
Secondly, behaviour can be supervised and adjusted, and thirdly, an intentional change in behaviour can lead to a change of mind (Dobson & Dozois, 2021). For CBT to have the desired positive impact on patients who battle with dysfunctional thought processors, it is vital that therapy be completed (Pentaraki, 2018). Results from a meta-analysis reflecting on 125 studies, almost half of the patients were reported to have dropped out of therapy (Pentaraki, 2018). Pentaraki, (2016) identifies “racial status”, education and income (p. 102) as reasons for this Additional factors include poorly motivated individuals, and disappointment with the treatment plan or therapist (Pentaraki, 2018)
In an experiment done by Chibanda et al. (2016), lay healthcare workers in Zimbabwe were trained to deliver evidence-based talk therapy established in CBT (Chibanda, 2018), to members of the community who were in mental distress. Among the 573 patients involved, 90% of them had completed follow-up sessions at 6 months, and the intervention group showed improvement in mental health (Chibanda et al., 2016)
While psychodynamic therapies prove to be successful over time, at a cost, the success of CBT theories relies on diligently following through with the treatment plan in place. It is clear that the patient/therapist relationship is key to the success of both theories (Pentaraki, 2018, Leichsenring and Rabung, 2008). Future research is encouraged to possibly better align more direct treatment methods (and combinations thereof) with more specific mental illness, with a therapist’s own personality and cultural background.
Article 3
Childhood memories, events, and experiences impacts a person’s adulthood. The advancement prospect of an adult is being shaped by events and relationships during childhood. “According to Freud, children were dominated by sexual drives by which an early demonstration of juvenile sexuality were related with physical behaviour” (Feltham, 2017) (Freud, 1916-1917/1963) hypothesized that “childhood memories are being obstructed by their consciousness because of their improper and aggressive formation. Early memories are harboured due to their consciousness of undesirable feelings and images.
Negative childhood memories and experiences could affect their health in the future. Children who were exposed to abuses, family violence, neglected and any other dysfunctional in the household could lead them to a variety of health issues, psychological and medical problems years later. Freud interpreted childhood forgetfulness from an adult’s viewpoint due to his clinical work that involved patients with complex, problematic life episodes/history and psychological issues.
Recalling of early childhood memories were too taxing because of the incompatibility of cognitive development in adulthood because during that period in their childhood there was the starting of a sexual life that had occurred and therefore their memories (unwanted episodes) are being forgotten and suppressed.
Question 1
The patient or client commitment to process seems to be a key element of therapy success regardless of model of therapy.
How important do you think the lack of scientific evidence is for the psychodynamic model?
Question 2
As 79% of patients who seek therapy are better than those who do not seek any (Westra, 2020). Even though we know CBT therapies hold greater Empirical evidence, psychotheraphy still has studies that deem it reliable. Dr. Westra wrote about the effectiveness of psychotherapy and what the research tell us. Just share some views about it.
REFERENCE:
-W (2020, February 18). The effectiveness of Psychotherapy. What the Research Tell Us – Find a Psychologist.
https://www.findapsychologist.org/the-effectiveness-of-psychoterapy-what-the-research-tell-us/
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