Therapeutic Approaches
This domain tests the major therapeutic approaches, the techniques associated with each, and ethical reasoning. Therapy is a planned professional relationship, not casual advice.
Approaches
- Psychodynamic: unconscious conflicts; free association, dream analysis, interpretation, transference, resistance.
- Behaviour: learned maladaptive responses; systematic desensitisation, exposure, aversion therapy, token economy, modelling.
- Cognitive: distorted beliefs; Ellis’s REBT and Beck’s cognitive therapy; CBT combines cognitive and behavioural methods.
- Humanistic: Rogers’s client-centred therapy with unconditional positive regard, empathy, and genuineness; growth and self-actualisation.
- Biomedical: psychotropic medication, ECT, and other physical treatments; these target symptoms and often have side effects.
Worked example
A client has a specific phobia of dogs. A behaviour therapist constructs a fear hierarchy from looking at a photo to standing near a dog, pairs each step with relaxation, and progresses gradually. This is systematic desensitisation; it targets the learned fear response. Free association would explore unconscious meaning but is not the first-line structured treatment for this phobia.
Traps
Therapy is not advice-giving; biomedical treatment is not always the only or best option; humanistic therapy is not “positive thinking”; ECT is not punishment. Therapists need informed consent and must explain confidentiality limits.