Psychotherapy

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Jung

Perhaps the most influential was Carl Gustav Jung, who believed that Freud overemphasized sexual instincts as a source of behaviour. Jung thought that non-sexual potentials within the person must be realized, or neuroses would develop. Jungian therapists attempt to help patients recognize their own inner resources for growth and for dealing with conflict. Techniques for solving immediate problems are varied and pragmatic. Dreams and art are used to draw out the patient’s associations to the unconscious images that Jung believed are shared by all.

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Adler

Alfred Adler also minimized the importance of instinctual sexual drives in behaviour. He believed that the smallness and helplessness of children produce feelings of inferiority in them and that in reaction to these feelings, many people strive for superiority. Countering this search for power and significance is the quality that he called social interest, that is, empathy and identification with other people. According to Adler, psychological disorders result from a faulty way of living, including mistaken opinions and goals and an underdeveloped social interest. The therapist’s job, therefore, is to re-educate patients—to convince them of their errors and to encourage them to develop social interest.

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Fromm, Horney, and Erikson

Several of Freud’s followers elaborated theories of neuroses that emphasized the role of social and cultural influences in the formation of personality. These so-called neo-Freudians include Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Erik Erikson.

Fromm believed that the fundamental problem confronted by everyone is a sense of isolation deriving from the individual’s separateness. The goal of life and of therapy, according to Fromm, is to orient oneself, establish roots, and find security by uniting with other people while remaining a separate individual.

Horney believed that neurotic behaviour blocks a person’s inherent capacity for healthy growth and change. The job of therapy, in her view, is to disillusion the patient of such defence blockages, that is, to identify and clarify them, and then to help the patient mobilize innate constructive forces for change.

Erikson, like Horney, was convinced that human beings are capable of growth throughout their lives. Guiding such change is the person’s ego, which can develop in a healthy way when given the right environment. Failing that, a person can acquire through therapy the basic trust and confidence needed for a healthy ego. Unlike traditional psychoanalysts, Erikson, who began practice as a child analyst, usually worked with a patient’s family while treating the patient.

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Behaviourism School

In the 1950s another group of theorists, later known as behaviourists, became known in the field. They had become disenchanted with the lack of scientific fact and methodological rigour in the research supporting psychoanalytic theory, their disenchantment having first been raised by John B. Watson in the United States around the turn of the century. The main thrust behind the new theory was that human inner experiences could not be studied and evaluated as they were not observable in the strictly methodological sense. He proposed “behaviourism“ as a basis for the objective study of human behaviour, and was influenced by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov, who described how conditioning works in animals, and by Edward Lee Thorndike, who in the United States was investigating the effects of reward and punishment on animal behaviour. Watson’s ideas were further refined by B. F. Skinner, who supported the idea that observed human behaviour was the only valid object of study, and Watson continued to research conditioning processes.

Behaviour therapists believe that behaviour of all kinds, normal and maladaptive, is learnt according to specifiable principles and that these same learning principles can be used to correct troublesome behaviour. Regardless of the specific technique they later use, behaviour therapists begin treatment by finding out as much as they can about the client’s problem and the circumstances surrounding it. They do not infer causes or look for hidden meanings; rather, they concentrate on observable and measurable phenomena. On the basis of this behavioural analysis, they formulate hypotheses about the circumstances creating and maintaining the problem. They then set out to alter the circumstances, one by one, and observe whether the client’s behaviour changes as a result.

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Wolpe and Eysenck

In the 1950s, clinical applications of what was then termed learning theory were described by Joseph Wolpe in South Africa. He developed a technique known as systematic desensitization, which he used for treating symptoms caused by excessive anxiety. This method calls for helping the client to relax and then, gradually, to approach the situations or objects that are feared.

Hans Eysenck, working at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, defined behaviour therapy as the application of modern learning theory to the treatment of behavioural and emotional disorders. He described behaviour therapy as an applied science with testable theories that could be investigated experimentally and proved or disproved. In 1963 the discipline was sufficiently established to support its first journal, Behaviour Research and Therapy. Throughout the past three decades these ideas have grown beyond classical and operant conditioning to other areas of social psychology, developmental psychology, and experimental psychology. Albert Bandura in the United States formulated a social learning theory, through which he conceptualized self-regulatory mechanisms that have further influenced treatment methods. He used the behavioural approach to change beliefs and habits of thought that appeared to be the source of the client’s distress.