An individual's explanation of why an event occurred. Some researchers believe that individuals develop attributional styles (i.e., particular ways of explaining events in their lives that can play a role in the development of emotional problems and dysfunctional behaviors). The basic attributional dimensions are internal/external, stable/unstable, and global/specific. For instance, clinically depressed persons tend to blame themselves for adverse life events (internal), believe that the causes of negative situations will last indefinitely (stable), and overgeneralize the causes of discrete occurrences (global). Healthier individuals, on the other hand, view negative events as due to external forces (fate, luck, environment), as having isolated meaning (limited only to specific events), and as being transient or changeable (lasting only a short time).
Authenticity:
In existential therapy, this concept refers to the conscious feelings, perceptions, and thoughts that one expresses and communicates honestly. An individual achieves authenticity through courage and is thus able to define and discover his own meaning.
Classical conditioning:
According to this theory, an originally neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus when paired with an unconditioned stimulus (an event that elicits a response without any prior learning history) or with a conditioned stimulus. This is also referred to as stimulus substitution. As applied to substance abuse, repeated pairings between the emotional, environmental, and subjective cues associated with use of substances and the actual physiological effects produced by certain substances lead to the development of a classically conditioned response. Subsequently, when the substance abuser is in the presence of such cues, a classically conditioned withdrawal state or craving is elicited.
Cognitive restructuring:
The general term applied to the process of changing the client's thought patterns. Using this process, the therapist identifies distorted "addictive" thoughts in the client and encourages her to search for more rational ways of seeing the same event. The client develops and practices these alternative ways of thinking over the course of cognitive restructuring.
Contact:
A term used in Gestalt therapy that refers to meeting oneself and what is other than oneself. Without appropriate contact and contact boundaries, there is no real meeting of the world. Instead, one remains either engulfed by the world or distant from the world and people. The Gestalt therapist tries to help the client make contact with the present moment rather than seeking detailed intellectual analysis.
Contingency management:
A contingency management approach attempts to change those environmental contingencies that may influence substance abuse behavior. The goal is to increase behaviors that are incompatible with use. In particular, contingencies that are found through a functional analysis to prompt as well as reinforce substance use are weakened by associating evidence of substance abuse (e.g., a drug-positive urine screen) with some form of negative consequence or punishment. Contingencies that prompt and reinforce behaviors that are incompatible with substance abuse and that promote abstinence are strengthened by associating them with positive reinforcers.
Core conflictual relationship theme (CCRT):
Used in Supportive-Expressive (SE) Therapy, this concept refers to the way in which the client interacts with others and with herself. The CCRT is considered to be the center of a client's problems. It develops from early childhood experiences, but the client is unaware of it and of how it developed. SE therapy posits that the client will have better control over behavior if she knows more about what she is doing on an unconscious level.
Core response from others (RO):
A term used in SE therapy to explain one way in which the core conflictual relationship theme is unconsciously developed. The RO represents an individual's predominant expectations or experiences of others' internal and external reactions to himself.
Core response of the self (RS):
A term used in SE therapy that helps to develop an individual's core conflictual relationship theme. The RS refers to a more or less coherent combination of somatic experiences, affects, actions, cognitive style, self-esteem, and self-representations.
Counterconditioning:
A method that uses classical conditioning principles to make behaviors previously associated with positive outcomes less appealing by more closely associating them with negative consequences. By repeatedly pairing those cues that formerly elicited a particular behavior with negative rather than positive outcomes, the cues lose their ability to elicit the original classically conditioned response; instead, they elicit a negative outcome. This is also called an aversive or counterconditioning treatment approach.
Countertransference:
The phenomenon in which the therapist transfers his emotional needs and feelings onto his client. This can occur to a degree of personal involvement that seriously harms the therapeutic relationship.
Covert sensitization:
A technique used in counterconditioning therapy that pairs negative consequences with substance-related cues through visual imagery.
Cue exposure:
This principle of classical conditioning holds that if a behavior occurs repeatedly across time but is not reinforced, the strength of both the cue for the behavior and the behavior itself will diminish, and the behavior will eventually vanish. Using cue exposure, a client is presented with physical, environmental, social, or emotional cues associated with past substance abuse (e.g., by accompanying her into an often-frequented bar). The client then is prevented from drinking or taking drugs. This process, over time, leads to decreased reactivity to such cues.
Defense mechanisms:
The measures taken by an individual's ego to relieve excessive anxiety. When the environment causes excessive stress, the client's ego will operate unconsciously to deny, distort, or falsify reality. Defense mechanisms include denial, displacement, grandiosity, introjection, isolation, projection, repression, regression, undoing, and identification with the aggressor.
Deliberate exception:
A situation in which a client has intentionally maintained a period of sobriety or reduced use for any reason. For example, a client who did not use substances for a month in order to pass a drug test for a new job has made a deliberate exception to his typical pattern of daily substance use. If he is reminded that he did this in the past, it will demonstrate that he can do so in the future.
Directive approach:
This form of group therapy offers structured goals and therapist-directed interventions to enable individuals to change in desired ways. It is a contrast to the process-sensitive approach. The directive approach addresses specific agenda items in a logical order with greater emphasis on content as the primary source of effective change.
Effect expectancies:
A set of cognitive expectancies that the client develops concerning anticipated effects on her feelings and behavior as drinking and drug use are reinforced by the positive effects of the substance being taken. These represent the expectation she holds that certain effects will predictably result from drinking or using specific drugs.
Family sculpting:
A technique used in family therapy. The therapist "sculpts" family members in typical roles and presents significant situations related to substance abuse patterns. In this process, family members enact a scene to graphically depict the problem. The physical arrangement of the family members can illustrate emotional relationships and conflicts within the family. For example, a family may naturally break up into a triad of the mother, sister, and brother, and a dyad of the father and another sibling. In that case, the therapist might highlight the fact that the mother and father communicate through one of their children and never talk to each other directly.
Functional analysis:
A process used in behavioral and cognitive- behavioral therapy that probes the situations surrounding the client's substance abuse. A functional analysis examines the relationships among stimuli that trigger use and the consequences that follow. This can provide important clues regarding the meaning of the substance use behavior to the client, as well as possible motivators and barriers to change. In these forms of therapy, this is a first step in providing the client with tools to manage or avoid situations that trigger substance use. Functional analysis yields a roadmap of a client's interpersonal, intrapersonal, and environmental catalysts and reactions to substance use, thereby identifying likely precursors to substance use.
Insight:
A particular kind of self-realization or self-knowledge, usually regarding the connections of experiences and conflicts in the past with present perceptions and behavior, and the recognition of feelings or motivations that have been repressed.
Miracle question:
A solution-focused interviewing strategy in which the therapist asks the client the question, "If a miracle happened and your condition were suddenly not a problem for you, how would your life be different?" This forces the client to consider a life without substance use and to imagine himself enjoying that life.
Operant learning:
Operant learning refers to the process by which behaviors that are reinforced increase in frequency. Behaviors that result in positive outcomes or that allow the client to avoid negative consequences are likely to increase in frequency. Substance use in the presence of classically conditioned cues is instrumental in reducing or eliminating the arousal associated with a state of craving, thus serving to reinforce the substance abuse behavior. That is, the behavior serves a basic rewarding function for the individual. For example, an alcohol abuser who drinks to feel more social and less anxious is using substances in an instrumental way. To the extent that she experiences the effects she seeks, the greater the likelihood she will use alcohol under similar circumstances in the future.
Process-sensitive approach:
This term consists of two, somewhat different, contrasting types of group psychotherapy. The process-sensitive group approach examines the unconscious processes of the group as a whole, using these energies to help individuals see themselves more clearly and therefore open up the opportunity for change. The first type of process-sensitive approach may be termed the "group-as-a-whole" approach and sees healing as an extension of the individuals within the group as the group comes to terms with a commonly shared anxiety. The second type of process-sensitive approach uses an interactional group process model. By attending to the relationships within the group and helping individuals understand themselves within the relational framework, an interactional group process provides individuals with significant information about how their behavior affects others and how they are in turn affected by other members.
Psychodrama:
A method of psychotherapy in which clients act out their personal problems by spontaneously enacting specific roles in dramatic performances performed before fellow clients.
Random exception:
An occasion upon which a client reduces substance use or abstains because of circumstances that are apparently beyond his control. The client may say, for example, that he was just "feeling good" and did not feel the urge to use at a particular time but cannot point to any intentional behaviors on his part that enabled him to stay sober. In such instances, the therapist can ask the client to try to predict when such a period of "feeling good" might occur again, which will force him to begin thinking about the behaviors that may have had an effect on creating the random exception.
Selfobject:
A term used in self psychology that refers to something or someone else that is experienced and used as if it were part of one's own self. For example, a child is dependent on her parent's love and praise in order to develop a sense of self-worth and self-esteem. In that way, the child internalizes a part of the parent as the selfobject.
Therapeutic alliance:
The relationship between the therapist and client. In all psychodynamic therapies, the first goal is to establish a "therapeutic alliance" between therapist and client, because this association functions as the vehicle through which change occurs. A therapeutic alliance requires intimate self-disclosure on the part of the client and an empathic and appropriate response on the part of the therapist. In brief psychodynamic therapy, this alliance must be established as soon as possible, and the therapist must be able to establish a trusting relationship with his client in a short time.
Transference:
The process, basic to all psychodynamic therapies, of the client's transference of salient characteristics of unresolved conflicted relationships with significant others onto the therapist. For example, a client whose relationship with her father is deeply conflicted may find herself reacting to the therapist as if he were her father. An initial goal of brief psychodynamic therapy is to foster transference by building the therapeutic relationship. Only then can the therapist help the client begin to understand her reasons for using substances and to consider alternative, more positive behavior.
Transpersonal awakening:
The process of awakening from a lesser to a greater identity in transpersonal psychotherapy. This form of therapy uses the healing nature of subjective awareness and intuition in the process of awakening and employs the therapeutic relationship as a vehicle for this awakening in both client and therapist.
Site Map
Help
Account
Cart
Home
