Resource File and Personal Theory Paper Essay

Resource File â€Å"Psychotherapy is a process that focuses on helping you heal and learn more adaptive ways to deal with the problems or issues within your life. It can also be a supportive process when going through a difficult period or under increase stress such as starting a new career or going through a divorce. Generally psychotherapy is recommended when a person is struggling with a life, work or relationship issue or a mental health concern – and the issues or concerns are causing the individual a great deal of pain or upset for longer than a few days or interfering with someone ability to go through their normal day† (Grohol, J., 2014). Behavioral theory is that personality is a result of the interaction between an individual and their environment. It is focused on observable and measurable behavior rather than mental or emotional behaviors. Cognitive is a form of psychotherapy that empathize the role that your thoughts or cognitions claim making you depressed, anxious or angry. This form of psychotherapy that we call cognitive therapy has been shown to be quite affective in helping reduce depression, anxiety, suicidal risk and marital problems and has been helpful with patients who are on medications who are psychotic or have bipolar disorder. System theory is all about what it sounds like –system and it’s the theory of systems which involves the study of their components and how their components interact and basically the dynamics of systems. System is a collection of objects where theirs objects undergo change. A system can be quite broad – it doesn’t have to be one particular thing. The idea behind systems theory is that it’s an all-encompassing general theory about all seems involving objects that undergo change. Multicultural is a type of psychotherapy that  sees all people as cultural beings, that all of our actions thoughts and feelings involve culture. Traditionally we might see culture as evolving ethnicity but it involves all sorts of factors like language, sexual orientation, disability, gender, age, class, education level, where you grew up, religion and other cultural dimensions. Personal Theory Alfred Adler was born in 1870 in Austria and developed his own theory on Individual Psychology in 1912. Adler’s theory is closely related to Humanistic Psychology. Influenced by Freud, Smuts and Vaihinger, Adler based his theory on the client’s ability to live as a fully functioning adult in society. Adler’s holistic theory views each person as unified. Adler discussed birth order personality traits. Adler’s theory also discussed the roles therapists should take and the techniques that should be used in Individual Psychology therapy sessions. A major difference in Adlerian psychology compared to Freudian is the client is viewed as lacking courage, instead of being mentally ill in Freud’s theory. Adler’s belief, that a person’s consciousness is the center of their personality differed from Freud’s belief. (Wood, 2004). Adler agreed with Freud that gratification is a central need but Adler goes on to also imply that clients have needs for power, security, self-esteem, achievement and social welfare. Day (2008) emphasizes that people can decide how to state their needs, but may not be able to be in charge of their needs. Furthermore, Adler had different viewpoints regarding the theory of children’s inferiority compared to Freud’s psychosexual theories (Wood, 2004). Adler also differed from Freud because Freud assigned fixed meanings to objects in dreams. Adler felt the meaning of each dream is special to the dreamer (Day, 2008). Adlerian therapists believe the style of life is developed by age six and remains constant throughout life. Adler claimed that because society and family construct the style of life, the development of personality moves to an overall goal, instead of rather than passing through distinct stages (Day, 2008). Individual psychology is based on a growth model, therefore the belief is that everyone has the power to change, but sometimes people might lack the courage to do so. Alder believed that psychological problems are a failure of courage to deal with life’s demands (Day, 2008). Operant  Conditioning was a theory developed by B.F Skinner. Skinner focused more on voluntary behavior and how new behavior is acquired. He basically looked at what happened before a behavior and what happens after a behavior. The before the behavior he called the antecedent and the after behavior he called the consequence. Skinner authored was what happens before someone behaved in order to see if he could influence the behavior. Some elements of an antecedent could be cues and cues provide a stimulus just before a behavior is supposed to occur. Consequences occur after the behavior and can influence future behavior- Skinner focused on reinforcements which strengthen behavior and he broke it down to positive reinforcements. Another type of consequence could by punishment that suppresses behavior, for example, getting detention for acting out. Skinner theory known as Operant conditioning shows that you could learn a voluntary behavior by strengthening or weakening either the antecedent or the consequence. References Day, S. X. (2008). Theory and design in counseling and psychotherapy: 2nd ed. (pp. 174-202). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. Grohol, John (2014). An Introduction to Psychotherapy. Professional Services. Wood, A. (2004). Alfred Adler’s treatment as a form of brief therapy. The Journal of contemporary psychotherapy. 33 (4), 287-301.