Question

Compare and contrast Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, Adlerian Psychotherapy, and Client-Centered Psychotherapy with regard to how each views normal and abnormal development.

Answer 1

• ”Psychotherapy includes a wide variety of approaches to treatment. One such approach is psychodynamic therapy, which studies the psychological forces underlying human behavior, feelings, and emotions, as well as how they may relate to early childhood experience.
• Psychoanalytic therapy is based on the ideas that a person’s development is often determined by forgotten events in early childhood, and that human behavior and abnormality are largely influenced by irrational drives that are rooted in the unconscious.
• Psychopathology develops because of early childhood experiences.
• The emphasis is on unconscious conflicts and their relation to development, dysregulation, and dysfunction and the use of defense mechanisms to deal with these abonormality.
• Psychoanalytic therapy makes use of transference in which which a patient unconsciously redirects their feelings onto the therapist or another person. It is more directive in nature.
• Client centered or Person-centered therapy is less structured and non-directive. This therapy proposes that the function of the therapist is to extend empathy, warmth, and “unconditional positive regard” toward their clients. By listening to and echoing back the clients’ own concerns, the therapist helps the client see themselves as another might see them. This can help them perceive inconsistencies in their perceptions of the world and other people.
• Adlerian psychotherapy focuses on a collaborative arrangement between the client and the counselor. A relationship of mutual respect and trust is developed between the client and counselor.The counselor do not see clients as being “abnormal” and in need of being “cured.” The therapy takes a nonpathological perspective and thus do not label clients by their diagnoses. Instead of using a medical model to understand their clients, It assumes a broader perspective based on a growth model.The therapy process focuses on providing information, teaching, guiding, and offering encouragement to discouraged clients.
• Clients sometimes become discouraged and function ineffectively because of mistaken beliefs, faulty values, and goals in life. The therapist focuses on major mistakes in thinking and valuing such as mistrust, selfishness, unrealistic ambition, and lack of confidence.
• Adlerian Therapy and Person-Centered Therapy encourage self-understanding and insight which ultimately enable us to gain knowledge of others. These therapies provide an understanding of behaviour and focus on the client's life goal.
• Rogers also focused on addressing the individual who has come for therapy as "client" in contrast to Psychoanalysis where Freud addressed the individual as "patient".