question_answer

Explain the importance of therapeutic relationship in psychotherapy. State the ethical standards in psychotherapy.

Or

A person has a phobia of cockroaches. Explain this phobia from the social learning perspective and psychoanalyst viewpoint giving examples.

Answer:

The special relationship between the client and the therapist is known as the therapeutic relationship or alliance. It is neither a passing acquaintance, nor a permanent and lasting relationship.

The purpose of the relationship is to help the client to solve the psychological problems being faced by her or him. The relationship is conducive for building the trust of the client so that problems may be freely discussed.

Psychotherapies aim at changing the maladaptive behaviours, decreasing the sense of personal distress and helping the client to adapt better to her/his environment.

Two major components of a therapeutic alliance:

1. The first component is the contractual nature of the relationship in which two willing individuals, the client and the therapist, enter into a partnership which aims at helping the client overcome her/his problems.

2. The second component of therapeutic alliance is the limited duration of the therapy. This alliance lasts until the client becomes able to deal with her/his problems and take control of her/his life.

Properties of Therapeutic relationship:

(i) It is a trusting and confiding relationship. It enables the client to unburden herself/himself to the therapist and confide her/his psychological and personal problems for the later.

(ii) The therapist encourages this by being accepting, empathic, genuine and warm to the client.

(iii) The therapist conveys by her/his words and behaviours that she/he is not judging the client and will continue to show the same positive feelings towards the client even if the client is rude or confides all the 'wrong' things that she/he may done or thought about. This is the unconditional positive regard which the therapist has for the client.

(iv) The therapist has empathy for the client. Empathy is present when one is able to understand the plight of another person and feel like the other person. It means understanding things from the other person's perspective, i.e., putting oneself in the other person's shoes. Empathy enriches the therapeutic relationship and transforms it into a healing relationship.

(v) The therapeutic alliance also requires that the therapist must keep strict confidentiality of the experiences, events, feelings or thoughts disclosed by the client.

(vi) Finally, it is a professional relationship and must remain so.

The following are the ethical standards in psychotherapy:

(i) Informed consent needs to be taken.

(ii) Confidentiality of the client should be maintained.

(iii) Alleviating personal distress and suffering should be the goal of all attempts of the therapist.

(iv) Integrity of the practitioner-client relationship is important.

(v) Respect for human rights and dignity.

(vi) Professional competence and skills are essential.

Or

In intense, persistent irrational fear of something that produces conscious avoidance of the feared object, activity or situation is called a phobia.

(i) Social learning theorists focus on learning of stimulus-response connections and their reinforcement.

(ii) According to them personality can be best understood as the response of an individual to the environment.

(iii) For most behaviourists, the structural unit of personality is the response.

(iv) Each response is a behaviour, which is emitted to satisfy a specific need. The response which is positively reinforced because of habit. That is satisfying one's needs repeatedly may become her/his habit.

(v) Personality is not biologically determined, it is learnt and acquired through experience.