Understanding Pathological Problems and Therapy
Understanding Pathological Problems
Criteria for Pathological Problems
Characteristic Criterion
Psychological factors define an individual. A normal distribution in the reference population is considered. Throughout, emotion and thinking separate from what is considered the normal condition. Thus, we can distinguish a person with emotional stability from a neurotic individual or someone with high capacity from someone with low capacity. However, this criterion is not valid if we consider that all geniuses, thinkers, and artists have been and are emotionally complex.
Biological Criterion
Abnormal behavior is due to the imperfect functioning of the organism. Emotional or structural alterations of the brain may be present. Despite their importance, we must also consider processes influenced by environmental and psychosocial factors.
Social and Cultural Criterion
This criterion examines what is considered normal or abnormal within a specific culture.
Subjective and Personal Criterion
Each individual must know their condition and their inability to develop their life. However, this criterion is not valid because many people do not want to acknowledge their symptoms.
Different Models of Categorization
Biophysiological Model
Mental illness is considered a physical disorder. We look for biological causes of any alteration, such as genetic, biochemical, or neurological factors. This model, developed primarily within psychiatry, focuses on treating the symptom and not the causes of the disease. Treatment is primarily with drugs.
Conduit Model
This model describes behavior as a whole, and the variables that affect abnormal behavior are as varied and complex as those of normal behavior. Supporters of this model often use educational therapy, which involves teaching the person to cope with their difficulties and acquire more control over their lives.
Biopsychosocial Model
This model considers the hierarchical organization of science corresponding to different levels of organization in nature, where the lower level is part of the one above. It attempts to explain the complexity of behavior from three levels: biological, psychological, and social. This model serves to describe abnormal behavior more than to explain it.
What is Therapy?
The term “therapy” comes from Greek and means caring for another person. Today, many believe that psychological difficulties must be overcome by willpower, time, etc. Therapy is a working relationship between therapist and client to develop more viable and satisfying ways of being in the world. A therapist is concerned with observable behaviors, relationships, affective expressions, cognitive styles, strategies to address problems, and blockages that prevent individuals from taking control of their lives and personal change. With different methods and techniques, the therapist helps resolve personal problems, seek new alternatives, and have a more realistic view of oneself.
Therapeutic Goals
- Overcoming Demoralization: Caused by low self-esteem, lack of social skills, and difficulty with decision-making. Individuals should be taught to see problems as challenges rather than threats.
- Consolidating Self-Sufficiency: Empowering individuals to manage their own lives.
- Overcoming Avoidance Behaviors: Helping the person to face their fears and confront situations that provoke anxiety.
- Awareness of Misconceptions: Cognitive therapists teach individuals to be aware of their own distortions and irrational ideas that undermine emotional well-being.
- Accepting the Realities of Life: Two important tasks for personal maturity are accepting things we cannot change and fighting for changes we can transform, and having realistic expectations and adapting interests to reality.
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
Born in the late nineteenth century with Freud’s psychoanalysis, this therapy utilizes three basic techniques:
- Free Association: Used to discover the unconscious. The patient reports seemingly trivial thoughts and memories to the analyst, facilitating the emergence of repressed memories and desires.
- Dream Analysis and Interpretation: Impulses manifest in dreams but in distorted forms.
- Transference: The repetition of past experiences, experienced emotionally during analysis, allows the patient to transfer hostility, affection, or guilt felt towards parents or significant others onto the analyst. This releases tension and helps the analyst understand how childhood feelings impact the patient’s adult life.