Benefits of Psychotherapy,
Counseling and Therapy


By Harold L. Burke, Ph.D.

 

Psychotherapy (therapy, counseling) for stress, mood disorders, and anxiety

At the Brain Therapy Center, we use primarily five types of psychotherapy (often referred to as counseling or therapy) depending upon the needs of each patient and combined synergistically to optimize effect:

• Cognitive therapy helps an individual replace dysfunctional thoughts and images that are inaccurate and that cause symptoms (e.g., depression, anxiety) with thoughts and images that are more accurate and which decrease unpleasant emotions and maladaptive behaviors.

 

• Behavioral therapy (sometimes called “behavior modification”) is the systematic application of scientific principles of learning theory for the purpose of changing behavior.  By changing certain maladaptive behavioral patterns, unpleasant emotions and unhealthy physiological responses can be decreased. Operant conditioning is one example. It is the systematic application of reinforcement (reward) after a desirable behavior that increases the likelihood that the behavior will occur again. Punishment and aversive conditioning pair unpleasant stimuli with an unwanted behavior. A psychologist can apply these principles to increasing desirable behaviors and to decreasing unwanted behaviors (including thoughts and images) in the patient. Similarly, a psychologist may assist the parents of a child with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) to implement a reward system that can result in more frequent good behaviors (e.g., concentrating, doing homework) and decreasing unwanted behaviors (e.g., temper tantrums). Classical conditioning occurs when a previously neutral stimulus acquires the ability to elicit a given behavior because it was repeatedly paired with a stimulus that naturally elicits the particular response. B.F. Skinner first discovered this in his famous classical conditioning experiments with dogs. First, he noted that a dog would salivate (the unconditioned response) to the sight of food (the unconditioned stimulus). Then he rang a bell (the conditioned stimulus) just before the food was presented, and again the dog salivated. He repeated this numerous times. Then he just rang the bell, and the dog salivated (the conditioned response) even though no food was presented. This helps to explain how an individual can acquire a phobia or fear of what was previously a neutral stimulus, and it gives the psychologist a tool for treating such a phobia or fear. A final example is insomnia. Frequently this troublesome problem can be treated by the application of the behavior modification principles just described.                  

 

• Logotherapy assists patients in achieving more meaning in their lives. In the case of a depressed patient for example, logotherapy is primarily utilized after the major depression has decreased significantly by such techniques as cognitive/behavioral therapy or antidepressant medication. This helps the patient find a reason to get up in the morning and to look forward to a more fulfilling life which will in turn decrease the probability of a relapse. Logotherapy was first developed by Dr. Victor Frankl who survived Aushwitz; he observed that those victims who survived more intact than others were the ones who could see some meaning in the whole nightmare and could hold onto that meaning. Spiritual counseling is closely related to this, and Dr. Burke at the Brain Therapy Center and many other therapists have found that the spiritual domain is an important element of mental health for those patients desirous of such exploration.     

 

• Existential therapy assists patients in examining the relationship between their symptoms and very basic choices that they make. Concepts of freedom and the responsibility for the consequences of that freedom are used therapeutically to help patients live and interact more authentically and in a healthier manner. 

 

• Medical hypnosis assists the patient in entering an extremely relaxed but focused state so that subconscious processes of healing can occur.

 

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