human nature and how it influences the practice of counseling

Question # 1: Person-Centered Chapter 7 (answer all parts of the question)

Think about Roger’s view of human nature and how it influences the practice of counseling.

Questions:

In your own words, explain the concept, “actualization tendency.”
How does the actualization tendency influences the practice of Person-Centered Therapy?

Make sure to make reference to the text to support your points.
Question # 2: Behavioral Therapy Chapter 9 (answer all parts of the question)

Put yourself in the place of a client and think of a particular problem you might have that involves some form of fear or avoidance.

As the client, would you want your therapist to use in vivo (gradual) exposure OR flooding to treat the fear?

Identify the fear
Select a treatment (exposure or flooding)
Explain the specific steps to applying the treatment
Explain why you selected the particular method of treatment over the other option.

Grading Rubric for Discussion Posts- 8 Points

Did the student answer the question fully? (4.5 points)
Did the response make reference to the assigned reading? (0.5 points)
Did the response include the use of at least one outside resource to support points made in the discussion with reference listed? (2 points)
231

9Behavior Therapy

1. Identify the key figures associated with the development of behavior therapy.

2. Differentiate the four developmental areas of behavior therapy: classical conditioning, operant conditioning, social cognitive theory, and cognitive behavior therapy.

3. Evaluate the central characteristics and assumptions that unite the diverse field of behavior therapy.

4. Understand how the function and role of the therapist affects the therapy process.

5. Describe the role of the client– therapist relationship in the behavioral approaches.

6. Identify the diverse array of behavioral techniques and procedures and how they fit within the evidence-based practice movement.

7. Describe the key concepts of EMDR, its main applications, and the effectiveness of this approach.

8. Describe the basic elements of social skills training.

9. Understand and explain the main steps involved in self-management programs.

10. Identify the key concepts of the four major approaches of the mindfulness and acceptance- based behavior therapies.

11. Examine the application of behavioral principles and techniques to brief interventions and to group counseling.

12. Understand the advantages and shortcomings of behavior therapy in working with culturally diverse clients.

13. Discuss the evaluation of contemporary behavior therapy.

L e a r n i n g O b j e c t i v e s

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232 CHAPTER NINE

B. F. SKINNER (1904–1990) reported that he was brought up in a warm, stable family environment.* As he was grow- ing up, Skinner was greatly interested in building all sorts of things, an inter- est that followed him throughout his professional life. He received his PhD in psychology from Harvard University in 1931 and eventually returned to Harvard after teaching in several universities. He had two daughters, one of whom is an educational psychologist and the other an artist.

Skinner was a prominent spokesperson for behaviorism and can be considered the father of the behavioral approach to psychology. Skinner cham- pioned radical behaviorism, which places primary emphasis on the effects of environment on behavior. Skinner was also a determinist; he did not believe that humans had free choice. He acknowledged that feel- ings and thoughts exist, but he denied that they caused our actions. Instead, he stressed the cause-and-effect links between objective, observable environmental conditions and behavior. Skinner maintained that too much attention had been given to internal states of mind and motives, which cannot be observed and changed directly, and that too little focus had been

given to environmental factors that can be directly observed and changed. He was extremely interested in the concept of reinforcement, which he applied to his own life. For example, after working for many hours, he would go into his constructed cocoon (like a tent), put on headphones, and listen to classical music (Frank Dattilio, personal communica- tion, September 24, 2010).

Most of Skinner’s work was of an experimental nature in the laboratory, but others have applied his ideas to teach-

ing, managing human problems, and social plan- ning. Science and Human Behavior (Skinner, 1953) best illustrates how Skinner thought behavioral concepts could be applied to every domain of human behav- ior. In Walden II (1948) Skinner describes a utopian community in which his ideas, derived from the lab- oratory, are applied to social issues. His 1971 book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, addressed the need for drastic changes if our society was to survive. Skinner believed that science and technology held the promise for a better future.

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*This biography is based largely on Nye’s (2000) discussion of B. F. Skinner’s radical behaviorism.

ALBERT BANDURA (b. 1925) was born in a small town in northern Alberta, Canada; he was the youngest of six chil- dren in a family of Eastern European descent.* Bandura spent his elemen- tary and high school years in the one school in town, which was short of teachers and resources. These meager educational resources proved to be an asset rather than a liability as Bandura early on learned the skills of self-direct- edness, which would later become one of his research themes. He earned his PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Iowa in 1952, and a year later he joined the faculty at Stanford University. Bandura and his colleagues did pioneering work in the area of social model- ing and demonstrated that modeling is a powerful process that explains diverse forms of learning (see

Bandura 1971a, 1971b; Bandura & Wal- ters, 1963). In his research programs at Stanford University, Bandura and his colleagues explored social learning the- ory and the prominent role of observa- tional learning and social modeling in human motivation, thought, and action. By the mid-1980s Bandura had renamed his theoretical approach social cogni- tive theory, which shed light on how we function as self-organizing, proactive, self-reflective, and self-regulating beings (see Bandura, 1986). This notion that we

are not simply reactive organisms shaped by environ- mental forces or driven by inner impulses represented a dramatic shift in the development of behavior ther- apy. Bandura broadened the scope of behavior ther- apy by exploring the inner cognitive-affective forces that motivate human behavior.

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Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.

BEHAvIoR THERAPy 233

Introduction behavior therapy practitioners focus on directly observable behavior, current determinants of behavior, learning experiences that promote change, tailoring treatment strategies to individual clients, and rigorous assessment and evalua- tion. Behavior therapy has been used to treat a wide range of psychological disor- ders with specific client populations. Anxiety disorders, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, eating and weight disorders, sexual problems, pain management, and hypertension have all been successfully treated using this approach (Wilson, 2011). Behavioral procedures are used in the fields of develop- mental disabilities, mental illness, education and special education, community psychology, clinical psychology, rehabilitation, business, self-management, sports psychology, health-related behaviors, medicine, and gerontology (Miltenberger, 2012; Wilson, 2011).

Historical Background The behavioral approach had its origin in the 1950s and early 1960s, and it was a radical departure from the dominant psychoanalytic perspective. The behav- ior therapy movement differed from other therapeutic approaches in its application of principles of classical and operant conditioning (which will be explained shortly) to the treatment of a variety of problem behaviors. Today, it is difficult to find a con- sensus on the definition of behavior therapy because the field has grown, become more complex, and is marked by a diversity of views. Contemporary behavior ther- apy is no longer limited to treatments based on traditional learning theory (Antony & Roemer, 2011b), and it increasingly overlaps with other theoretical approaches (Antony, 2014). Behavior therapists now use a variety of evidence-based techniques in their practices, including cognitive therapy, social skills training, relaxation

LO1

There are some existential qualities inherent in Bandura’s social cognitive theory. Bandura has pro- duced a wealth of empirical evidence that demon- strates the life choices we have in all aspects of our lives. In Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control (Bandura, 1997), Bandura shows the comprehensive applica- tions of his theory of self-efficacy to areas such as human development,…