Question

Summarize the goals of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and contrast it with the psychodynamic approach.

Answer 1

• Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a short-term, goal-oriented psychotherapy treatment that takes a hands-on, practical approach to problem-solving. Its goal is to change patterns of thinking or behavior that are behind people's difficulties, and so change the way they feel.
• CBT works by changing people’s attitudes and their behavior by focusing on the thoughts, images, beliefs and attitudes that are held (a person’s cognitive processes) and how these processes relate to the way a person behaves, as a way of dealing with emotional problems.
  
• Goals of Cognitive Therapy Include:
• the promotion of self-awareness and emotional intelligence by teaching clients to “read” their emotions and distinguish healthy from unhealthy feelings
• helping clients understand how distorted perceptions and thoughts contribute to painful feelings
• the rapid reduction of symptoms with an emphasis on examining the client’s current situation and solving current problems
• the development of self-control by teaching clients specific techniques to identify and challenge distorted thinking
• prevention of future episodes of emotional distress and development of personal growth by helping clients change core beliefs that are often at the heart of their suffering.
• Psychodynamic therapy is more long term therapy taking roots from Freud's psychoanalysis.Psychodynamic psychotherapy relies heavily on the therapeutic relationship – the relationship that develops between the therapist and client. It provides an opportunity to examine this relationship in a safe arena and see how it reflects other relationships that we have.
• Major techniques used by psychodynamic therapists include free association, recognising resistance and transference (unconsciously transferring feelings about a person or event in the past onto a person or event in the present), counter-transference (feelings evoked in the therapist by the client’s transference), and catharsis (intense emotional release).It is less structured than CBT.Also could be more expensive due to long term therapy and it also focuses on discussing childhood history in contrast to CBT.