Psychotherapy: Cognitive, Humanistic, And Behavior

Psychotherapy is a psychological intervention designed to help people resolves emotional, behavioral, and interpersonal problems and improve the quality of their lives. There are three major forms of psychotherapy: cognitive, humanistic, and behavioral. In this essay, I will identify the focus of each approach as well as areas of agreement and difference.
The cognitive approach includes cognitive-behavioral therapies which are treatments that attempt to replace irrational cognitions and maladaptive behaviors with more rational cognitions and adaptive behaviors. These therapies share three core assumptions: cognitions are identifiable and measureable, cognitions are the key players in both healthy and unhealthy psychological functioning; and irrational beliefs or catastrophic thinking can be replaced with more rational and adaptive cognitions, or viewed in a more accepting light. Clearly the cognitive approach focuses on how individuals think and cognitive psychotherapists attempt to alter maladaptive behaviors through changing the way individuals think.
The humanistic approach …show more content…
Behavior therapists use a wide variety of behavioral assessment techniques to pinpoint environmental causes of the person’s problem, establish specific and measureable treatment goals, and devise therapeutic procedures. Behavior therapists may use direct observations of current and specific behaviors, verbal descriptions of the nature and dimensions of the problem, scores on paper-and-pencil tests, standardized interviews, and physiological measures to plan treatment and monitor its progress. The behavioral approach focuses on the situation in which bad habits occur as well as the consequences associated with the bad habit. From there, the behavioral therapist would attempt to alter the undesirable behavior to become more