Psychological Theories

Audio Lectures

Psychological Theories

The topic of each tape is listed below with the approximate length of the session and a brief description of the content of each tape. After listening to a tape, please take a few minutes to e-mail your comments to us.

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6.1  3/5/79 Metaphysics and the Psychology of Reality

Don discusses what is reality and how it comes to exist.   This tape is easy to listen to and should be of interest to individuals who enjoy thinking about philosophical issues. 

• Metaphysics can’t be separated from science
• Malott believes there is a real world – Whaley just acts like there is one – Whaley has the edge because he can consider otherwise
• What is real depends on whether or not people agree that it is real
• What is really real? Nothing – it boils down to consensus
• People don’t get better unless someone is willing to take a chance to help them
• People who have the biggest reality should and do impose it on others for their own good
• People who come for help are not firmly entrenched in beliefs – they’re there because they have doubts
• Are you safe if you don't doubt?

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6.2 1/14/80 Professionalism, Unionism and the Control of Practitioners

This tape discusses the pros and cons of licensing of health care providers. It is easy to understand.

• Texas laws govern who may dispense psychological services in the state of Texas  It is against the law to provide psychological services alone unless you are licensed and certified.  State agencies are exempt because the state can’t afford to pay for licensed/certified professionals

• The laws have to do with the competency of the people providing the service.  The laws for psychologists are fairly standard across the country because all graduates of APA- approved programs have similar training – not true for psychiatrists

• The laws are said to protect the consumer but  they also are effective in keeping some people out.  Licensed people don’t want others encroaching on the territory

• The untrained may be able to charge less because they did not invest as much money in their education and they do not keep up to date

• A big problem is identifying what psychology is.  Who does it include? Clergy, bar tenders?  What is psychological? Can’t tell what it is so you can’t tell what it isn’t

• No one knows what competency is

• Behavior modification being given a bad name because of poorly trained providers – may take only one course in behavior modification then call themselves a behavior modifier.  Who should say who is a behavior modifier?

• Behavior modification has a body of science and competency can be judged.

• Those who can, do; those who can’t, get on committees

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6.3  7/23/79 Phases of Therapy

If you are interested in different clinical psychology therapies you will enjoy listening to this lecture.

• Children are easier to work with because children are used to adults telling then what to do and they have fewer options
• First find out if the patient is there under duress, because of a spouse or parent, etc. Find out if they feel they have a problem
• Most therapists know within the first hour what is wrong and what to do about it. The psychoanalyst is the only therapist who doesn’t
• Psychoanalysis is almost totally irrelevant to most patients. Beginning and ending for the psychoanalyst is uncovering. They exert a great deal of influence but they don’t believe they do.  They don’t  consider themselves as directive
• Nondirective therapists – Rogers and Rogerian therapists: reflect what the patient says.  Consider themselves as catalysts, reflect a clients verbal behavior. Those who do little but reflect lose patients quickly.  They irritate people.  If the patient doesn’t come back it’s their problem. The nondirective therapist denies he helps.  They are passive agents and don’t take responsibility for the client. 
• Directive therapists are like a plumber. 
• Transactional analysis believes patients tend to act in subversive ways.  People tend to play games.  The game is, “Yes, but…” The only way a TA can change a behavior is to badger the client
• Rational Emotive Therapy – Ellis – None of us is rational.  Most clients are under weak stimulus control.  Ellis thinks the worst thing you can be is irrational.  The therapist decides what is best for the client.

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6.4 ca.1978-80 Rational Emotive Therapy

This lecture will be interesting to anyone interested in different approaches to clinical psychology.  It is easy to understand.

• Rational emotive therapy points up to people the inconsistencies in what they say and what they do.

• The goal of rational emotive therapy is to point out what the real reinforcers are that are controlling the behavior.

• The “emotive” part or rational emotive therapy doesn’t make much sense except there is a great deal of emotion involved

• The primary goal of psychoanalysis is to identify sources of motivation

• Freudian therapists went astray when they tried to explain motivation in terms of the subconscious.

• Why things are reinforcing worried Freud as much as it does us

• Just pointing out to people that they don’t have goals is important

• Rational emotive therapy depends on verbal behavior

• Sometimes you have to teach the concept of consistency/inconsistency

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6.5 ca.1978-80 Reality Therapy

Anyone interested in different approaches to clinical psychology will enjoy listening to this lecture. It is easy to understand. 

• Sometimes extinction produces aggression and after a time, it produces apathetic behavior.
• Behavior analysts don't have a quarrel with Glasser and Freud but we do have a conflict with their techniques
• Glasser and Freud approaches are sparse on specifics 
• TA (transactional analysis) blames failure on the client not on the therapist
• Glasser talks about needs - Skinner says it is foolish to talk about needs - we should be talking about reinforcers
• Freud's patients were obviously being beaten up by their super egos. They couldn't come up to the expectations of the culture - Freud may have been right - the culture was very stern and structured
• Glasser believes in the end there is no such thing as nonreality. Reality is reality.
• Freudian therapists try to maintain neutrality like the Wizard of Oz 
• TA therapist is essentially a psychoanalyst but uses a TA framework. TA therapist is a source of feedback
• Glasser's approach is good but his level of analysis isn't

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6.6 3/28 Don Whaley Script on Therapy

Before Don's untimely death he was writing a book titled Hope. This is a short chapter he dictated on the role of the therapist. You will hear his labored breathing which is the result of a life long battle with asthma. If you intend to practice clinical therapy you will enjoy listening to this tape. It is easy to understand.

• What a therapist does
• The therapist is a hope salesman
• The therapist gives others hope that things can change 
• Many people who have lost much and often become losers
• The therapist must convince the losers that things can change and they can become winners

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6.7 9/10/79 Systematic Desensitization 

If you are interested in clinical psychology you will enjoy listening to this lecture on systematic desensitization. It is easy to understand.

• The big inroad of behavior analysis into clinical psychology was systematic desensitization.
• Phobias are learned fear responses
• Wolpe was a psychiatrist who developed the technique of systematic desensitization and then developed the theory that explained the results.
• The basic tenet of systematic desensitization is reciprocal inhibition. A person can't be relaxed and at the same time be anxious
• First task is to interview the patient to find out what they were afraid of. Wolpe developed questions to establish a hierarchy of fears.
• Wolpe believed that relaxing was a reinforcer
• Get a person to relax, rather than re-living the actual trauma. Get him to imagine - A fantastic step!
• Watson thought you had to end up with the actual object. The genius of Wolpe was using imagination
• Relaxation is a successful technique with many problems. Wolpe taught people to relax and if the patient became anxious then the patient would signal and the therapist would back off.
• Studies found the only critical variable in desensitization was getting the patient to imagine the situation - the relaxation didn't matter. The patient using imagination has resulted in forced extinction
• Implosion therapy 
• Test anxiety - some escape/avoidance responses. It doesn't matter why the client fails. What matters is that they failed.
• Look for effective ways to help people be successful instead of looking for phobias
• Hope - take the person and thrust them into the future and show them the reinforcers

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6.8 ca. 1978-80 Systematic Desensitization II 

This lecture continues the 9/10/70 discussion of systematic desensitization. It is easy to understand and anyone in clinical psychology will enjoy listening to it.

• Who is a better imaginer of running - a person in a wheelchair or a person who has run? There is no way to know - can't compare experiences of 2 people
• When things are well learned the muscle activity associated with them tends to drop out to a certain point When we begin to talk we talk aloud; as verbal behavior becomes better the energy decreases and the talk becomes less audible
• The more things come under contingency control it moves to the right side of the brain
• Older people quit interacting with the present so all that is left is the past
• If a person has a lot of good behavior it doesn't matter how you give them the tokens
• The more the reinforcer is tied to a specific topography the more reinforcing it is
• For tokens to become conditioned reinforcers, think of what someone is doing when they get them
• McGuigan was the first to do empirical studies using EMG's - found some people think with movement and others don't - on some things when people think they will use movements but on other things they don't

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