Psychodynamic Vs. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

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Introduction A part of training to become a licensed mental health counselor is to discover one’s theatrical orientation. It is over time that one will realize what style works best for them. After spending some time at my practicum with individual clients of my own and all the reading and studying about different types of therapies, I have reached a point in which I have more clarity about the type of therapy that I will use. I initially found myself drawn more to humanistic type therapy and when I got more into the field I also found myself becoming more attached to cognitive behavioral therapy. While both therapies differ from one another, there are pieces of each that I have found to work well with me as I develop my own personal …show more content…
This particular therapy focuses more on how individuals think more than anything else. Cognitive behavioral therapy is “…a time-limited, structured psychological intervention aimed at treating patients with various mental disorders” (Aschim, Lundevall, Martinsen, & Frich, 2011, p.176). Cognitive behavioral therapy “…aims at helping the patient to develop skills to identify, to counteract, and to cope with problematic thoughts, beliefs, and interpretations, and to learn how these affect symptoms, feelings, and problems” (Aschim, Lundevall, Martinsen, & Frich, 2011, p.176). It is important to help clients change their thinking and that is one if the main reasons I want to incorporate it into my own therapeutic …show more content…
No matter what that conflict is, everyone who comes to therapy has some type of disturbance in their life that they want to work on. The mechanism of change in therapy includes …”self-understanding of interpersonal patterns…, compensatory skills (or coping skills)…, and views of the self…” (Gibbons, et al., 2009). When any or all of these variables are meet, that is when one knows change has happened or is currently happening within their client. One will not get to any of these mechanisms of change without a genuine therapeutic relationship between the client and the therapist. There is a quote by psychologist Derek Truscott in which he states “…the client must experience a collaborative relationship with the therapist…” (Truscott, 2010). This is critical in determining the effectiveness of therapy. I believe that the therapeutic relationship is one of the most important factors that can affect the outcome of the client. That is because in order for therapy to be the most effective, the client must feel as if they have a part in the treatment and it is factual, clients do have an active part in their treatment. Also, there has to be trust between the client and the therapist. Both need to have a mutual understanding of why they are each there and that should be for the benefit of the