Approaches

There are many approaches to therapy.

1. Behavior therapies. Focus on the common mechanisms between animal and human psychology, made famous originally by Pavlovian classical conditioning. Leverages associative learning, such that there are triggers and responses that can be manipulated to create patterns of “quick” behavior, which comes close to subconscious hypnosis but is really, in their view, a scientific automation of the somatic mechanism. They also leverage desensitization techniques to subvert the avoidance mechanism that can trigger life-long feedback loops of unhealthy functions playing out in a person’s cognitive architecture. Thorndike discovered operant conditioning, but it was David Burns’ Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy that became popular as a self-treatment tool. His book was so effective that it became the basis for many studies which found that it was more effective in treating mild-moderate depression among self-motivated clientele even than counseling or anti-depressants.
2. Cognitive Therapies. These approaches assume that emotions and behaviors come from faulty thinking, with proponents such as Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck.
3. Humanistic therapies.
   1. Existential Therapy. With forerunners Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Buber, Søren Kierkegaard, existential therapy assists clients in pursuing meaning with an emphasis on freedom and free will.
   2. Client-Centered Therapy. Rejects the idea of therapists as authorities on a client’s inner experience.
   3. Gestalt therapy. Focuses on “organic holism,” being aware of here and now, accepting yourself.
4. Psychoanalytic and psychodynamic therapies. With proponents such as Freud, Jung, Kline, and Lacan, psychoanalytic approaches see themselves as working with dynamic realities beneath conscious awareness that are in somewhere universal and yet pre-linguistic, requiring the therapist (or analyst) to engage realities that will forever resist literalization and straightforward articulation.
5. Alternative Therapies. Most therapists don’t believe themselves to be a proponent of any single approach, but blend treatment approaches to tailor their method to the needs of each individual client.