Emotional Problems due to Disturbed Family Relationships - Case Study Example

Counseling Methods: Psychodynamic and Cognitive Behavioral Position: Customer Inserts His/Her Name Customer Inserts Grade Course Customer Inserts Tutor’s Name Insert Date Here (Day, Month, Year) People in their daily lives struggle with the world outside but more than they often find themselves struggling from emotional problems either owing to disturbed relations with the family members or due to disturbance with the spouse. These emotional disturbances bring them onto the verge of depression having a deteriorating effect on their overall personality. Emotionally disturbed adolescence can enter onto the verge of drinking, smoking and into illicit and extra marital affairs. Patients find them themselves struggling with their mental state as well adjusting with their surroundings. As more and more they struggle with themselves, more and more they find themselves falling into the trap of the mentally disturbed stage. Let us take an example of a 37-year-old girl who since childhood found herself depressed under the subjugated and dominating attitude of her parents. She confounded herself in two lives. Her one life was spent as an obedient daughter while her other life was amidst the youth of her age- drinking, smoking and enjoying sexual activities at nightclubs and hanging out places of youths. She had to follow the dreams of her parents and got married to a person she never liked and as a result she entered into extra marital affairs. Now the situation is she is separated with two children to care for and now getting divorced. In all these years, she has been living a double life and suffering from emotional trauma. She is suffering from what is known in psychological term as Dissociative Identity Disorder. This disorder is defined as an occurrence of two or more personalities in the same individual, when one personality overpowers the other side of the personality of the same individual and goes to an extreme limit. “Dissociative identity disorder develops in response to extreme trauma that occurs at an early age and usually over an extended period of time,” (Haddock 2001: xvi) this form of trauma can occur at an early age and extend over the large period of time. Neglect of children by parents and child abuse are the main causes driving the children into the grip of personality disorder as happened with the girl. They have to spend high amount of energy trying to cope up with the daily lives. (Haddock 2001: xvi) We all often use some or the other kind of defense mechanism when we are facing with too much stress. The defenses we adopt help us to protect ourselves emotionally and dissociate ourselves. This dissociation is one way by which people find themselves relief from pain according to adaptable and life-affirming defense. But once the mental trauma is over and threat diminished then we may find that dissociation is interfering in our daily life and that what makes maladaptive in the present and then can result in various other forms of disorders like post traumatic stress disorder, borderline traumatic stress disorder. Victims show the signs of amnesia, fugue, depersonalization disorder, borderline personality disorder, dissociate disorder not personally specified otherwise and many other related problems. (Haddock 2001: 4) The Dissociate disorder includes such characteristics as inner voices, nightmares, panic attacks, depression, eating disorder, chemical dependency, loss of time, severe headaches that often co-relates with the switching behavior. The psychodynamic therapy serves the basic motive of “bringing disparate elements of psyche together”. (Barach, P.M. & Comstock 1996: 413) Barach & Comstock focus that “psychodynamic therapy helps in involving the patients to maintain the emotional stability by ignoring connection between events”. (Barach, P.M. & Comstock 1996: 414) Sigmund Freud also bases his theory on the clinical observations and his theories led him to formulate the main theories of personality in the form of three models and these are topographic model, genetic model and the structural model and all the three models try to explain us about several complexities of human personality and many causes of different levels that psychological functioning can go through. The topographical model is a study of the human mind. It is basically an imaginary map of human mind consisting of three phases: unconscious, preconscious, and the conscious phases. The unconsciousness part of the mind reflects the feelings and ideas that are not accessible to what constitutes awareness. The conscious is that part of the mind where the thoughts about which we are aware and results in our feelings, and ideas are stored. Mitchel and Black said that, “As his clinical experience grew, Freud realized that what was most crucial to a permanent removal of symptoms was for the objectionable, unconscious material to become generally accessible to normal consciousness.” (Mitchel & Black 1995: 5) Freud observed that clinically patients showed the symptoms what was known as defense. They were keeping the feelings hidden in their unconscious level out of their awareness. The genetic model involves that the biological instincts of man help in the various forms of functioning in the patients. For Freud, “the stages of life are determined by the unfolding of sexuality in the oral, anal, phallic, and genital stages and at every stage, a child can become developmentally fixated or stuck, which leads to later psychopathology in adulthood”. (Prochaska & Norcross 2003: 31) Whereas structural model states that mind is composed of three structures in its unconscious level and these are id, ego, and super-ego. The id keeps within it various desires, wishes and rash form of impulsive drives requiring immediate relief. Ego is a part of the mind that helps in regulating and controlling human desires whereas super-ego “includes a person’s moral code…represents the traditional values and ideals of society as they are handed down from parents to children…inhibits the id impulses, persuades the ego to substitute moralistic goals for realistic ones, and strives for perfection… and as the internalization of the standards of parents and society, is related to psychological rewards and punishments.” (Corey 2005: 62) Freud feels that an analysis has to be done on the patient to unfold what is there in the unconscious level of mind. Psychoanalytical and clinical writing espouses from within our unconscious level those aspects that we have not realized or are not evident and if we are aware of these disavowed aspects, we will get relief from emotional pain and also from the time and energy spent to keep ourselves at unconscious level. The need of the client is to provide the expressive or supportive therapy. Expressive therapy gives the patients relief from symptoms through the development of awareness of feelings and thoughts. This therapy is based on the concept that difficulties experienced by the adults have actually been originated in childhood; children facing neglect from parents and their age neither allows them to make the suitable choices of their own nor adopt an independence to follow the same. Moreover the methods they developed in the childhood were also no longer effective during adulthood. With counseling, adults are able to leave ineffective ways they had been adopting and adopt today’s ways to come out of the various problems and hurdles. With the supportive therapy, patient gets an immediate relief. Therapist adopts this approach with the previous level of functioning of a person and helps him to strengthen the ways already been adopted by him. Other therapies may also be involved like family therapy, couple therapy, or group therapy, which could be separately given and also in combination. But the basic method psychoanalyst approach is related to the analysis of the transference and resistance of free association. The patients, who are in a relaxed state of mind, get directed to convey whatever things or happenings might appear in their minds. It might be their dreams and their hopes or their wishes or fantasies. In the process, analyst only listens and gives comment only when the patient demands the judgment and analysis to be given. They believe in what is known as empathic neutrality intended to form a safe environment and helps in making interpreting the different patterns and inhibitions that may arise in the speech and behavior pattern. The patient can also go through what is known as cognitive therapy developed by Aaron T Beck. (Corey 2005: 287) He was developing his theory at the same time as Ellis was developing his, yet they both formulated their methods of treatment in different way. Beck’s observed that patients adopt negative attitude towards many aspects of their life. Features of this therapy are more or less similar to the rational as well as emotive behavior therapies. Psychological problems in cognitive therapy are perceived to arise from faulty thinking, making incorrect inferences and failure to differentiate between fantasy and reality. Further he says that patients face errors in reasoning powers, which is termed as cognitive distortions. (Corey 2005: 288) Distortions like arbitrary inferences mean making conclusions without any relevant evidence or support. In other words you are underestimating yourselves into thinking that you will not be either liked or able to create value either by your colleagues or your clients. Another is selectiae abstraction involving the formation of conclusions based on isolated cases whereby the client ignores the information and the significant points are missed. Beck suggests that people suffering from emotional problems face logical errors that would turn objective reality towards the direction of self-depreciation. The therapist would make himself aware of the thinking patterns and make them examine the patient’s thoughts. Therapist would make the client look into the various inferences of patient’s life that may be faulty and then form traces into earlier experiences of life. In this case, client’s problem arises from the childhood when she felt neglected and lacked emotional love of her parents which she tried to seek flouting her youthful passions; therapist examined clients’ and emotional intuitive instincts among family members. The therapists for the treatment on the basis of psychodynamic psychotherapy and cognitive therapy depend on the treatment of caring and love. Once French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan said that all desire is the “desire of the other”, (Nobus 2000: 122) it means that number of unconscious parts of our life is caused by number of external factors and so are our emotional traumas. The psychological trauma faced by the client has been due to the lack of emotional love during childhood and she needs someone in front of whom she can pour all her distorted feelings that had been disturbing her since childhood. In number of upheavals in our life, we need someone who can listen to us and care for us and here psychotherapist role starts. They listen to us and strive to give us good hearing and relieve us from emotional pains. With the characteristics of both the psychoanalytic and cognitive treatments, therapist gives hearing to the patient that can be beneficial to them. The treatments changes the negative thought processes on the events that we may face and encounter in our day-to-day lives. Reference List Barach, P.M. & Comstock, C.M.1996. Psychodynamic Psychotherapy of Dissociative Identity Disorder, in Handbook of Dissociation: Theoretical, Empirical, and Clinical Perspectives, edited by Larry Michelson, William J. Ray. New York: Plenum Press: 413-430. Corey, G. 2005.Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy. 8th ed. Belmont: Thomson Brooks/Cole Haddock, D.B. 2001. The Dissociative Identity Disorder Sourcebook. New York: McGraw-Hill Professional. Mitchell, S.A. & Black, M.J. (1995). Freud and beyond: A history of modern psychoanalytic thought. New York, NY: Basic Books. Nobus, D. 2000. Jacques Lacan and the Freudian Practice of Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge Prochaska, J.O. & Norcross, J.C. 2003. Psychoanalytic therapies in Systems of psychotherapy: A transtheoretical analysis. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole: 25- 62. Read More

The topographical model is a study of the human mind. It is basically an imaginary map of human mind consisting of three phases: unconscious, preconscious, and the conscious phases. The unconsciousness part of the mind reflects the feelings and ideas that are not accessible to what constitutes awareness. The conscious is that part of the mind where the thoughts about which we are aware and results in our feelings, and ideas are stored. Mitchel and Black said that, “As his clinical experience grew, Freud realized that what was most crucial to a permanent removal of symptoms was for the objectionable, unconscious material to become generally accessible to normal consciousness.

” (Mitchel & Black 1995: 5) Freud observed that clinically patients showed the symptoms what was known as defense. They were keeping the feelings hidden in their unconscious level out of their awareness. The genetic model involves that the biological instincts of man help in the various forms of functioning in the patients. For Freud, “the stages of life are determined by the unfolding of sexuality in the oral, anal, phallic, and genital stages and at every stage, a child can become developmentally fixated or stuck, which leads to later psychopathology in adulthood”.

(Prochaska & Norcross 2003: 31) Whereas structural model states that mind is composed of three structures in its unconscious level and these are id, ego, and super-ego. The id keeps within it various desires, wishes and rash form of impulsive drives requiring immediate relief. Ego is a part of the mind that helps in regulating and controlling human desires whereas super-ego “includes a person’s moral code…represents the traditional values and ideals of society as they are handed down from parents to children…inhibits the id impulses, persuades the ego to substitute moralistic goals for realistic ones, and strives for perfection… and as the internalization of the standards of parents and society, is related to psychological rewards and punishments.

” (Corey 2005: 62) Freud feels that an analysis has to be done on the patient to unfold what is there in the unconscious level of mind. Psychoanalytical and clinical writing espouses from within our unconscious level those aspects that we have not realized or are not evident and if we are aware of these disavowed aspects, we will get relief from emotional pain and also from the time and energy spent to keep ourselves at unconscious level. The need of the client is to provide the expressive or supportive therapy.

Expressive therapy gives the patients relief from symptoms through the development of awareness of feelings and thoughts. This therapy is based on the concept that difficulties experienced by the adults have actually been originated in childhood; children facing neglect from parents and their age neither allows them to make the suitable choices of their own nor adopt an independence to follow the same. Moreover the methods they developed in the childhood were also no longer effective during adulthood.

With counseling, adults are able to leave ineffective ways they had been adopting and adopt today’s ways to come out of the various problems and hurdles. With the supportive therapy, patient gets an immediate relief. Therapist adopts this approach with the previous level of functioning of a person and helps him to strengthen the ways already been adopted by him. Other therapies may also be involved like family therapy, couple therapy, or group therapy, which could be separately given and also in combination.

But the basic method psychoanalyst approach is related to the analysis of the transference and resistance of free association. The patients, who are in a relaxed state of mind, get directed to convey whatever things or happenings might appear in their minds. It might be their dreams and their hopes or their wishes or fantasies. In the process, analyst only listens and gives comment only when the patient demands the judgment and analysis to be given.

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