Existential Therapists State That All

Existential therapists state that all human beings possess the ability to choose their destinies: they can choose to free themselves from constricting environmental circumstances, or remain where they are, 'stuck' in an unhappy situation. All too often people make excuses as a way of evading their responsibility of choice. Instead of trying to find a new job, they say they have to remain in their old job to pay the bills.

The existential therapist tries to make the client understand that it is his or her mental block and avoidance of the responsibility to freely choose his or her circumstances that is preventing the person from moving forward. Behaviorists stress the need for positive and negative reinforcement when changing behaviors.

Rewarding the child when he or she has a day free of 'acting out' (such as with an extra half-hour of television) and punishing the child when he or she does not behave with consequences (such as no television) is part of a behaviorist program. Operant conditioning 'shapes' behaviors using rewarding and non-rewarding stimuli.

To more directly reward and punish the behaviors, the child could be sent to a 'quiet corner' to do his or her work, preventing the child from gaining the positive reinforcing behavior of laughter when he or she acts out. Q3.

For a client with a borderline personality disorder, which is characterized by intense preoccupation with relationships, to the point of possessiveness, a therapist might suggest that the client keep a record of how events like a lover's failure to return a call lead thoughts like: "if he doesn't call, that means that he doesn't love me;"or "if no man loves me, then I am worthless;" or "if I self-injure, then he will realize how much I love him." REBT therapy views this spiraling thought sequence as follows: A (activating event: no call from a boyfriend) + B (belief: no one will ever love me) = C (emotional and behavioral consequences of depression and self-injury) D (disputing event: why is the boyfriend's opinion so important? Could another event arise that might prevent the call) +effect (acceptance of inability to control boyfriend's behavior) = F (new feeling=appropriate level of annoyance).

Q4. Depressed patients, when they note their mood is worsening, should record in an automatic thought log the date and time of the thought, the situation, the automatic thoughts, their emotions, the adaptive responses they use and the outcome. This helps the client understand the frequency by which they are plagued with depressive thoughts, what situations provoke such moods, the type of (usually irrational) thinking processes that lead to the depressed mood, and how well they coped with the mood.

The therapist can gain a sense of the degree to which the client is depressed, the client's coping mechanisms, and the degree to which the depressive stimulus is irrational (such as feeling rejected by a friend when the friend does not call) or real (a chronically ill parent at home). Q5. Behavioral therapy can be problematic, given that different cultures reinforce different behavioral norms, and a child from a bicultural environment may not be subject to a consistent reinforcement schedule.

Additionally, behaviors, as always, must be interpreted in light of the client's cultural and personal experiential background.