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¶ … Cognitive Restructuring on Rape Victims
Recently, the growing numbers of research have been focused on psychological trauma which can be caused by physical, sexual and life threatening events. The survivors of traumatic events would exhibit great variation of symptoms, especially, self-blaming, guilt, negative beliefs about self and others, cognitive distortions, and inaccurate thoughts related to their traumatic experiences. Sobel, Resick and Rabalais (2009) proposed a cognitive processing therapy (CPT) to reduce the posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms and increase the positive thought and accurate cognition of the survivors. In this seminal paper, they reviewed the literature, classified the syndromes before and after the CPT, reported the statistical results and suggested a cognitive restructuring method. Cognitions are assessed using coding and analyzing the participants' statements before and after the therapy and the scaling systems used are the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale and PTSD Symptom Scale. They scaled two cognitive processes, accommodation, and assimilation adopting the cognitive processing theories of McCann and Pearlman (1990), and Resick and Schnicke (1993).These studied suggested assimilation or...
Accommodation involves the modification of existing schemas to incorporate new events and information. Although accommodation is essential to integrate new information and previous information, over accommodation would have some negative effects in the aspect of overgeneralization and inaccurate cognition. Assimilation is defined as incorporating or altering the new information to fit into preexisting cognitive structures. The threat for assimilation is previous assumptions (e.g., self-blame). The writes scaled the changes in assimilation, accommodation and overaccomodation in the aspects of agency, safety, trust, power, esteem, and intimacy before and after the CPT. It was hypothesized that CPT would be associated with reductions in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and problematic (i.e., assimilated and overaccommodated) thoughts as well as increases in the number of realistic (i.e., accomodation) cognitions. Thirty-seven female rape survivors were evaluated.
The tools were the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS) and the PTSD Symptom Scale (PSS). The CAPS is a 22-item…
The writers suggested that it was possible to observe, record, and reliably code the number and percentage of assimilated, overaccommodated, and accommodated statements that rape survivors produced in their impact statements at the beginning and end of a course of CPT. As hypothesized, there were significant decreases in the overaccommodated and assimilated processes from start to the end of therapy whereas there was an increase in the accommodated processes. Although there was a clear relationship between decreased PTSD and accommodation, this study was not able to make a clear statement about the relationship between assimilation and PTSD. Another limitation of this study is the ethnicity classification because of the limited number of participants.
This study is parallel to the studies of Foa and Rothbaum (2001), and Koss, Jose Figueredo, & Prince (2002) and the results are compatible. However, these two studies employed self-report inventories of cognitive distortions, which limited the response options available to participants and focus on content rather than process. Sobel et al. (2009) developed a more flexible strategy to evaluate the effects of CPT.
Overall, the study by Sobel et al. (2009) is chosen because it is up-to-date, rich in the literature review and very clear to provide results and limitations of the study.
. . cognitions," further research is needed to find out how an individual may utilize various parts of cognitive therapy in order to reach the goal of openness and flexibility (Sobel, 2009, 1). The paper will conclude with a suggestion that a valuable follow-up research project might be done, comparing repressed feelings which may lead to possible massive anger problems preceding self-destructive and negative behaviors. References Foa, Edna B. And Rothbaum,
In this study, patients were adults suffering from PTSD that had been referred after three months of PTSD symptoms. These patients were not combat soldiers, and had been referred after either a non-sexual assault or a motor vehicle accident. The patients were between 17 and 60 years old and did not have other psychological problems. Eighty-four individuals made it through the primary assessment through the follow-up meeting. Individuals were
Clinical Psychology Dissertation - Dream Content as a Therapeutic Approach: Ego Gratification vs. Repressed Feelings An Abstract of a Dissertation Dream Content as a Therapeutic Approach: Ego Gratification vs. Repressed Feelings This study sets out to determine how dreams can be used in a therapeutic environment to discuss feelings from a dream, and how the therapist should engage the patient to discuss them to reveal the relevance of those feelings, in their present,
Meanwhile on the subject of obedience, an article in American Psychologist (written by the former research assistant to Milgram at Yale University) poses the following question: if Milgram's experiments / research were conducted today, in 2009, "would people still obey… " (Elms, 2009, p. 34). The answer given in most cases by Elms is that "…a current measure of obedience to destructive authority would find substantially less obedience than
Mental Disorders: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder tends to surface among individuals with experiences of a frightening, life-threatening or shocking event. This severe, possibly incapacitating ailment may become apparent among eye-witnesses or survivors of life-threatening occurrences like natural calamities, fatal accidents, terror attacks, wars, personal assault (e.g., rape, abduction, etc.) or unexpected death in the family (National Institute of Mental Health, 2016; ADAA, n.d). What are the signs and
Adolescent Sex Offenders: Early Development and Transition to Adulthood (Ages 15 -30) The objective of this study is to examine the early development of sex offenders and the adolescent activity that fosters the abnormal behavior. This study will relate to lifespan development where the focus must explain the abnormal development over a period between ages 15 and 30. Adolescents who commit sex offenses are in many states listed on a sex offender