Models of Human Nature and Therapeutic Change

Biological (Medical) Model

• The mind’s activity depends on the brain whose composition is genetically determined
• Still acknowledge influences of environment and learning
• Genetic influences on anxiety and depression
• Brain structure different in individuals with schizophrenia- process information differently
• Therapy: Pharmacological treatments (medication)

Behavioural Model

• Focuses on what people do rather than on brain structures and/or chemistry
• Behaviour is analyzed in terms of stimulus, response, and reinforcement.

o   Their fear, their response to the fear, experience of relief leads to reinforcing the response to that certain fear.

• Aim is to discover what reinforcements sustain and undesirable behaviour and then to alter those reinforcements.
• Therapy: Exposure

• • Behaviour results from complex attitudes, expectations, and motives rather than simple reinforcements.
  • Individuals are taught to substitute their unrealistic thoughts with realistic ones and to test their assumptions.
  • Therapy:
  • • Emphasizes thoughts as well as unconscious emotions, ideas, and impulses
    • Emphasizes the role of the past in shaping the present.
    • Therapies: Interpersonal, humanistic, existential, experiential

    Psychodynamic Model

  • Typically emphasizes exposure as well as changing problematic patterns of thinking
  • Typically involve- 10 individual or group sessions with a therapist plus homework
  • Has been shown to produce significant improvements
  • Has been combined with drug therapy

Cognitive Model


“Seeks to make conscious that which is unconscious.”


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