Treating Recurring Anxiety
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Imagine that an existential psychotherapist and a Freudian psychoanalyst encounter the same scenario where a person seeks help with recurring episodes of serious anxiety. Which of these therapists do you believe might most accurately attribute the cause or origin of the person's anxiety? Why?
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Solution Summary
This solution discusses an accurate form of therapy between Existential and Freudian therapies for treating a recurring episode of anxiety with a focus on the origin of anxiety.
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Which of these therapists do you believe might most accurately attribute the cause or origin of the person's anxiety? Why?
Anxiety is operationalized as a response to stress that include exposure to anxiety-provoking situations such as: (1) poverty, (2) unhealthy lifestyles, and (3) parental stress that increases a child's natural response to anxious situations (Pinel, 2011). Several features are described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in which anxiety can manifest into several severe mental disorders. Therefore a therapist that would most likely attribute the anxiety to some originating factor would be the Freudian therapist. For example, Freud's theoretical formulations were based on an analytical processes with a strong emphasis on internal processes. His psychodynamic processes included intra-psychic (mental processes) looking within the individual for conflicts in efforts to uncover problems that are below the individual's unconscious awareness (Archer & McCarthy, 2007).
As an example, research also reveals that genetic factors play a key role in the development of anxiety disorders. For instance, based on the DSM-IV-TR (2000) people are more likely to have anxiety disorders given familial patterns of first-generation relatives. Thus, a therapist in treating a person with recurring anxiety ...
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