Guess Who's Coming To Dinner! Congrats! You are invited to a dinner party; however, this isn't just any old dinner party. This is a dinner party where all the party guests are famous psychologists, the preeminent leaders of their field. During the party, a murder will take placeoops, wrong game. At this dinner party, the host (Dr. T) will introduce a client that he is having problems with and in which he would like your input. Acting as one of the particular doctor's below, you will provide him with some advice on the causes and treatments of his patient. Of course, you will have to defend your perspective from the other "pushy" psychologists who believe that their perspective is completely right and your's is totally wrong. Bring your wine, a dish to pass and your kick boxing apparelthe doctors are in and coming to dinner and things might get ugly! General Directions: For this assignment, we will be putting on our doctor hats (wait, a minute doctors don't wear hats!). Okay, we will be putting on our doctor coats! You'll be given a case study to analyze and your job will be to do so as a doctor from a particular contemporary perspective. Your team will be expected to play the role of ONE of the following doctors, each of whom represents a different contemporary perspective on mental illness:

Examples:

Freud, Skinner, Beck, Ellis, Rogers, Sartre, Bandura, Dr. PoMo, etc. (we'll decide in class)

Your team will role-play that doctor (changing the gender if you wish!), using that perspective and only that perspective to analyze Mrs. T's case described below. More specifically, you will be asked to:

(1) introduce your character in such a way that the introduction provides us with a brief summary of your perspective and (2) identify the causes for Mrs. T's problem based on your perspectivethe latter part is very important because the perspective you choose will only allow you to identify particular causes, those that are consistent with your perspective. For example, a behaviorist would never mention cognitions or mental activity as a cause of a person's behavior because s/he doesn't believe in looking into the "black box" of the mind. There are always multiple causes for any problem, however, disregard any causes that are not consistent with your perspective. And (3) you will be asked to describe how your perspective would treat Mrs. T and resolve her problem.

The Case Study of Mrs. T

Mrs. T is a 53-year-old woman with three children in their mid-20s who comes in at their insistence. A year ago, her husband of 30 years left her for a younger woman. Since then, she has been unable to mobilize herself. She has felt very sad every day since the separation and has become incapable of making decisions about what she should do about any aspect of her life (e.g., whether to continue living in her house, whether to seek a job, how to handle her finances, and even what clothes to buy). She is constantly begging her children for the advice and emotional support that her husband had previously provided. Her children love her and understand her plight but are becoming increasingly annoyed by her inability to stand on her own two feet. Friends who had previously been very fond of Mrs. T have also been put off by her constant demands for assistance and have begun to avoid her. Most of Mrs. T's friends and acquaintances cannot understand why she is so devastated by her husband's desertion. He had been chronically unfaithful, impossible to please, and was always very tight with money. He did, however, make all the important decisions for Mrs. T. He decided how they would spend and invest their money, where they would live, when and where they would go on vacation, when they would eat out and where, what movies they would see, whom they would entertain, and where their children would go to school. Mr. T always shopped with her and even helped her choose all her clothes. She never spoke out against his decisions because she felt that he would make her feel foolish and even possibly leave her. After he left, Mrs. T collapsed, felt unable to do any thing and lapsed into a helpless funk. Mrs. T has expressed extreme sadness since her husband left her. She no longer goes to the movies or out to dinner the way she used to because every thing reminds her of the years she spend with her husband. She has been under such stress, that she has lost 20 pounds. On occasion, she is able to get a full night's sleep but she often finds herself waking up and crying uncontrollably. Lately, she has found help in taking sleeping pills to help her get to at least a few hours of sleep. There have been many occasions in which she has felt so lonely and upset that she believes that the world would be better off without her. Mrs. T has had to visit the doctor on several occasions this year due to erratic behavior and her sleep disturbances. She has recently been prescribed Valium to calm her down when she becomes anxious about the events of her life. Mrs. T has decided that it is time to see a psychiatrist to finally begin to accept that her life as she has known it is no longer in existence.

It should communicate at least five important beliefs or assumptions about your perspectives; beliefs you feel are the essence or main idea of your perspective.

Now that you've introduced your doctor, you are ready to sit down to dinner with the rest of the dinner guests. After the first course of Caesar salad with a Spanish twist and some small talk with your fellow doctors, your host, Dr. Travis (that's me!), introduces the purpose of the dinner party. He has a patient, Mrs. T, who is troubling him. He's not sure what is causing Mrs. T's problem or what to do about it. He asks you and your fellow guests, the preeminent doctors of your respective fields, to weigh in on the case. Using the voice and mannerisms of the doctor character you created in your first post, and using the perspective you selected, you should identify the cause(s) of Mrs. T's problem and describe the best course of treatment. Remember your causes and treatments must be grounded in your perspective.

S describe one advantage or strength of at least TWO other doctor's psychological perspective, to be polite, and one disadvantage or limitation of that perspective. also want to state at least one way in which your perspective is similar to and different from his/her perspective.