Chapter 7: Socratic Method Flashcards
Socratic Question
Using questions to help students reach a conclusion without directly instructing them; one that students have the ability to answer 0- althought he may not realize it yet; intention is to encourage the other person to query their view and to develop new outlooks
Aim of Therapist Using Socratic Method
Direct clients’ attention to possibilities that had previously been outside their attention, and there are means other than questioning to achieve this
How do you know if you’ve asked a good Socratic Question?
If your client can work out an anser to it and
if the answer reveals new perspectives
Socratic Questions in Assessment & Formulation
What did you do when this happened?
What did it mean to you when you thought/did that?
When was the first time that this thought occured to you?
Did you ahve any other feelings?
And when that happens, how do you feel?
What goes through your mind when you feel like that?
What do you tend to do at those times?
Socratic Questions for Education
Imagine…what would go through your mind?
How would you feel?
What would you do?
If … were safe, what would go through your mind?
How would you feel?
What would you do?
What does that suggest about the links between thoughts and feelings, or thoughts and actions?
What youjust said, did you mean it? Did it seem true for you?
Socratic Questions for Unhelpful Cognitions
Evidence for Questions
Evidence Against Questions
Alternate View Questions
Consequences of Questions
Evidence for Questions
In your experience, what fits with this belief, what makes it seem true?
Why might any of us have that thought at some time?
Evidence Against Questions
I’m just wondering, do you have any experience of this not being the case?
Is there anything that doesn’t seem to fit with that thought?
How might someone else view the situation?
Is that so all of the time or are there occasions when things are different?
Alternate View Questions
Now that you have looked at the bigger picture, how would you view your original concern?
Given what you’ve just described, how likely do you think that it is that the worst will happen?
Consequences of Questions
How helpful, or unhelpful, is it to hold this particular belief?
What good, if any, comes of holding this belief?
What is the downside of seeing things this way?
If you see the world in this way, how do you feel, how do others react?
Problem Solving & Working Out Solutions and the Socratic Method
So, just what is it that you fear will happen?
How might your friend try to deal with such a dilemma?
Given that you have identified avoidance as an obstacle to gaining confidence, how would you advise a friend to go about dealing with this obstacle?
Devising Behavioral Tests and the Socratic Method
What do you think would happen if you held your ground and did not run away?
What would go through your mind?
And if you were able to remain in the situation, what would you go through your mind?
How would you feel? What would this mean to you?
How might we set up a situation where this could happen?
What would make it easier for you to take on the challenge?
How will you gauge your success?
What could go wrong?
What is the worst-case scenario?
How might you prepare yourself/deal with this if it happened?
How might a friend prepare herself/deal with it if it happened?
What would we learn from that?
Socratic Method in Supervision?
Enhances learning, fosters collaboration and tests hypotheses
Aims of Cognitive Therapy
Changing Minds
Guiding Discovery
Changing Minds
Invalidates specific thoughts or meanings
Guiding Discovery
Creates alternative mental frameworks; done by adopting a position of curiosity and humility;
Downward Arrowing/Vertical Arrow Restructuring
Refers to a type of systematic questioning that aims to help clients elaborate on, or unpack, their experience or NATs and perhaps identify more fundamental meanings underlying an unwanted reaction
Questions for Downward Arrow Technique
Just how did you feel at that time?
And what was going through your mind?
Any particular thoughts or pictures?
Unpack Personal Relevance of a Thought or Image
I wonder what seems so bad about that? In your view, what does it mean? What does that say about you? What would that mean about your life/future? What would others think of you? How would you label that? Can you describe the worst thing that could happen? And if that were true - then what?
Stages in Socratic Questioning
Concrete Questioning
Emphatic Listening
Summarizing
Synthesizing Questions
Concrete Questioning
Structured, information-gathering questions, which begin to inform your hypotheses about the client’s difficulties:
How long have you felt low in your mood?
How often do you …..?
Emphatic Listening
Careful, non-judgmental attention both to what the client is saying and how it is said. Client can communicate a great deal through tone of voice or facial expression, which can further impact on your hypotheses and influence subsequent questions
Summarizing
Feeding back a synopsis in order to check hypotheses, clarify information or reiterate a point.
You say you have felt ____ for ___ months, but that for several ___ you have felt low.
You seem to be saying you probably ____ every ____, but you are sometimes unsure or not whether or not you have actually _____.
Synthesizing/Analyzing Questions
Encourage either the development or expansion of an idea or theme (synthesizing) or the refinement of key information (analyzing)
When we review the past few years, your lowest points seem to be ____ (Synthesizing)
Although there are many circumstances in which you ___, on what evenings are you most likely to?
Daily Thought Record (DTR)
Record of key events wich guides the user through the stages of identifying key emotions/cognitions, exploring the validity of the cognitions, and then synthesizing a new perspective
Examples of Socratic Questions for Daily Thought Records
What is going through my mind and how much do I believe it?
What supports this?
What contradicts my conclusions?
How might someone else view this situation?
What would I advise someone else?
What evidence is there to support alternatives?
What thinking biases can I identify?
How does my thinking help or hinder me achieving my goals?
What effect would believing an alternative have?
What’s the worst thing that could happen?
How would I cope?
Can the problem situation be changed?
What can I do differently?
How can I check this out?
Problems with Socratic Questioning
Client cannot access key thoughts or images in the session
Client invalidates distressing cognitions
Client is avoidant of distressing cognitions
Key cognitions are fleeting in naturre
Crucial meanings are held in a non-verbal form
Client invalidates new perspectives
Therapist questions without direction, or in an unfruitful direction
The therapist lectures
Therapist explores but does not synthesize and draw conclusions
Therapist asks questions only to validate a hypothesis
Therapist limits Socratic enquiry to guided discovery
