Experiential - Symbolic-Experiential Therapy Flashcards
Who is the founder of Symbolic-Experiential Therapy?
Carl Whitaker
- Psychiatrist at Emory U
- Developed theory in 1940’s-50’s
What are key ideas originated by Carl Whitaker?
- Interactional metaphor: the therapist-client relationship as a symbolic relationship
- Patient “imago” - therapist’s role to client
What is normal development in Symbolic-Experiential Therapy?
- A flexible, integrated family
- A family atmosphere that supports feelings, natural creativity, and individual growth and choice
- Interactions across generations maintain sense of history
- Generational roles are separate
- Includes metacommunication (comm about comm)
- Assimilation & accommodation - regression & reintegration
- Normal process of change
- Negotiation of life tasks (coupling etc)
What are types of dysfunction in Symbolic-Experiential Therapy?
- Spouses struggling over whose FOO will dominate
- Unable to accomodate developmental changes
- Degrees of “craziness”: driven crazy, going crazy, acting crazy
- Fixation of triangles (clash of FOO)
- Teaming roles (self-sacrifice)
What explains the existential thrust of Symbolic-Experiential Therapy?
Whitaker saw symptoms as mere signals of, or even noisome distractions from, the real existential problems faced by families—birth, growing up, separation, marriage, illness, and death. Whitaker said “Psychopathology is proof of psychological health” as people struggle against being a cog in society’s wheel. He believed anxiety and struggle were necessary foils to complacency and signs of growth potential through a desire for agency.
What did Carl Whitaker believe about personal responsibility in therapy?
Whitaker believed anxiety and suffering can be growth inducing; people have the power to choose to be responsible; elements of the human condition which exist in clients’ relationships with each other also exist between clients and therapists.
Rousing awareness of change processes, Whitaker coaxed people toward ownership. He declared, “The integrity of the family must be respected. They must write their own destiny” (Neill and Kniskern, 1982).
Whitaker saw the therapist’s role as one of inducing courage in clients.
What are some assumptions of Symbolic-Experiential Therapy?
- Family issues are rooted in suppression of feelings, rigidity, denial of impulses, lack of awareness, emotional deadness, and overuse of defense mechanisms
- Families must get in touch with (and share) their real feelings
- Expanding individual experience raises awareness that helps improve family function
- emotional well-being is crucial
- Families change via interactive process, metaphorical language, and personal interaction
What did Carl Whitaker believe about vulnerability?
If clients can experience themselves and family members more openly and non-defensively, it creates an existential shift that induces change.
This is a reason to move attention to process / metacommunication instead of the factual content of conflicts.
What is the role of the therapist in Symbolic-Experiential Therapy?
- Engage a family by raising the intensity within its relationships and communicating symbolic meaning through experiential interaction in such a way as to catalyze the family toward intimacy.
- Have a spontaneous and evocative presence, to help cultivate vulnerability and communication of emotions, and help clients engage at a symbolic level.
- React quickly and intuitively to interactions between family members, both to prevent unhelpful more-of-the-same dynamics and to highlight potential signals of underlying emotional patterns.
- Help balance individual autonomy/differentiation with relational connection, attunement, & care - a more holistic view
How are intergenerational themes emphasized in Symbolic-Experiential Therapy?
Interactions across generations maintain sense of history. Sometimes 2-3 generations are seen in therapy.
The generations need to separate.
What is Alienation in Symbolic-Experiential Therapy?
The condition of being shut off from one’s true Feelings. This happens to dysfunctional family members and it makes family intimacy difficult to achieve.
What is the Battle for Structure in Symbolic-Experiential Therapy?
The Battle for Structure comes before the Battle for Initiative.
- The therapist decides who should attend and assumes the position of the leader.
- Therapist demands that the family capitulate or submit to their way of conducting the therapy, particularly during the early stages
- Therapist blocks typical patterns of behavior.
The therapist must win this battle.
What is the Battle for Initiative in Symbolic-Experiential Therapy?
The Battle for Initiative follows the Battle for Structure. In this second battle, the family takes back its authority from the therapist, to make choices about what is discussed and about decisions that affect their lives.
- Therapist communicates that responsibility for treatment belongs to the family
The family must win this battle
What is the role of craziness in Symbolic-Experiential Therapy?
This is a Symbolic-Experiential (Whitaker) concept in which healthy functioning for both therapists and families includes a high proportion of non-rational, creative, right-brain activity. Therapist needs to be mature enough to be immature. Can use fantasy freely and be irreverent.
What is the Parent Imago, in Symbolic-Experiential Therapy?
An idealized but inaccurate unconscious image of a mother or father that influences the way an individual relates to others. Typically formed in infancy/childhood.
