Final Overview: Famous Family Therapists Flashcards
Nathan Ackerman
He used the psychoanalytic or psychodynamic approach.
Virginia Satir
Experimental conjoint family therapist Virginia Satir popularized
the notion that in times of stress, family members use four inept
patterns of communication. The placator (who tries to please everybody
in the family); the blamer; the reasonable analyzer (who intellectualizes);
and the irrelevant distracter (who interrupts and changes
the topic to something irrelevant).
Experimentalist Carl Whitaker
Carl Whitaker could be very wild, radical,
and creative, and often utilized a cotherapist.
Murray Bowen
Murray Bowen is a key name in Intergenerational Therapy. His
approach is often referred to as Extended family systems therapy.
Triangulation
Triangulation (also referred to as triangles) occurs when two
people who are stressed, bring in a third party to reduce the
dyad’s stress level and restore equilibrium.
Genograms
Genograms are actually graphic diagrams of the family from a
minimum of three generations.
Fusion
Fusion is a blurring of the psychological boundaries between
the self and others. A person driven by fusion can’t separate
thinking and feeling well.
Differentiation
Differentiation (the opposite of fusion) is the ability to
control reason over emotion. People often secure their level of
differentiation from a multigenerational transmission process.
Salvador Minuchin
Salvador Minuchin is the leading name behind structural
family therapy The technique of joining or blending in with the
family is used. The therapist uses a popular strategy of joining known
as mimesis to imitate or copy the family’s communication and patterns.
The therapy proposes that changes in the family system, subsystems, and family organization must take place in order for individual
family members to resolve their systems. Structural therapy is directive
and performed in the here-and-now.
Jay Haley and Cloe Madaness
are powerful names in strategic
family counseling (also called MRI model and the communications
model). In this paradigm the therapist gives directives or
prescriptions, often paradoxical (e.g., telling a client who is afraid
he will shake to shake as much as he can; actually prescribing the
symptom). Reframing and relabeling problems is common in this modality.
This approach warns us that double-bind communication
(e.g., a parent telling a child she loves her while beating her severely)
could cause serious psychopathology, even schizophrenia.
Solution focused brief therapists (SBFT)
Solution focused brief therapists (SBFT) speak of fi rst order
change which is superfi cial and second order change that includes
actual changes in the rules and structure of the organization.
SFBT or BT, brief therapy, is not the same as crisis intervention.
SFBT or BT, brief therapy, is not the same as crisis intervention.
Crisis intervention is used for persons who are experiencing an expected
normal reaction to stress. Therapy on the other hand, is aimed
at reducing abnormal and pathological behaviors and symptoms.
The Milan Model
The Milan Model uses a treatment team with a one-way
mirror.
Consultation
Consultation occurs when you voluntarily assist a counselor or counselors (known as consultees) who will be helping clients.
Contact with the helpees is indirect.
Gerald Caplan is known as the father of mental health
consultation.
Edgar Schein’s purchase of expertise model (where you buy the
person’s information and knowledge); his doctor–patient model
(here you aren’t sure what the problem is, so you hire an expert
to diagnose and treat it); and his process consultation model
(where the consultant helps the consultee with the process).
Process models
Process models focus on the process while content models
focus on the imparting knowledge to the consultee.
