Fundamentals of Counseling

Question 1

Explain the difference between emotion and mood.

Answer 1

Emotion is a mental state arising spontaneously as a reaction to some stimulus and is usually accompanied by physiological changes in the person’s body.

Mood is a state of mind, which can be caused by emotions, events, or a combination of the two.

Question 2

Explain the difference between ego-dystonic and ego-syntonic.

Answer 2

Ego-dystonic pertains to behaviors, values, and feelings, which are INCONSISTENT with the person’s basic concept of self (ego) and can lead to a psychological disorder.

Ego-syntonic pertains to behaviors, values, or feelings that are CONSISTENT with the person’s ego.

Question 3

Explain the difference between clinical assessment and diagnosis.

Answer 3

Clinical assessment uses tests and tools to determine the psychological, biological, and social factors that are cause of a psychological disorder.

Diagnosis determines whether or not the problems meet the DSM criteria for a psychological disorder.

Question 4

Define psychological dysfunction.

Answer 4

Psychological dysfunction is a breakdown in a person’s thought processes, emotional functions or behavior. A diagnosis of psychological dysfunction must consider the patients cultural context, his personal distress and the extent to which his ability to function is impaired.

Question 5

Define etiology.

Answer 5

Etiology is the study of the causes of disease or abnormal conditions, whether the cause is biological, psychological, or arises form the patient’s social environment.

Question 6

Define equifinality.

Answer 6

Equifinality can be defined as multiple paths leading to the same outcome. An example of equifinality in abnormal human behavior would be physical injury or illness, the loss of a loved one or alcoholism leading to depression.

Question 7

Define comorbidity.

Answer 7

Comorbidity is the coexistence of two or more diseases or disorders such as alcoholism and depression. The conditions may have a causal relationship with each other, or there may be an underlying predisposition for both or all of them.

Question 8

Define adaptive functioning.

Answer 8

Adaptive functioning is coping with stressful situations through defense mechanisms such as anticipation, humor and sublimation. Persons who fail to adapt can develop a breach with reality.

Question 9

Define co-dependents.

Answer 9

Co-dependents are people in relationships with addicted or troubled persons. The addiction can be to drugs, alcohol, or self-destructive behavior. Some form of psychological dysfunctions may also be involved. The relationship may be that of lovers, spouses, family members, friends, or co-workers. The codependent becomes an enabler or rescuer for the other person. He or she makes excuses for the person or may deny that is a problem.

Question 10

Define mediation.

Answer 10

Mediation is the resolution of a conflict between two or more parties by the intervention of a neutral party.

Question 11

Define assertiveness training.

Answer 11

Assertiveness training is a psychotherapy method that helps a person to learn to state both negative and positive feelings directly. The method does not encourage aggressive behavior.

Question 12

Define androgyny.

Answer 12

Androgyny is defined as both male and female characteristics.

Question 13

Explain the difference between diagnosis, prognosis, intervention, recommendation, statistical norm and cultural (or social) norm.

Answer 13

Diagnosis is the identification of a disease based on the symptoms or through laboratory tests.

Prognosis is the prospect of recovery from a disease based on its usual course or the particularities of the specific case.

Intervention is the introduction of services, activities, or products in an effort to cause change or improvement.

Recommendation is a counselor’s statement of the recommended course of treatment.

Statistical norm is a mathematical distribution that can be used to measure the average expectation of how a group of people will act.

Cultural (or social) norm is the expectation of how a population will or should behave, as opposed to what they actually do.

Question 14

Define accountability.

Answer 14

Accountability is being responsible or accountable for one’s actions. For a counselor, accountability means being able to explain or justify treatment decisions and activities used with a client.

Question 15

Define paralanguage.

Answer 15

Paralanguage is the use of nonphonemic properties of speech such as intonation, pitch, tempo, and gestures to convey attitude or meaning.

Question 16

Define contextualism.

Answer 16

Contextualism is the concept that behavior, decisions and actions must be understood in context.

Question 17

Define ACA (The American Counseling Association)

Answer 17

ACA is a not-for-profit organization that promotes the educational and professional growth of counselors and establishes professional and ethical standards. Since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the organization has encouraged cross-cultural counseling.

Question 18

Define culture versus society.

Answer 18

Culture is the shared norms, values, arts, beliefs, and institutions of a community or population.

A society is a population that occupies a defined territory and has shared interests and institutions. All members of a society may or may not share the same culture. An example would be a Native American culture inside the United States.

Question 19

Define therapeutic surrender.

Answer 19

Therapeutic surrender occurs when a client psychologically surrenders himself or herself to a counselor form a different culture or class. The relationship must involve trust and rapport, resulting in the client becoming open with his/her thoughts and feelings.

Question 20

Define free association.

Answer 20

Free association- a therapy strategy in which the client responds with whatever comes to mind to clues given by the therapist.

Question 21

Define catharsis.

Answer 21

Catharsis- the purging of emotions

Question 22

Define pre-conscious mind.

Answer 22

Preconscious mind- the portion of awareness that includes information of which a person is aware but to which he is not currently paying attention.

Question 23

Define repression, reaction formation, and sublimation.

Answer 23

Repression-the involuntary forgetting of an incident in order to protect oneself from anxiety.

Reaction formation- a defense mechanism in which a person acts in the opposite manner from an impulse be or she cannot accept.

Sublimation- a defense mechanism in which a person uses a socially acceptable behavior to act out an unconscious impulse.

Question 24

Define the following family therapy term: sculpting, homeostasis, identified patient, joining, nuclear family, strategic, structural, and triangulation.

Answer 24

Sculpting- creates a picture or representation of family relationships. The representation is often made by the family members’ physical placement of each other.

Question 25

Define stress inoculation

Answer 25

Stress inoculation- an effective technique for dealing with stress developed by Donald Meichenbaum as part of his “self-instructional therapy”. It has three phases:
Educational- in which the problem is identified and the client is given information about what to expect.
Rehearsal- in which the client practices the stressful event or behavior while using relaxation techniques.
Implementation- in which the client uses the new skills to deal with the stressful situation.

Question 26

Define racket and collecting trading stamps.

Answer 26

Racket- in Transactional Analysis, is a set of behaviors that originate from a childhood script.

Collecting trading stamps- in Transactional Analysis, the saving up of enduring, non-genuine feelings, then “trading” them for a script milestone such as a drinking binge or an anger outburst.

Question 27

Define retroflection.

Answer 27

Retroflection- doing to oneself what one would like to do to someone else.

Question 28

Define attending.

Answer 28

Attending- the attention the counselor pays to the client during a session. This includes listening to the client and both verbal and nonverbal interaction. In task-facilitative attending behavior the counselor’s attention is on the client. In distractive attending behavior the counselor’s attention is on his or her own concerns.

Question 29

Define empathy.

Answer 29

Empathy- the ability to recognize, perceive, and understand the emotions of another.

Question 30

Define mandalas.

Answer 30

Mandalas- Drawings Carl Jung called protective circles representing self-unification that he used to analyze himself and clients.

Question 31

Define eidetic imagery.

Answer 31

Eidetic imagery- the ability to recall minute details of something a person has observed.

Question 32

Define TAT (Thematice Apperception Test)

Answer 32

TAT- a projective test introduced by Henry Murray, in which a client tells stories about pictures the therapist shows him or her.

Question 33

Define archetype.

Answer 33

Archetype- an ideal model of a person, thing, or concept; a stereotype or a defining example.

Question 34

Define extinction.

Answer 34

Extinction-The withholding of reinforcement for a behavior as a means of eliminating the behavior.

Question 35

Define chaining.

Answer 35

Chaining- behaviors that occur because of a cue from an earlier behavior.

Question 36

Define behavioral rehearsal.

Answer 36

Behavioral rehearsal- a role-playing strategy in which a client acts our a behavior he wants to change or acquire. Can be quite useful in assertiveness training.

Question 37

Define fixed role therapy.

Answer 37

Fixed role therapy- a treatment method created by George Kelly in which the client is instructed to read a script at least three times a day, then act, speak and think like the script’s character.

Question 38

Define sensate focus.

Answer 38

Sensate focus- a series of exercises for a couple in which they take turns paying attention to their own senses.

Question 39

Define implosive therapy.

Answer 39

Implosive therapy- a method for decreasing anxiety by exposing the client to an imaginary anxiety stimulus. The method is risky because overexposure can actually increase anxiety.

Question 40

Define flooding therapy.

Answer 40

Flooding therapy- the exposure of the client to the actual stimulus in conjunction with response prevention. Care is necessary to ensure the overexposure does not increase anxiety.

Question 41

Define introjection.

Answer 41

Introjection- the process by which a child adopts the values of another person.

Question 42

Define projection.

Answer 42

Attributing a person’s own characteristics to others.

Question 43

Define displacement.

Answer 43

Displacement- a defense mechanism in which a person does not display anger at the time of the anger-inducing incident but displays it later and directs it toward a different person.

Question 44

Define sour grapes rationalization.

Answer 44

Sour grapes rationalization- a defense mechanism by which people rationalize that they did not really want something they did not get.

Question 45

Sweet lemon rationalization.

Answer 45

A defense mechanism by which a person rationalizes a distasteful event into an acceptable one.

Question 46

Define the following family therapy term: alignment

Answer 46

Alignment- the alliances, either short or long-term, formed among family members as they move toward homeostasis.

Question 47

Define the following family term: boundary

Answer 47

Boundary- a limit or border. In family therapy the term refers to membership in the subsystems (parents, siblings, students, etc.) within the family and can be summed up as “who does what with whom”.

Question 48

Define the following family terms: closed system and open system

Answer 48

Closed system- a system that is self-contained, has impermeable boundaries and does not interact with other systems.

Open system- a system with permeable boundaries that allow interactions with other systems.

Question 49

Define the following family term: coalitions

Answer 49

Coalitions- alliances, either short or long term, among family members against other family members.

Question 50

Define the following family term: conjoint

Answer 50

Conjoint- therapy in which the counselor works with two or more family members together.

Question 51

Define the following family term: cybernetics

Answer 51

Cybernetics- the study of the flow of information through feedback loops.

Question 52

Define the following family term: enmeshment

Answer 52

Enmeshment- a family organization pattern in which family members are over-concerned and over-involved in each other’s lives, thereby limiting each member’s autonomy.

Question 53

Define the following family term: Homeostasis

Answer 53

Homeostasis- a dynamic state of equilibrium; a balanced system.

Question 54

Define the following family term: identified patient (IP)

Answer 54

Identified patient (IP)- the member of a family who is the primary focus of treatment.

Question 55

Define the following family term: joining

Answer 55

Joining- the strategy of the therapist entering a family system in order to explore and modify dysfunctions.

Question 56

Define the following family term: nuclear family

Answer 56

Nuclear family- the basic family unit of father, mother, and child(ren) living together in one household.

Question 57

Define the following family term: strategic

Answer 57

Strategic- a therapeutic method in which the therapist devises strategies and interventions to resolve the problem.

Question 58

Define the following family term: structural

Answer 58

Structural- a therapeutic method of realigning the family in order to change dysfunctional interactions.

Question 59

Define the following family term: triangulation

Answer 59

Triangulation- when two members of a family have a problem with each other, one or both may turn to a third person.