Goldberg Chapter 9: Experiential Models Flashcards
What does emotionally focused therapy (EFT) involve?
Emphasizes emotional engagement between family members and partners, identifying feelings that define the quality of their relationship, and helping create secure attachment bonds.
*More accepting of theory than the experiential therapeutic approaches before it.
T or F: Experiential interventions are, by definition, uniquely fitted to the individual client or family by a personally involved therapist.
True.
What do all experiential approaches emphasize?
All emphasize choice, free will, and the human capacity for self-determination and self-fulfillment, thus accentuating the client’s goals over any outcomes predetermined by the therapist.
How is dysfunctional behaviour viewed to experiential therapists?
Disordered or dysfunctional behaviour is viewed, especially by the early experientialists, as a failure in the growth process, a deficiency in actualizing one’s capabilities and possibilities.
T or F: Experientialists focus on the emotional experience over rational thought and especially intellectualization
True.
T or F: Experientialist therapists are active, often self-disclosing, and likely to use various evocative procedures to help clients get closer to their feelings, sensations, fantasies, and inner experiences.
True.
What is family sculpting?
A nonverbal communication method whereby a family member can physically place other members in a spatial relationship with one another, symbolizing his or her perception of the family members’ differences in power or degrees of intimacy with one another
What is Symbolic-experiential family therapy (S-EFT)?
Pioneered by Carl Whitaker.
Is a multigenerational approach that uses therapy to address both individual and family relational patterns. Oriented toward personal growth and family connectedness, the therapist assumes a pivotal role in helping family members dislodge rigid and repetitive ways of interacting by substituting more spontaneous and flexible ways of accepting and dealing with their impulses. Several generations of family are typically included in the therapeutic process.
Symbolic-experiential family therapists insist that both real and symbolic curative factors operate in therapy.
The growth and development of individual members is stimulated when members feel themselves to be a part of an integrated family. Once they experience this sense of security and belongingness, they can later feel free (“unstuck”) enough to psychologically separate from the family and develop autonomy as unique individuals.
What is co-therapy?
Carl Whitaker developed this, and the technique allowed one therapist to serve as an observer while the other engaged the client more directly.
T or F: Advocates of S-EFT listen, observe, stay in immediate touch with what they are experiencing, and actively intervene to repair damage without being concerned over why the breakdown occurred. They make an effort to depathologize human experience; dysfunction is viewed in both its structural and process aspects.
True. To add, for practitioners of S-EFT, the focus of therapy is the process— what occurs during the family session—and how each participant (therapist included) experiences feelings, exposes vulnerabilities, and shares uncensored thoughts.
What do S-EFT therapists assume about how symptoms develop in a family?
These therapists assume that symptoms develop when dysfunctional structures and processes persist over time and interfere with the family’s ability to carry out its life tasks
For practitioners of S-EFT, the focus of therapy is?
The process— what occurs during the family session—and how each participant (therapist included) experiences feelings, exposes vulnerabilities, and shares uncensored thoughts.
What is the family therapist’s mission, as S-EFT sees it?
The family therapist’s mission, as S-EFT sees it, is to help the three-generational family (family-of-origin and current family) to simultaneously maintain a sense of togetherness along with a sense of healthy separation and autonomy.
According to S-EFT, Family roles, while largely determined by generation, should remain flexible, and members should be encouraged to explore, and on occasion even exchange, family roles. Provide an example of this.
For example, the 6-year-old son says to daddy, “Can I serve the meat tonight?” and daddy says, “Sure, you sit over on this chair and serve the meat and potatoes and I’ll sit over in your place and complain.”
In S-EFT, this exchange is an opportunity to develop healthy, straight-talking communication, in which all family members are able to look at themselves and grow both as individuals and as a family.
What does the two battles in the therapeutic process in S-EFT?
In its initial stages, the therapist must deal with the inevitable battle for structure, as the family sizes up the therapist and his or her intentions and attempts to impose its own definition of the upcoming relationship: what’s wrong with the family, who’s to blame, who requires treatment, how the therapist should proceed.
If the therapist must win the battle for structure, the family must be victorious in the battle for initiative. Just as the battle for structure defines the integrity of the therapist, so the battle for initiative defines the integrity of the family. Any initiative for change must not only come from the family but also be actively supported by its members.
