Key Terms Flashcards
From the Contextual Model, this refers to the notion that because everyone is born to parents, a certain history that emerges from the patterns of interactions and meanings have occurred that form a basis to how one understands relationships
Legacy
From contextual theory, an internal system in which the relative balance of debts and entitlements is kept. Ideally, there should be a balance between the repayment of the person’s debt to the family of origin and self-fulfillment
Ledger
From contextual theory, the fundamental dynamic force that holds families and communities together through reliability and trustworthiness
Relational Ethics
From contextual theory, what each person is inherently and fairly due and what each accrues based on his/her behavior toward others and other’s behavior toward him/her
Entitlements
Therapy model is based on the family’s emotional system, the differentiation of self within one’s family, and the multi-generational transmission of emotions and family patterns
Bowenian Family Therapy
A model of problem-focused and time-limited therapy developed by the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, CA. Milton Erickson and others
Brief Family Therapy
A therapeutic technique of the strategic model, in which symptomatic or other undesirable behaviors are paradoxically encouraged in order to lessen such behavior or bring it under conscious control
Symptom Prescription
From Ashby, the rule-bound mechanism by which a system remains unchanged so long as the internal or external environment is stable, but when the fluctuation exceeds the range of stability the system must respond in some new way. The system eithers breaks down or makes a leap into new levels of functioning. The change results in a new set of patterns which, like the old patterns, is also bound by rules, and it, too, remains unchanged, so long as the environment is stable.
Bi-Modal Feedback Mechanism
Strategic models see change as occurring suddenly and resulting from shifts in beliefs
Discontinuous change
Structural and transgenerational models see change as occurring through a gradual learning process
Continuous change
In Structural Family Therapy, the process by which elements of a system are transformed to new states or levels of organization
Perspective change
The notion held by the Milan systemic group that causality in families cannot be thought of as a simple, single cause and effect relationship (linear causality). Instead, events, behaviors, and interactions are seen in a more complex way, as mutually influencing one another (feedback loops). Each is the effect of a prior cause and in turn influences future behaviors. Family system events create an endless circular chain. In this model it is meaningless to identify an individual as having caused or started a problem. Instead, all elements of the problem coexist and are reciprocally reinforcing. The problem could not be maintained if any one element were to be removed.
Circular Causality
A technique for interviewing and hypothesis validation designed by the Milan systemic group, based on Bateson’s idea that people learn by perceiving differences. In this technique, each family member comments on the behavior and interactions of two other members. It is hoped that beliefs will become less rigid when members are exposed to different perspectives.
Circular Questioning
In Bowenian therapy, the use of an objective person, such as the therapist, to guide a family member to interact with other members in new ways and prevent the family from seducing the person back into older, dysfunctional behaviors.. The therapist takes an educative role, rather than an emotional one.
Coaching
Originated by the MRI group, the study of the process by which verbal and non-verbal information is exchanged within a relationship. Communication can be analogic which has little structure, but is rich in content, or digital which is verbal communication perceived and interpreted based on meaning.
Communication Theory
A theory and therapeutic model developed by Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy based on the ethical dimension of family relationships. The family maintains invisible, intergenerational loyalties, which members hold in their personal ledgers. Problems in relationships are thought to result either from an attempt to maintain or change the balance sheet of what members owe to one another.
Contextual Family Therapy
From Hoffman, discontinuous changes in families, like symptom development, often occur at times of stress. Changes in the family composition are particularly demanding. There are crises of accession when someone joins the family (birth, marriage) and crises of dismemberment when members leave (divorce, death)
Crisis of Accession - Crisis of Dismemberment
The study of how systems are controlled by information and feedback loops and the means by which they work
Cybernetics
The Bowenian concept of withdrawing from an existing triangle so that the person is not drawn into the conflict between the other two, often the parents
Detriangle
From Nagy’s contextual family therapy, the development of symptomatic behaviors in the pursuit of self-justifying and harmful means to satisfy the perception of what is due as a result of deficient caring and responsibility in parenting. For example, a child who was forced into the role of “adult” by his/her parents may feel entitled to engage in irresponsible, adolescent behaviors as an adult.
Destructive Entitlement
In Bowenian Family Therapy, the separation of intellectual and emotional functioning, which results in being less reactive to family system dynamics and other members’ emotional states.
Differentiation of Self
A scale, developed by Bowen, to measure the degree of emotional fusion with others. The scale ranges from 0, no self, to 100, a hypothetical ideal of fully differentiated.
Differentiation of Self Scale
An intervention developed by Haley and Madanes in which the therapist gives the family a task with the intent of changing stuck sequences. There are two types: straightforward and indirect. Straightforward are not paradoxical, and the therapist expects the family to carry out the task as given. Indirect are paradoxical and the therapist expects the family to resist the task. The process of negotiating relationships and behavior is more important than whether they are carried out.
Directive
From Milan systemic family therapy, the unacknowledged power struggle between parents and the symptomatic child.
Dirty Games
Sudden, unanticipated change in family organization usually brought on by a crisis (may be therapeutically induced), which causes a change in perception, beliefs, or perspective.
Discontinuous Change
From contextual theory, moves away from trustworthy relatedness
Disjunctive Moves
From Guerin, a follower of Bowen, a technique to help family members gain emotional distance from their problems and to become more self-reflective and less blaming. Rather than have a couple discuss their specific problems, the therapist might discuss another couple with similar problems or use film to illustrate an issue.
Displacement Story
A six-step concept described by Bateson in which an individual receives contradictory commands within an important emotional relationship. The recipient of the information can neither comment nor escape, a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation.
Double Bind
From Madanes, a therapeutic technique in which a parent is directed to request that the child intentionally perform the problem behavior. In this way the symptom will not draw as much parental attention, and if it no longer serves a purpose, it can be dropped.
Dramatization
A temporary or permanent connection between two persons
Dyad
A breakdown in the ability of a structure to achieve its goals
Dysfunction
From Haley’s strategic model, the primary focus of treatment. Family decision-making structures that do not allow the family to accomplish goals and meet the needs of family members, for example, parents who have abdicated their executive function to their children.
Dysfunctional Hierarchy
In the transgenerational models, emotional and/or physical distancing from family relationships or a denial of their importance in order to avoid the pain of unresolved emotional conflicts, anxiety, and lack of differentiation. Often falsely perceived as the solution to a problem.
Emotional Cut-off
From Bowen’s family therapy, the cool distance between the parents whose relationships vacillated between overcloseness and overdistance
Emotional Divorce
From contextual theory, what each person is inherently and fairly due and what each accrues based on his/her behavior toward others and other’s behavior toward him/her
Entitlements
From general systems theory, the measure of disorder in a system that occurs without imposed controls and inputs.
Entropy
The study or theory of the nature, sources, and limits of knowledge. Used by family therapists to describe how and what family members come to believe.
Epistemology
A cybernetic principle, which states that a similar outcome may result from many different initial events. For example, depression may be caused either by biochemical imbalances or traumatic life experiences.
Equifinality
From contextual theory, the unequal, but healthy, degree of care and consideration given by parents towards children
Equitable Asymmetry
A set of commonly agreed upon rules and standards for proper professional conduct. Distinguished from law in which a government body legislates criteria for professional behavior, the violation of which may result in criminal or financial penalties.
Ethics
Ethnic origin of a family which incorporates a value system, conscious and unconscious processes, and from which members often derive a sense of identity and belonging.
Ethnicity
From contextual therapy, the goal of treatment in which the therapist attempts to help the client see the positive intent and intergenerational loyalty issues behind even the destructive behaviors of previous generations. Also thought of as forgiveness based upon understanding the past. If the behavior can be seen in a human context, the hold of the past is loosened.
Exoneration
The degree of emotion expressed by family members. It has been observed that families with a schizophrenic member tend to have a high degree of intense and negative emotional interactions.
Expressed Emotion
From contextual theory, the attributes that people are born with (gender, ethnicity, birth defects) and their life experiences (parental divorce, abuse, etc.)
Facts
In Bowenian Family Therapy, the recurrent pattern of emotional reactivity linking family members
Family Emotional System
The series of sequential developmental periods that occur over the course of a family’s lifespan, each with transition points and specific tasks that need to be negotiated for healthy development: marriage, child rearing, launching of adolescents, aging, and death. Normal functioning requires adapting to the changes of each stage. Families are vulnerable to developing problems during transitions.
Family Life Cycle
The family into which the person is born or adopted, used most extensively by transgenerational models
Family of Origin
In Bowenian family therapy, the lack of differentiation in parents often results in one of the parents becoming dysfunctional, immature, and fused with one of the children. Conflict in the parental sub-unit is avoided, but the child’s emotional growth is sacrificed. In this manner symptoms and a lack of differentiation is transmitted from parents to children.
Family Projection Process
From strategic family therapy, rules that govern family members’ behavior or promote specific reactions
Family Rules
A broad range of theories and therapeutic models that view the family as an open system that functions in relation to its larger environment and define individual problems in the context of family dynamics
Family Systems Theory
Information which is returned to the system and which exerts a controlling influence on it
Feedback
A circular mechanism whereby feedback is reintroduced into the system, in a looping chain of events that influence one another
Feedback Loops
From Lewin, the theory that the individual’s field or “life-space” is psychologically and emotionally constructed of objects which are perceived to have either positive or negative valence. Positively valued objects are approached, while negatively valued ones are avoided. Closely related to Gestalt psychology in its interest in how attention to objects is determined.
Field Theory
From contextual theory, the loyalty inherent in children toward parents. The care and concern given to children, in turn, results in filial responsibility toward parents.
Filial Loyalty
From the MRI school, adaptations and changes in families which may change behavior, but do not affect the system’s organization. For example, an adolescent begins maintaining his/her curfew as a result of being grounded for breaking curfew.
First-Order Change
From Bowen, refers to the blurring of intellectual and emotional features or boundaries between family members. The opposite of differentiation, it results in a lack of a separate self and high levels of reactivity among family members.
Fusion
The study of how living systems organize, maintain, and regulate themselves, emphasizing the unity and interrelated hierarchical structure of the parts. Adapted from the biological, physical, and communication sciences, primarily through the work of von Bertalanffy.
General Systems Theory
A multigenerational schematic diagram of the family system used by Bowenian and other transgenerational therapists to depict individual and relationship characteristics and behavioral patterns.
Genogram
From communication theory, communication through touch
Haptic (or symbolic) Communication
The control and decision-making structure of a family, which may be based on age, gender, roles, or education.
Hierarchy
From Bowenian theory, a person who is able to react to the world rationally and enter into relationships while balancing competing needs for belonging and individuality
Highly Differentiated
The tendency of a system to strive for balance in order to achieve stability and limit the range of behavioral variability
Homeostasis
In research, a proposed causal explanation that can be tested and supported or disproved
Hypothesis
A technique used by Milan systemic therapists. A trial and error process by which the therapist makes initial suppositions about the presenting problem, then tests the supposition by asking questions or making an intervention based on that hypothesis. The original supposition is then revised according to the new information. This cybernetic process makes use of information resulting from completed feedback loops.
Hypothesizing
From Madanes, a dysfunctional structure in which children use symptoms to try to change their parents
Incongruous Hierarchy
The legal right of clients or research subjects to be told of the purpose and risks prior to agreeing to participate
Informed Consent
A therapy format associated with Haley in which the therapist conducts a structural interview consisting of four stages: social stage, problem stage, interactional stage, and goal setting stage
Initial Interview
In contextual family therapy, the set of emotional obligations to one’s family of origin as well as to one’s spouse and children
Intergenerational Loyalties
In general a maneuver on the part of the therapist to test a hypothesis and/or promote change
Intervention
Created by the Milan systemic group, this unchanging prescription, given to all families with symptomatic children, requests that parents spend time together away from the children and is intended to break the pattern of destructive “games” and create clearer generational boundaries.
Invariant Prescription
From Nagy’s contextual therapy, unconscious obligations that children take on in order to help their families, sacrificing their own interests and well being in the process.
Invisible Loyalties
From Bowenian therapy, statements that reflect the speaker’s own thoughts and feelings, instead of attempting to blame others
I-Position
From communication theory, communication through body motion
Kinesthetic communication
An assumption of cause and effect in which one event is thought to cause the next. For example, in a classical conditioning paradigm, a particular stimulus elicits a specific response
Linear Causality
A development in the Milan systemic model that grew as the use of paradox declined. The therapist communicates that the development of a symptom is understandable, given the context. There is no implication that a problem is useful, beneficent, or functional, only that people have gotten used to it and that habits are hard to change
Logical Connotation
A central concept in contextual theory, the internalized set of expectations, injunctions, and obligations deriving from interactions with one’s family of origin
Loyalty
From Madanes, a therapeutic technique in which parents are asked to make-believe they need the child’s help and the child is to make-believe helping them. Since the parents explicitly ask for help and the child overtly helps them, there is no need for the covert symptomatic behavior. Additionally, when parents are put in this inferior position overtly, they may feel at odds with what is appropriate and reassert a superior position.
Make Believe Play
From Lidz, a dysfunctional marriage in which each partner is centered on him/herself, undermines the other, and makes frequent threats of divorce
Marital Schism
From Lidz, a dysfunctional marriage in which one partner is dominant and the other submissive. The couple presents the situation as “normal,” leading to a distortion of reality by family members in order to maintain the marriage
Marital Skew
From contextual theory, what is earned through the accumulation of care and concern toward others
Merit
Communication messages, usually nonverbal, that qualify or clarify another communication (communication about communication). The nonverbal message may be congruent with the message (A pat on the back that accompanies, “Job well done, son.”) or incongruent (“Nothing’s wrong,” said through clenched teeth.)
Metacommunication
A theory and therapeutic model influenced by Bateson and the MRI Group, originally developed in Italy by Selvini Palazzoli, Boscolo, Cecchin, and Prata. The primary techniques associated with the early Milan group were rituals and positive connotations. The Milan Group split in the early 1980s with Selvini Palazzoli and Prata forming one group, adhering to the strategic model and developing a ritualistic technique, invariant prescription, to counteract the dirty game, or power struggle between the parents and their child. Boscolo and Cecchin moved away from the strategic approach, developing a collaborative style of therapy. In this model, problems are maintained when the family holds to an old epistemology that does not fit its current circumstance. The therapist introduces new information indirectly by asking questions and the family solves problems themselves as they develop a new epistemology. The therapist/client interactions within the session are the treatment. In their interviews they displayed a curious attitude about the family and the meanings they derived from their experiences and interchanges.
Milan Systemic Family Therapy
A system’s tendency to change its basic organization or structure
Morphogenesis
A system’s tendency to maintain its basic organization and structure
Morphostasis
A center for the study of families in Palo Alto, CA whose researchers and practitioners - Bateson, Satir, and Haley - studied schizophrenia and family interactions, communication, and cybernetic theory. They emphasized process and interactional sequences rather than structure, and distinguished between first-order change and second-order change. They developed a version of brief family therapy based on the notion that the “problem” or treatment focus, stems from the failed solution previously attempted by the family. Later MRI practitioners include Watzlawick, Weakland, and Fisch.
Mental Research Institute (MRI)
From Nagy’s contextual family therapy, the clinical stance of the therapist in which the therapist is accountable to, and supportive of, every relevant member, even when it necessitates accepting contradictory positions within a conflict. The therapist strives for neutrality, joins with each family member, and keeps communication open with all members.
Multidirectional Partiality
More than one generation of a family
Multigenerational
A diverse grouping of theories and therapy models based on psychodynamic principles developed by Ackerman, Bowen, Nagy, Framo, Paul, and others, which identify family patterns that repeat across generations
Multigenerational Family
In Bowenian family therapy, the process by which roles, patterns, emotional reactivity, and family structure are passed from one generation to another. Poorly differentiated individuals tend to marry one another and over several generations produce offspring who are increasingly less differentiated and as a result suffer from severe mental disorders including schizophrenia.
Multigenerational Transmission Process
Corrective information that flows back into the family system which serves to minimize deviation, keep the system functioning within prescribed limits, and discourage change. Homeostatic.
Negative Feedback Loop
From later Milan systemic, a technique and stance with the family in which the therapist withholds judgment, either positive or negative, in an effort to avoid becoming part of the family’s struggles. The therapist is indifferent to treatment outcome, recognizing that his/her role is simply to perturb (or have an impact on) the system.
Neutrality
Parents and their children living together as a unit
Nuclear Family
From Bowen, a fused family that is unstable and unable to cope with stress. Characterized by conflict and dysfunction which are transmitted across generations.
Nuclear Family Emotional System
From Milan systemic, a technique to encourage irreverence or a more flexible view of the family. The family is given a directive that on odd days one set of opinions would be true, but on even days, false. On the seventh day, the family should act spontaneously.
Odd Day/Even Day Ritual
From general systems theory, a living system (including families), with a functionally porous or flexible boundaries, permitting the free exchange of information and resources with other systems.
Open System
From strategic family therapy, a directive that is aimed at making the symptom harder to keep than give up. Requires the family member or members do something they do not want to do, but is something that would benefit them in some way.
Ordeal
A strategic intervention that is built around a statement containing messages at different logical levels which contradict one another. This subtle contradiction is used to perturb the system and to generate change. The symptomatic family member might be asked to keep or intensify his/her depression. If he/she rebels, the symptom must be given up. If he/she complies, the symptom has come under his/her conscious control.
Paradoxical Intervention
From communication theory, communicating through tone, pace, and inflexion
Paralinguistic Communication
From Nagy’s contextual model, the subjective distortion of a relationship that induces one’s spouse or child to assume parental responsibilities for that person. These distortions can be achieved either by “wishful fantasy” or by the use of dramatic dependent behavior. Part of the loyalty system of the family. For example, a parent’s fear of seeing blood leads the oldest child to clean other family member’s wounds before the phobic parent might see them. According to Nagy, a modest amount is a necessary part of helping children eventually assume responsible adult roles. But when it is extreme and reinforced by excessive guilt or obligation, as if the parent wouldn’t survive, a psychological bind is created, trapping the child.
Parentification
A sequence that repeats over time
Pattern
From Bowenian therapy, interactions that characterize differentiated relationships in which individuals talk rationally to one another without blaming the other and handle conflict without attempting to triangulate a third person
Person-to-Person Interactions
From Bowenian theory, a person with a pseudo-self who is ruled by his/her emotions. He/she adopts the values and attitudes of significant others in order to be accepted and loved
Poorly Differentiated
From MRI strategic therapy, a paradoxical intervention in which the therapist amplifies or exaggerates the family’s explanation of the problem to such a point that the family will disagree
Positioning
From the Milan systemic group, a complex paradoxical reframing technique which includes all family members and the system itself. Each family member’s contribution to the problem is reframed as an effort to solve problems and help meet the family’s needs.
Positive Connotation
The flow of information back into the system that works to amplify deviations which increases instability and facilitates change toward meeting new goals.
Positive Feedback Loop
A paradoxical strategic family therapy technique in which the therapist attempts to unbalance the family structure by instructing the members to continue or increase the problem or symptomatic behavior in or to bring the behavior under conscious control or lessen the behavior as the family rebels against the instruction. For example, a client who is unable to complete a work project is encouraged to set times each day in which the project would not be worked on.
Prescribing the Symptom
A strategic, paradoxical technique designed by Madanes. Clients are instructed to pretend to have the symptom. The symptom becomes voluntary, unreal, and subject to being changed.
Pretending
A legal right that state law gives to clients stating that communications between therapist and client are protected by the law from forced disclosure. That is, only the client, not the therapist, has the legal right to disclose communications that take place within such a relationship.
Privilege
The notion that the information people reveal varies according to the circumstance. For example, the process of constructing a genogram tends to encourage subjective responses that distort the information that is revealed. Therapists should pay attention not only to the information received from the client family, but also to their projections and distortions.
Projective Hypothesis
From communication theory, interpersonal spatial relations, including body language, stance, and preferred physical distance.
Proxemics
From Bowenian theory, a person who is not differentiated may be fused with another person. As a result he/she does not reason from his/her own values, but instead borrows the values of the person with whom he/she is fused and commonly makes emotionally reactive choices.
Pseudo Self
From contextual theory, what happens within a person such as thoughts, fantasies, emotions, and the meanings that he/she ascribes to the Facts of his/her life
Psychology
From cybernetics, rule-determined repetitive patterns of interaction
Redundancy
From second-order cybernetics, Tomm designed questions that inspire families not only to reflect on the meaning of their current perspectives, but also to consider new options
Reflexive Questions
From strategic family therapy, techniques in which the therapist’s language and how he/she labels events gives new, often positive, meaning to a situation. This alteration of meaning invites the possibility of change.
Reframing
From contextual theory, moves toward trustworthy relatedness
Rejunctive Moves
From contextual theory, the fundamental dynamic force that holds families and communities together through reliability and trustworthiness
Relational Ethics
From MRI strategic, a paradoxical therapeutic technique used when the family seems ambivalent about changing. The therapist warns the family of the dangers of change, restrains them from trying to change, or asks them to change slowly. Thus, the therapist aligns with the side of the ambivalence that resists change so that the family will align with the side that wishes to change.
Restraining Techniques
From contextual theory, the generational perpetuation of destructive entitlement where one generation damages the next innocent generation. The process is reinforced by earned destructive entitlement and is the chief factor in family and marital dysfunction.
Revolving Slate (of Injustice)
A Milan systemic intervention consisting of a series of actions that involve the whole family in a sequence of steps forming a “play” to be repeatedly enacted under prescribed circumstances. By engaging family members in a sequence in new ways, it is hoped that they will gain new perceptions which will result in changes in beliefs and behaviors.
Rituals
Wynne’s term for the type of boundaries around some families that may appear open and flexible, but which in fact permit little information from the outside to penetrate. In these families, rules are in constant flux.
Rubber Fence
A closing statement in a Milan systemic (early Milan) session that includes a statement of paradox. The person with the symptom is characterized as being in the service of the homeostasis. This intervention tends to overcome resistance by causing a rebellion against the symptom.
Sacrifice Intervention
From the MRI school, a change in the rules that govern the emotions and behavioral patterns of the system, resulting in fundamental system reorganization and permanent changes in interactions
Second-Order Change
The therapist’s self-knowledge regarding his/her values, beliefs, biases, strengths, and weaknesses. Also refers to the ways in which therapists make use of their personal experiences during therapy and the nature of the emotional bond offered to clients.
Self of the Therapist
From Hoffman, a mechanism for change in which a message or request is given and the recipient’s new behavior is rewarded. Distinguished from a double bind in which the nature of the message insures that no response will be rewarded. A double bind is a simple bind that is continually imposed and then continually lifted.
Simple Bind
From Bowenian theory, a person who is well differentiated and is able to function based upon a personally defined set of values, beliefs, convictions, and life principles.
Solid Self
From contextual theory, if parents require the child to choose between them, the child must be loyal to one at the expense of his/her loyalty to the other. The child becomes symptomatic as he/she attempts to bring the parents together
Split Filial Loyalty
Reuben Hill’s model used to explain whether or not a stressful event would result in a crisis in some families but not in others. A = the stressor, B = the family’s crisis-meeting resources, C - the family’s definition of the stressor, and X = the crisis.
ABC-X Family Crisis Model
Describes a variety of engagement techniques, such as joining, used principally by structural family therapists in which the therapist adapts him/herself to the family’s style of interacting.
Accommodation
The primary national professional association of MFTs. Located in Washington DC.
AAMFT (American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy)
A set of ethical guidelines and rules that all members of AAMFT are required to understand and follow. Functions are to define the role of the professional, help guide professional conduct, and serve as a basis for sanctions.
AAMFT Code of Ethics
The process by which immigrant group members adjust to the culture of their new country
Acculturation
From Olson’s Circumplex Model, a measure of the family’s ability to respond and adapt to changes in their lives. Also called “flexibility.” Families are rated at four levels: rigid, structured, flexible, and chaotic.
Adaptability
A chronic and infectious disease in which the body’s immune system is damaged, making a person vulnerable to a number of serious, sometimes fatal, infections and cancers
AIDS - Acquired-Immune-Deficiency Syndrome
A self-help group that uses a 12-step program for recovery from alcohol addiction
Alcoholics Anonymous - AA
In the structural and strategic models, a bond or affiliation between two or more family members. Generally within a subsystem and not hidden.
In the domestic violence literature, refers to the redemptive phase of the abuse cycle, in which the perpetrator promises never to act violently again and the victim agrees to participate in that goal.
Alliance
Distorting someone’s experience by denying or relabeling it (ex: parents dismissing or denying a child’s feelings)
Mystification
Originated by postmodern Chilean biologist, Maturana: systems that can be controlled from the outside, such as machines
Allopoetic Systems
From object relations theory, that part of the ego that is formed from interactions with the rejecting object
Antilibidinal Ego
From object relations theory, a repressed system within the ego characterized by aggression, rage, and contempt
Antilibidinal System
From symbolic-experiential therapy, family members are encouraged to freely experiment as if they were in the role of the other, so long as they understand that the role-play is symbolic. The process allows family members to alternately experiment and return to their secure roles.
As If Structure
Originated by postmodern Chilean biologist, Maturana, systems that are self-organizing and self-maintaining, such as biological and human systems. Can be described by second-order cybernetics.
Autopoetic Systems
From Satir’s experiential family therapy, one of five communication styles. Tends to distract others from potential conflict by acting helpless, weak, and lacking an understanding
Avoider
Equalizing access to power in a couple which is overly organized by a hierarchy
Balancing Power
A beginning observable, stable performance measure against which change, particularly behavioral change, can be measured
Baseline
Formulated by Whitaker (symbolic-experiential therapy), the family takes back from the therapist its authority to make choices about what is discussed and about decisions that affect their lives
Battle for Initiative
Described by Whitaker as the therapist’s demand that the family capitulate to his/her way of conducting therapy, particularly during the initial stages.
Battle for Structure
An assessment tool used to rate the dimensions of competence and style in a family’s functioning. Competence dimensions are: adequate, optimal, midrange, borderline, and severely dysfunctional. Stylistic dimensions are: centripetal, centrifugal, and mixed.
Beavers - Timberlawn Model
From behavioral family therapy, a way of describing relationships in terms of costs and benefits. Functional relationship have plentiful access to rewards and relatively few costs, while distressed relationships have a scarcity of rewards relative to costs.
Behavioral Exchange Theory
A theory and therapeutic model developed by Patterson, Reid, and others, based on principles of learning and behavior change. All family members are seen as part of the problem and symptoms are reformulated into concrete observable behaviors, each of which will either be rewarded or extinguished.
Behavioral Family Therapy - BFT
A program for training parents in the use of contingency management to modify or extinguish unwanted behaviors and reinforce desirable behaviors in children
Behavioral Parent Training - BPT
People who belong to more than one culture and who are able to alternate between the cultures, adjusting temporarily to each depending on the circumstance.
Bicultural
From symbolic-experiential therapy, the tendency in some families for family members to be therapists to one another. Therapists demand that the therapy be turned over to them, asserting that the family has failed in its efforts at self-therapy.
Bilateral Pseudo-Therapy
A therapeutic stance in symbolic-experiential therapy in which the therapist adopts the language, accent, rhythm, or posture of the family
Bilateral Transference
Biological factors that influence behaviors, e.g. depression, that is caused, in part, by faulty neurochemistry
Biobehavioral
Families in which the parents are divorced, have remarried, and formed two intact nuclear families
Binuclear Family
From Satir’s experiential family therapy, one of five communication styles where the person judges and complains, often for the purpose of bullying others into accepting his/her preferences
Blamer
Hypothetical dividers between or among subsystems within the family or between systems. Defined spatially by the ways family members align with one another. Set by implicit or explicit rules concerning who participates in which subsystem and in what manner. May change over time with variable circumstances. Described as either rigid, clear, or diffuse in the structural model.
Boundary
The regions between each subsystem of the family and between the family and the suprasystem. In family systems therapy, referred to as the familial boundary.
Boundary Interface
A structural therapy technique in which the therapist establishes a functional semi-permeable (clear) boundary where either a rigid or diffuse boundary had existed previously.
Boundary Making
From behavioral marital therapy, each partner identified behaviors that his/her partner finds enjoyable and makes a commitment to increasing those behaviors.
Caring Days
The US government agency that, among other things, tracks the incidence of communicable diseases and defines criteria for diagnosis.
Center for Disease Control - CDC
From object relations theory, one of three parts of the ego. It is conscious, adaptable, and free to deal with future experiences with attachment figures in reasonable ways. Maintains its own object, the ideal object.
Central Ego
Defined by Beavers as part of Beavers-Timberlawn Model, a family system dynamic in which members are expelled or encouraged to operate at the outer periphery and seek gratification outside of the family.
Centrifugal
Defined by Beavers as part of the Beavers-Timberlawn Model, a family system dynamic in which members are tightly bound to one another emotionally and encouraged to seek gratification from one another.
Centripetal
A graphic model for observing and assessing families designed by Olson, which measure the family’s levels of cohesion and adaptability.
Circumplex Model
A learning paradigm studied and practiced in a laboratory or other controlled environment in which a stimulus called the unconditioned stimulus (US) which naturally elicits an unconditioned response (UCR), is paired with a neutral stimulus that does not initially elicit a response. Through the repeated pairings, the neutral stimulus (now the conditioned stimulus - CS) begins to elicit the desired response (now the conditioned response - CR)
Classical Conditioning
A self-contained system with impermeable boundaries which resists change and operates with minimal interactions with its outside environment, thereby increasing its dysfunction
Closed System
A concept described by Minuchin (structural model) in which two family members form a covert alliance, either temporary or durable, against a third. Create power blocks in families.
Coalitions
Used in information management and research, these systems establish an organized and consistent approach to identifying and counting clinical phenomena
Coding Schemas
From behavioral family therapy, one person uses aversive stimuli to control the behavior of another
Coercion
Therapies based on both behavioral techniques, which grew out of scientific, laboratory experiments, and on the cognitive therapy models. People learn to modify behaviors both by altering the reinforcement contingencies and/or changing the cognitions that influence their behaviors and interactions.
Cognitive Behavior Family Therapy (CBT)
Mental models by which incoming information is perceived, understood, transformed, and stored, together with a corresponding repertoire of behavioral options. Based on the integration of experiences. Forms the individual’s internal representation of reality. Shape actions and communication. May be flexible or rigid.
Cognitive Maps
From Olson’s Circumplex Model, a measure of the strength of the emotional bonds between and among family members
Cohesion
Couples treatment in which each partner is seen by his/her own therapist
Collaborative Couples Therapy
Bloch and his followers use terms with other medical care providers - nurses, physicians, or rehabilitation specialists - to help families cope more effectively with the consequences of medical illnesses
Collaborative Family Health Care
From Goolishian and Anderson, a model of family therapy based on the idea that problems are maintained in the family’s language and may be resolved by changes in their use of language. The therapist asks questions from a not knowing stance, designed to draw out the client’s own views of the problem. The problem is “dissolved” as new meanings and actions evolve.
Collaborative Language Family Therapy
A family system defense mechanism in which members cooperate by unconsciously sharing thoughts and feelings. The defense is used to protect family members from threatening outside forces.
Collusion
An interactional pattern in which members of an intimate relationship establish roles and take on behavioral patterns which fulfill the unconscious needs and demands of the other
Complementarity
From solution-focused therapy, one of three ways to characterize the level of participation and commitment to change. This client brings a specific problem, but is currently unwilling to focus on a solution.
Complainant
From Satir’s experiential family therapy, one of the five communication styles. Rational, but often attempts to sway others by referring to outside “authorities.”
Computer
Couples therapy in which one therapist works with both spouses at different times
Concurrent Couples Therapy
A therapist whose stance is to be aggressive, confrontational, and charming
Conductor
The ethical obligation of the therapist to protect the client’s identity and other personal information. Therapists may not reveal information without the client’s consent to third parties except as allowed by the governing licensing body and/or as outlined in the Ethical Guidelines of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.
Confidentiality
Therapy that involves two or more family members, introduced by MRI psychiatrist, Jackson in 1959 to describe marital therapy in which the spouses were seen together
Conjoint
A model of marital therapy developed by Satir in which both partners are seen together by one or two therapists. The treatment is designed for married couples without children and in which one or both of the partners has either a psychiatric disorder or a social diagnosis e.g. (alcoholism, gambling, extramarital affair).
Conjoint Marital Therapy
From narrative therapy, the view of self is plastic and continuously deconstructed and reconstructed through interactions. The sense of self derives from experiences that fit into the dominant narrative. The therapist and client co-construct a new self that is more congruent with the client’s preferred outcome.
Constitutionalist Self
A variety of therapeutic models based on postmodern philosophy, which emphasizes the concept that a person’s knowledge of the world is based on his/her perception and internal construction of the “truth” and the belief that reality can never really be known
Constructivist Family Therapy
A term that describes the topics that people in therapy are discussing
Content
In the behavioral family therapy model, an agreement between two or more family members aimed at increasing mutually rewarding behaviors. The contract, which is usually written, specifies the desired behaviors each will do and under what circumstances.
Contingency Contract
A technique, introduced by Whitaker, in which two therapists work together as a team
Co-therapy
A concept from analytic theory that relates to the therapist’s unconscious emotional reactions to the client which derive from the therapist’s own history
Countertransference
From Whitaker’s symbolic-experiential family therapy, a concept in which healthy functioning for both therapists and families includes a high proportion of non-rational, creative, right-brain activity. Therapists need to be able to be irreverent, to use fantasy freely, to function at a regressed level when it serves the therapy and to be mature enough to be immature.
Craziness
From structural therapy, a stable coalition between a parent and child against the other parent
Cross Generational Coalition
A research design which examines subjects at a single point in time
Cross-Sectional Studies
The set of shared beliefs, behaviors, values, customs, meanings, symbols, and the like, transferred from one generation to the next and from the social groups to which the person belongs
Culture
Therapists’ sensitivity to the existence and impact of the family’s cultural rules and values. Such awareness enables easier engagement, reduces misunderstanding and misinterpretations of family members’ behavior, and facilitates the development of trust. Therapists should be aware of their biases regarding the cultural background of others and their own.
Cultural Consciousness
From solution-focused therapy one of three ways to characterize the level of participation and commitment to change. This client brings a problem and a willingness to work toward its resolution
Customer
A behavioral technique in which the therapist teaches the client to challenge his/her tendency to have catastrophic expectations
De-catastrophizing
The postmodern process of constructing new meanings by examining implicit assumptions
Deconstruction
An analytic concept describing the unconscious process by which the ego protects the person from conscious awareness of anxiety provoking, threatening thoughts and memories
Defense Mechanism
From structural family therapy, when two family members attempt to preserve their relationship by defining their conflict as a disagreement about a third person, keeping the focus on that person rather than themselves and their problem.
Detouring
The most recent edition of the diagnostic manual of the American Psychiatric Association, which provides a classification system of mental disorders and syndromes
DSM - V
In structural family therapy, boundaries that are not clearly defined or maintained, resulting in blurred generational roles and responsibilities. Often lead to enmeshed relationships.
Diffuse Boundaries
From sex therapist, LoPiccolo, a method of treating primary inorgasmic or preorgasmic dysfunction.
Directed Masturbation Training
From Framo’s couples therapy, an impasse in treatment when couples have gained some insight about the nature of the problems and the irrationality of their demands on one another, but they still have differences as to what each want from one another and from the marriage.
The Dirty Middle
From the operant conditioning paradigm, a cue that signals the availability of a reinforcer
Discriminative Stimulus
From structural family therapy, emotionally distant and uninvolved family members with overly rigid boundaries in which members are isolated and disconnected from one another.
Disengagement
From structural family therapy, the process of creating emotional space, often in response to enmeshment due to diffuse boundaries.
Distancing
From narrative therapy, sociocultural norms that can become internalized and have a controlling effect on one’s story of oneself. In treatment these norms are personified and their impact is discussed.
Dominant Culture Discourses
The extension of Hill’s early work on stress by McCubbin and Patterson which considers the cumulative effect of stress on families rather than the impact of a single stressor
Double ABC-X Family Stress Model
The therapeutic view that it is important to attend to the family’s relationship to the larger systems - community, school, and work.
Ecosystemic Approach
An analytic concept referring to a hypothetical internal mental structure that both contains the individual’s perception of him/herself and is also the rational mediator between the instinctual demands of the id and the internalized social prohibitions of the super-ego.
Ego
Phenomena or experiences at odds with an individual’s self-perception
Egodystonic
Phenomena or experiences consistent with the perceived needs, self-perception, or ideals of an individual
Egosyntonic
From general systems theory, distinct entities of the whole family or group, not present in the parts
Emergents
An experiential/humanistic couples therapy model from Greenberg and Johnson which posits that problems stem from an attempt to hide primary emotions such as fear and need for attachment and instead use defensive and coercive reactions known as secondary reactive emotions.
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy
A structural therapy technique used both in the assessment and treatment of families. Members are instructed to demonstrate their problems during the therapy session, allowing the therapist to observe the problem and develop strategies to change it.
Enactment
In structural family therapy, a loss of autonomy due to diffuse boundaries, resulting in family members being overly involved in one another’s emotional lives
Enmeshment
A solution-focused technique used to offset family member’s tendency to focus on what is wrong in their lives. Therapists ask clients to recall the times when they did not have the problem when they ordinarily would or times when they had the problem, but solved it.
Exception Question
From object relations theory, one of three parts of the ego. It is unconscious, inflexible, and in a state of longing for a tempting but unsatisfying object.
Exciting Ego
From object relations theory, gives rise to the libidinal ego
Exciting Object
The therapeutic stance of Whitaker’s symbolic-experiential therapy in which the therapist is willing to both receive the family members’ reactions to him/her and to fully disclose his/her reactions to them
Existential Encounters
A group of therapy models, developed principally by Satir and Whitaker, that have in common certain tenets such as: experience is more important than intellectual thought; the importance of experiencing a fully range of affect; the stance of the therapist as a real person; the importance of spontaneity and creativity; the belief in the freedom of choice; the focus on the here-and-now; the belief in the inherent ability of families to heal themselves; and the description of general rather than specific therapy goals.
Experiential Family Therapy
A narrative therapy technique described by White, in which a problem or symptom is conceptualized and discussed as though it originated outside the family or person. The problem is personified, and its powers and designs for the person or family are explored.
Externalizing the Problem
From operant conditioning paradigm, when a previously learned and reinforced behavior is no longer reinforced it eventually disappears
Extinction
Designed by Olson and others. A questionnaire designed to measure a family’s qualities, including cohesion and adaptability
Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales - FACES
A model of early family therapy created by Bell in which the therapist stimulates open discussions, leaving the family to solve its own problems. Like others, Bell found that families in therapy proceed through stages, and he structured his work to concentrate on those stages.
Family Group Therapy
A way of classifying families which illustrates members’ similarities and differences, and which may quickly enable the therapist to identify therapeutic goals
Family Typologies
A treatment philosophy with a nonsexist, egalitarian view in which the social and familial gender roles of women and men are actively considered, including the perspective that social and cultural structures often give men a greater amount of power and control over political and economic resources
Feminist Family Therapy
A term used by Whitaker (symbolic-experiential therapy) to describe a clash of family of origin cultures. The weakest family member is vulnerable to pathology arising out of family mythology.
Fixation of Triangles
From solutions-focused therapy, the idea that when families begin treatment they often characterize the problem as though it were an immutable fact, generating a sense of hopelessness. To reverse this tendency, the therapist begins by eliciting information about what happens when the problem does not occur.
Fixed Linguistic Statement
The first intervention of solution-focused treatment in which clients are asked to observe their lives between the first and second session to notice what has happened that they would like to continue to have happen so that they begin to identify their strengths
Formula First Task
The ability of a system or subsystem to achieve its goals
Functional
A behavioral assessment technique used to determine the interpersonal or environmental contingencies that maintain the problem
Functional Analysis
A model of cognitive-behavioral marital therapy developed by Alexander which integrates systems theory, behaviorism, and cognitive therapy. The two-step therapy includes cognitive work and psychoeducation and is most often applied to adolescents and their families.
Functional Family Therapy
A publication in 1970 in which the primary finding demonstrated that the majority of therapists who worked with families identified improved communication as their primary treatment goal.
GAP Report (Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry)
A project at the Ackerman Institute started during the mid-1980s, the goal of which was to describe the relationship between gender and violence using both the feminist and systemic perspectives. A important question considered was whether family therapy could be successful in cases of domestic violence.
Gender and Violence Project
A model of therapy that focuses on the anxiety inherent in the contact between people and which uses techniques to heighten self-awareness and personal choice.
Gestalt Family Therapy
An assessment tool used to rate family functioning along a continuum in three areas: problem solving (decision making and communication); organization (roles and boundaries), and emotional climate (empathy, respect, regard). Originally designed by family therapist Lyman Wynne.
Global Assessment of Relational Functioning (GARF)
The range of emotions following a loss, which are part of the process of integrating the loss.
Grief
The virus that causes AIDS. The virus can be detected in the blood of infected individuals.
Human Immuno-Suppressant Virus (HIV)
An irrational dislike, disregard, or fear of homosexual people.
Homophobia
The therapeutic stance that emphasizes the uniqueness of individuals and promotes their potential for growth.
Humanistic
An experiential model developed by Satir, in which the therapist and family work together to promote open communication and authentic emotional experiences.
Human Validation Process Model
From object relations theory, a neutral object freed from exciting and rejecting aspects. Maintained by the Central Ego.
Ideal Object
The family member who manifests the symptoms
Identified Patient (IP)
From symbolic-experiential therapy, an attitude by therapists in which they do not delude themselves into believing that they are consistent with families. They accept inconsistency and realize that it helps undermine the family’s attempt to maintain a rigid pattern of living.
Inconsistency
The selecting and accentuating of certain experiences and aspects of the self in the process of becoming a unique human being, includes separating from the larger group or system.
Individuation
A goal of psychodynamic therapy, to have clients gain an understanding of the underlying, unconscious dynamic issues that affect their relationships.
Insight
A goal of symbolic-experiential therapy occurring as a result of expanded emotional interactions within the session resulting in less inhibition
Interactional Insight
Points at which the boundary from one system or subsystem meets the boundaries of other subsystems or the environment
Interface (Boundary Interface)
An integrated approach using support and empathy to help couples accept differences and disappointments and break the cycle of mutual blame. Treatment begins with a formulation consisting of: a theme that defines the conflict and a polarization process describing the dysfunctional pattern of interaction. The problem is externalized and the couple unites against a common enemy. The couple uses behavioral exchange processes such as quid pro quo and good faith contracts, but is also taught to make I-statements, to listen, and to express themselves in direct but non-blaming ways.
Integrative Couples Therapy
A model developed by Pinsof in which various family and individual approaches are used in sequence, progressing from the simplest here-and-now interventions from structural, strategic, cognitive-behavioral, solution-focused models or pharmacological agents. If those interventions are unsuccessful, the therapist moves deeper into intergenerational issues or object relations. The therapy may use a team approach, bringing in experts in various techniques or assigning family members individual therapists.
Integrative Problem-Centered Therapy (IPCT)
A structural family therapeutic stance and technique in which the therapist regulates the degree of impact of his/her messages. Can be regulated by increasing the length of a transaction or repeating the message. Tone, pacing, and volume are the tools.
Intensity
An integrated, collaborative family or individual therapy model created by Richard Schwartz, applying systems concepts and techniques to intrapsychic processes. Therapists and clients co-create changes in life stories. The goal of individual therapy is to help the client differentiate his/her core Self and heal the parts. In family therapy the goal is to elicit the family members’ selves and collaboratively deal with the parts of each that are involved in the problem. Family members can then have Self-to-Self interactions and begin to see one another as people who have a problem with some of their parts rather than being defined by the symptom.
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
One of the primary therapeutic techniques of the psychoanalytic and object relations models in which the therapist makes clarifying statements regarding clients’ unconscious motives and processes in order to help them understand the significance of the material uncovered.
Interpretations
In general a maneuver on the part of the therapist to test a hypothesis and/or promote change
Intervention
A therapeutic process used to confront a substance abuser’s denial or his/her substance abuse. Friends and family members organize a confrontation meeting, led by the therapist, in which they each proclaim their commitment to, and concern for, the alcoholic. The goals are to have the substance abuser feel supported, acknowledge the problems the abuse is causing, and enter a treatment program.
The Intervention
A hypothetical construct from object relations theory referring to the internalized images and memories from past relationships, particularly parents, who continue to exert an influence on current thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviors.
Introjects
A process of normal development in which parts of caretakers are split off and internalized into the child’s developing personality. Expectations of self and other are based on these internal representations.
Introjection
A phenomena in which two or more systems or subsystems exhibit similar or parallel characteristics, especially in supervision when roles and interactions between therapist and supervisor mimic those of the family being discussed.
Isomorphism
A structural family therapy engagement technique in which the therapist accepts and accommodates to the family and engages with each family member. The goal is to establish a trusting and familiar connection with the family so that the therapist can effect changes from within the system.
Joining
From narrative therapy, questions the therapist asks to gather information about the times in clients’ lives that they were able to resist the effects of the problem
Landscape of Action Questions
From narrative therapy, questions to help clients consider a new, more heroic self view
Landscape of Meaning Questions
From narrative therapy, groups of clients who are working on similar problems meet in order to continue to construct and maintain new narratives and to support each other’s preferred outcomes
Leagues
From Satir’s experiential family therapy, one of five communication styles. Reacts appropriately to the situation in a flowing and authentic manner.
Leveler
Targeting interventions at a specific family subsystem, such as children or parents
Levels of Intervention
From object relations theory, an exciting (or overstimulating) object gives rise to this.
Libidinal Ego
From object relations theory, a repressed system within the ego characterized by need, excitement, and longing
Libidinal System
A research design in which subjects are followed across time, which often allows for greater certainty in causal inference
Longitudinal Studies
From behavioral marital therapy, on specific days one partner non-contingently increases those behaviors the other partner finds pleasurable
Love Days
A service delivery system in which the third-party payer controls the cost, quality, quantity, and terms of treatment
Managed Care
A method of statistical analysis used by researchers for determining which independent variables have a causal relationship with the dependent variable
Multiple Analysis of Variance (MANOVA)
A structural family therapy assessment tool used to depict a family’s organization and gain an understanding of its complex structures and sequences (triangles, coalitions, emotional cut-offs)
Mapping the System
From narrative therapy, the therapeutic technique of asking about the effect of the problem on relationships and the effect of the relationships on the problem. As family members identify their influence on the problem a second, alternative description of the problem is generated. This alternative description, in turn, is a source for new responses.
Mapping the Relative Influence
An assessment inventory used to determine the relative strengths and weaknesses of a marriage, e.g. communication skills, the manner and availability of rewards versus punishments, and sexual satisfaction
Marital Adjustment Scale
A psychoeducational weekend couple’s retreat for improved communication, problem solving, sexual intimacy, and spiritual health. Originally for Catholic married couples and later adapted for Protestant and Jewish couples.
Marriage Encounter
A psychoeducational model in which clients with medical problems and their families are treated by a team including physicians, allied health care professionals, and mental health professionals
Medical Family Therapy
A conceptually wide-ranging integrative model that addresses six core domains of human experience: organization, sequences, development, culture, gender, and internal processes. Each person has the capacity to interact positively and harmoniously unless they are being constrained. the therapist considers the contributions of gender, ethnicity, class, religion, education, or regional background in the development of constraints. The goal is to release constraints, not to focus on deficits.
Metaframeworks Model
A symbolic representation of an experience that captures both its basic and essential features by using a description of a completely different category of objects or events. Often used to shift a family’s perspective.
A joining technique used primarily by structural therapists in which the therapist gains acceptance by mimicking the gestures, communication, and behavioral patterns of family members.
Mimesis
A solution-focused technique used to clarify goals. Clients are asked, “Suppose one night, while you were asleep, there was a miracle and this problem was solved. How would you know? What would be different when you wake up?”
Miracle Question
From social learning theory, learning new behavior or extinguishing old behavior by observing the reinforcement contingencies of the behavior in another person
Modeling
From Satir, the child’s method for making sense of his/her parents’ differences and selecting those aspects of parental male/female role models that become a blueprint for his/her behavior and expectations in other relationships. As marital partners, individuals project onto their spouses an image of how they expect them to be, rather than how they are. Inevitably, each is disappointed.
Model Integration Analysis
From philosophy, a position in which “truth” consists of a tangible, knowable set of observable or deducible facts. In this philosophy it is assumed that there are universal principles that would guide researchers and therapists toward theoretic tenets, diagnoses, and treatment
Modernism
From network therapy, multiple therapists who share the group leadership as a team
Multi-Conductor Model
From social constructivist, Hoffman, the therapist’s stance in which he/she strives to positively regard each person’s point of view, even ones that are repugnant to the therapist or to society, in order to find the meaning behind behaviors, actions, and events
Multi-Partiality
Therapy with several families with similar problems. Originated by Peter Laqueur, this model uses techniques from traditional therapy, psychodrama and encounter groups while working with multiple families, simultaneously.
Multiple Family Therapy
From the operant conditioning paradigm, a procedure for strengthening a behavior, i.e., increasing the probability that the behavior will be repeated or increasing its frequency. A stimulus, often aversive, is removed once a target behavior is exhibited.
Negative Reinforcement
From general systems theory, the measure of organization in a system. A well-organized system would have high levels.
Negentropy
The integrated approach from Eron and Lund in which the therapists use MRI reframing techniques, narrative therapy techniques, and elements of solution-focused therapy. The therapist believes that people have a preference for how they would like to view themselves and others, which they call the preferred view. They ask clients questions about their preferred view and about their vision of a future without the problem. Therapists ask mystery questions, such as “How did a person who is so hard-working wind up feeling listless and depressed?”
Narrative Solutions Approach
A postmodern therapeutic model developed by White and Epston, which centers on the narrative metaphor. The family member’s sense of reality is organized around the stories he/she tells about him/herself and the world. Each culture forms dominant narratives, which influence personal narratives, and therapists and clients discuss their impact. Problems, symptoms, and dominant narratives are externalized in the therapy conversations. Clients are encouraged to tell “stories” about themselves and respond by exploring alternative perceptions of reality, leading to new options for solutions to problems, and in the process, “re-story” their lives.
Narrative Therapy
A goal of network therapy. It is a euphoric connectedness to others, likened to the energy and feelings of connectedness that can occur at religious revivals and rock concerts. The result is to bind the group together into a supportive, purposeful, goal-oriented social network.
Network Effect
A model associated with Speck, Attneave, and Ruevini in which the treatment includes people from a client’s social network (often a large group, including family, friends, neighbors) as well as a team of therapists that come together to solve the client or family problem. Treatment consists of six phases: retribalization, polarization, mobilization, depression, breakthrough, and exhaustion-elation.
Network Therapy
Focus on the hidden effects of language, the meaning of non-verbal behavior, and the utilization of communication and trance to create change.
Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP)
The concept that specifies that you cannot combine individual elements of a system to recreate its essential character. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Nonsummativity
From collaborative language systems, a stance in which therapists do not use diagnoses, give directives, or make hypotheses. They may offer tentative opinions or ideas, but assert that to take a more “expert” or directive stance would limit the solutions the family and therapist might discover through their conversations.
Not Knowing
The theory that people are motivated by a basic need for human connection rather than basic sexual and aggressive drives, and that repeated parent-child interactions, particularly unsatisfying ones, are internalized in the form of objects. In development, infants experience and internalize others in a variety of ways.
Object Relations Theory
A model developed by Scharff and Scharff based on principles that emphasize the internalization of experience as the developmental foundation on which humans form relationships and attachments.
Object Relations Therapy
A behavioral learning paradigm in which a naturally occurring response is reinforced, increasing the probability that it will be repeated.
Operant Conditioning
An example, model, or concept that contains an interrelated set of assumptions
Paradigm
From behavioral marital therapy, a contract in which the behavior of each partner is not contingent on the other
Parallel (Good Faith) Contract
From Minuchin’s structural model, a role set of behaviors, and placement in a family sequence which stems from he functional removal of a child from the sibling subsystem. The child’s responsibilities are poorly defined, unlimited, and beyond the child’s developmental capabilities.
Parentified Child
A psychoeducational program in which parents learn behavior management techniques to reduce the prevalence of troublesome behaviors and increase the frequency of more desired behaviors. A goal is to reduce distress and conflict and increase cohesiveness and expressiveness.
Parent Management Training (PMT)
A therapeutic technique from Satir to help clients experience the different parts of their personalities and enable them to see how they operate as an integrated whole. The family member directs others to act out the specific parts, fostering new personal experience and insight.
Parts Party
A conception of interpersonal reality that a person uses to make sense of the world
Personal Map
An intervention which introduces a small change or ripple without altering the system’s basic organization in an attempt to magnify the change later
Perturbation
From Satir’s experiential therapy, one of five communication styles. This person attempts to pacify and smooth over conflict by being “nice,” defending and covering up for others.
Placater
From operant conditioning, a process for increasing the probability that a desired (target) behavior will be repeated by adding a reinforcing stimulus after the target behavior is exhibited.
Positive Reinforcement
A philosophic view held by an eclectic group of family therapy models in which the practitioners consider reality to be subjective, and attend to social and political norms within the client’s culture. Examples include constructivist, narrative, and solution-focused models.
Postmodernism
From behavioral therapy, a technique in which a high probability behavior i.e., one that the subject would voluntarily tend to engage in frequently, is used to reinforce a low probability target behavior in order to increase the frequency of the target behavior
Premack Principle
A psychoeducational program for married couples to improve their relationship before problems set in. Participants learn communication and conflict resolution skills and discuss their expectations for marriage. The program can be held weekly for groups of 4-10 couples or in a weekend marathon session for 20-60 couples.
Preventive Intervention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREPARE)
From the operant conditioning paradigm, biologically determined reinforcers such as food and sex
Primary Reinforcer
A structural technique in which the therapist asks questions and/or makes provocative comments designed to evoke responses which help to obtain information about how the family operates. Even failure to obtain the family’s cooperation provides information about their boundaries.
Probing
In collaborative language family therapy, any system in which a problem is so prominent in the family’s conversation that few decisions can be made without taking it into account. Constituted by the people who are interested in talking about the problem.
Problem-Determined System
From narrative therapy, constructing a story about oneself by emphasizing problematic experiences and ignoring competencies. Individuals and families then function under the influence of such problem filled stories.
Problem Saturated Stories
A term used to describe the dynamics of a system, often contrasted with content. Includes things like the who initiates conversation, the interaction between them, the meanings each attaches to the disagreement, and the feelings each has about it.
Process
From psychoanalytic and object relations theory, an unconscious defense in which unwanted feelings or beliefs about oneself are split off and then attributed to others
Projection
An interactive and dysfunctional defense mechanism, defined by the object relations model, in which unwanted characteristics of the self are unconsciously projected onto another person who colludes by behaving as if these projections are true of them.
Projective identification
From Wynne, a collusive family maneuver for the purpose of maintaining homeostasis, in which family members present a falsely harmonious picture, masking dysfunction.
Pseudomutuality
Wynne’s term to describe the use of chronic conflict to create a somewhat superficial alienation of family members, thereby masking an individual member’s need for intimacy and affection
Pseudohostility
A combination of group therapy and theatrical techniques created by Moreno. Participants engage in lively enactments of troubling events, exploring family relations in the process. The goal is for clients and families to experience themselves and their histories in new ways.
Psychodrama
The process by which one arbitrarily identifies the beginning and the end of a behavioral sequence (linear causality) which instead, in MRI terms, should be seen as part of a circular pattern. Also a communication pattern in which each participant believes that what he/she says or does is caused by the other.
Punctuation
From the operant conditioning paradigm, a process for decreasing an undesirable behavior by applying an aversive stimulus immediately following the target behavior.
Punishment
A descriptive analysis of the elements of an interaction
Qualitative Analysis
A research method that is exploratory, open-ended, and directed more at discovery than at evaluation or justifying a set of hypotheses. Often used to generate, rather than test, hypotheses.
Qualitative Research
The analysis of the numeric quantity of elements in an interaction
Quantitative Analysis
A research method that emphasizes experimentation, large samples, data collection, statistical analysis, objectivity, and verification. Typically used to test hypotheses.
Quantitative Research
A form of behavioral contingency contract in which one family member agrees to change a behavior or engage in a desired behavior after the other partner in the contract has made a desired change. The behaviors are, thus, mutually positively reinforced.
Quid-Pro-Quo Contract
From Ellis, a cognitive-behavioral model with the goal of helping family members realize that illogical beliefs and distortions cause their emotional distress (linear causality). They are taught to recognize the problem causing pattern: A-B-C, in which events in the family (A) are influenced by irrational beliefs (B) and result in a problem (C). The goal is to identify and modify the irrational beliefs.
Rational Emotive Family Therapy
A therapeutic stance in which the therapist would be more likely to respond to others than to direct them
Reactor
From behavioral family therapy, the likelihood that the members of a dyad will equitably reinforce one another over time
Reciprocity
A therapy technique or process involving a team of therapists using a one-way mirror to observe the family and the therapist. The team then discusses the family while being observed by the family and the therapist. The therapist and family then discuss the team’s observations.
Reflecting Team
A 10-session psychoeducational program for couples emphasizing empathy, genuineness, and positive regard (non-judgmental acceptance). Therapists teach clients to recognize and acknowledge feelings and to express them openly. The program is designed to create a context in which positive changes can occur. The therapist and client share treatment planning and decision-making.
Relationship Enhancement
From object relations theory, one of three parts of the ego. Unconscious, inflexible, and frustrated by its rejecting object
Rejecting Ego
From object relations theory, gives rise to the antilibidinal ego
Rejecting Object
Refers to how a change that occurs at one level of a system results in changes at other levels of the system
Ripple Effect
From Satir, role-inappropriate relationships between the husband and wife who are not only marriage partners, but also form parent/child or sibling/sibling relationships as well
Role Function Discrepancies
A solution-focused therapy intervention used when presenting problems are vague and goals are difficult to specify. The therapist asks clients to rate on a scale of zero to ten, how they are currently feeling compared to an earlier time. If they report feeling better, the therapist asks how they achieved the improvement. They might also be asked to rate how confident they are that they will be able to maintain their resolve to change a behavior and to identify what they might do to improve their chances of making progress toward their goals.
Scaling Questions
From the operant conditioning paradigm, target behaviors may be reinforced after each occurrence, after a fixed or variable number of occurrences, or after a fixed or variable length of time. Behaviors that are reinforced intermittently and unpredictably are the most resistant to extinction.
Schedules of Reinforcement
A now-discredited notion by Fromm-Reichmann regarding the origin of schizophrenia, in which she describes a domineering rejecting mother whose behavior was thought to contribute to her child’s mental illness.
Schizophrenogenic Mother
A psychodramatic technique used by Duhl, Kantor, Satir, and others. One member, acting as “director,” places the family in a tableau or enactment of an event, feeling, or family structure in a therapy session. The process reveals patterns of emotional closeness and distance.
Sculpting
From the operant conditioning paradigm, items that have acquired reinforcing properties such as praise, approval, tokens, or money to be exchanged for actual goods
Secondary Reinforcer
A postmodern model that conceives of the therapist and family as one unit. Objectivity is not possible. The treatment unit is a meaning system to which the treatment professional is an equal and active contributor. The system does not create a problem; the problem creates a system.
Second-Order Cybernetics
The study of the way language conveys meaning
Semantics
A procedure developed by Masters and Johnson to minimize performance anxiety and spectatoring. A couple may be encouraged to engage in pleasurable body exploration and massage, with each partner giving feedback to the other as to what feels good, but without the expectation of sexual performance or orgasm.
Sensate Focus
From a psychoanalytic perspective, the emotional transformation of the parent permitting the child to form significant bonds with others
Separation
In family systems theory, the reduction of enmeshment by the clarification of diffuse boundaries
Separation
A married couple’s decision to live their lives in a more separate, disengaged way which may or may not involve legal arrangements and may be a step toward divorce
Separation
A married couple’s decision to live their lives in a more separate, disengaged way which may or may not involve legal arrangements and may be a step toward divorce
Separation
Pioneered by Masters and Johnson, Kaplan, and LoPiccolo. Treatment that focuses on the client’s or couple’s sexual functioning; often combined with couple’s therapy.
Sex Therapy
Disorders of sexual functioning caused by psychological factors such as anxiety, beliefs, or perceptions
Sexual Disorder
An impaired physiological response preventing a person from full sexual functioning
Sexual Dysfunction
A behavioral procedure in which successive approximations to a desired, often more complex, behavior are reinforced until the desired behavior is achieved
Shaping
From structural therapy, a method of increasing family members’ confidence in being able to solve their problems by pointing out what they have done right, rather than focusing on mistakes
Shaping Competence
The unexplained death of an apparently healthy infant. The actual cause of death may be unknown, but certain risk factors have been identified such as immature lungs, apnea, sleep arousal problems, placing the infant on his/her stomach to sleep, soft bedding, etc.
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)
A group of postmodern therapeutic approaches based on the concept that reality is an intersubjective phenomenon that is constructed in conversation. The theories have been referred to as: postmodern, collaborative, constructivist, narrative, reflexive, and second-order cybernetic.
Social Constructivist Family Therapy
From operant conditioning, social interactions such as praise, approval, nagging, or yelling that increase the frequency of a behavior
Social Reinforcer
Theory and therapeutic model in the tradition of brief therapy, developed by Insoo Berg and Steve de Shazer, which focuses on finding solutions rather than understanding the problem. The model evolved from the MRI group’s focus on problems and from the postmodern interest in the construction of reality. Clients are encouraged to increase behaviors that work well and notice situations in which the problem does not occur.
Solution-Focused Family Therapy
From narrative therapy, those events that exemplify the client’s preferred outcome rather than his/her problem saturated stories
Sparkling Events
A disorder of sexual functioning caused by monitoring one’s performance. It contributes to performance anxiety.
Spectatoring
A person who marries someone with children from a prior relationship
Stepparent
From communication theory, communicating through sounds such as whistles, claps
Streptic Communication
A method of sex therapy developed by Semans for the treatment of premature ejaculation. The client’s partner is asked to stimulate his penis until he begins to feel premonitory sensations of orgasm. He then instructs his partner to stop and the cycle is repeated. The method helps the client concentrate on preorgasmic sensations rather than suppressing them.
Stop-Start (or Squeeze) Technique
A theory and therapeutic model developed by Haley and Madanes, with interventions that focus directly on changing the presenting problem. Therapy typically begins with the therapist first assessing disorders in the system’s hierarchies and/or the dysfunctional coalitions that maintain the symptom. Interventions, given as directives, may be straightforward or paradoxical. Therapy is not growth-oriented, but change-oriented, and the therapist takes responsibility for the success or failure of the outcome.
Strategic Family Therapy
Haley and Madanes’s more recent model which is oriented toward increasing family members’ ability to soothe and love rather than to gain control over one another
Strategic Humanism
The theory and therapeutic model developed by Minuchin, which focuses on family organization and boundaries and the ways in which these structures govern interactional patterns. Dysfunction, in this model, stems from boundaries that are either too rigid or too diffuse, both of which prevent the system and its subsystems from achieving goals.
Structural Family Therapy
The interrelationship among system elements that make up the organization of the system.
Structure
A scale used by behavioral therapists on which the client rates their level of anxiety to a stimulus or situation
Subjective Units of Discomfort (SUDS)
From narrative therapy, stories about the client that are obscured by the dominant story. Some are helpful and some are not.
Subjugated Stories
A wide range of inappropriate and usually excessive ingestion of mind altering (psychoactive) chemicals such as alcohol or drugs
Substance Abuse
In structural family therapy, an organized component of a system which has a specific role in the functioning of the larger system and is somewhat autonomous from it
Subsystem
Intentionally taking one’s own life
Suicide
Images, thoughts, and feelings about committing suicide, often including ways to accomplish it and how it might affect others
Suicidal Ideation
A higher-level system such as a community, in which other systems are components
Suprasystem
A psychoeducational program for families coping with mental illness in a member. In those workshops, groups of families learn about the etiology, prognosis, psychobiology, and treatment of the illness and learn ways the family can deal with its special demands.
Survival Skills Workshops
From Hoffman, a mild or severe threat to the continuity of the relationship and the system, a possible precondition to morphogenesis
Sweat Boxes
A theory and therapeutic approach developed by Whitaker in which the therapist uses his/her own experience and craziness, to influence family members’ internal meanings, thereby changing dysfunctional patterns
Symbolic-Experiential Family Therapy
From Jackson and the MRI group, the opposite of complementarity, a relationship in which there is a relatively equal distribution of control and power, often resulting in rapid escalation of conflict
Symmetrical
From MRI strategic therapy, a treatment technique in which the therapist asks the family to continue to perform or even expand a symptom. The intervention may be compliance based if the therapist wants the family to do as suggested or defiance based when he/she wants the family to defy the directive.
Symptom Prescription
The form of a message
Syntax
A bounded set of interrelated elements with coherent and patterned behavior
System
From Wolpe, a behavioral therapy technique for reducing the capacity of conditioned stimuli or activities to evoke anxiety. The therapist first instructs the client to arrange various anxiety-provoking stimuli or activities on a hierarchy rated according to a SUDS. The therapist teaches the client to induce a state of relaxation, then pairs the relaxation response with the anxiety-provoking stimuli, working progressively up the hierarchy.
Systematic Desensitization
A court ruling, adopted by most jurisdictions, that states that when a therapist determines, or should determine, that his/her client presents a serious threat of harm to a specifically identified other person, he/she has an obligation to use reasonable care to protect the intended victim against such danger
Tarasoff v. Regents of University of California (Duty to Warn)
From symbolic-experiential family therapy, the notion that there are no well members in a dysfunctional family. Members who present as healthy may be paired with more obviously symptomatic members.
Teaming Roles
A therapeutic technique of Satir, in which family members express their hopes and wishes each day between sessions to show their appreciation of one another and discuss complains and solutions
Temperature Reading
The chronological order in which family behaviors occur
Temporal Sequencing
The end of the contractual relationship between the therapist and client or family. It may be formal and final or flexible. In some therapies it is initiated by the therapist, but in others the therapist follows the family’s lead.
Termination
From narrative therapy, these are given to the client or family announcing the client’s victory over the problem, which he/she shows to others and reviews, if he/she again feels the effects of the problem
Therapeutic Certificates
A type of paradoxical technique in which clients are instructed to continue to have the symptom. They are then caught in a bind since to continue the symptom willfully demonstrates that they have control over a symptom that they previously experienced as involuntary.
Therapeutic Double Bind
From narrative therapy, a procedure created by Epston, used to extend the therapy in which the therapist summarizes in writing the client’s competencies with respect to overcoming the problem and acknowledges the sparking events
Therapeutic Letters
From object relations family therapy, an intervention which entails maneuvers that appear to contradict the goals of therapy, yet are actually designed to achieve them
Therapeutic Paradox
The therapist’s position (engagement style) in relation to both the family system and therapist’s theoretical foundation, for example an engaged style in which the therapist tends to disclose personal experiences or disengaged in which the therapist remains emotionally distant
Therapist Stance
Gregory Bateson’s term for a dramatic transformation in thinking
Third-Order Change
A behavioral technique used to extinguish undesirable behaviors by removing the person from a situation in which the behavior is likely to be reinforced
Time Out
A behavioral program in which tokens are dispensed for desirable behaviors. The tokens can later be redeemed for desired items
Token Economy
From structural family therapy, an engagement technique in which the therapist participates in the existing family dynamic, while privately noting the dysfunctional or unbalanced processes being enacted. The therapist must assume the “median” position - paying attention to him/herself while engaging with the family.
Tracking
From contextual theory, the patterns of family organization - hierarchy, triangles, and transactional sequences
Transactions
A psychoanalytic term to describe the client’s unconscious tendency to attribute to the therapist unresolved drives, attitudes, feelings, and fantasies from previous (often parental) relationships
Transference
A Bowenian concept that refers to the smallest stable emotional unit in a family and describes a process by which two people will recruit a third person into the system to mediate the level of conflict or tension between them
Triangle
From Bowenian family therapy, a dysfunctional process in which an unresolved conflict between two people (often parents) is extended to include a third person (often their child), whose loyalty is fought over
Triangulation
A structural technique designed to disrupt a dysfunctional sequence by lending greater support to one side of a conflict than the other
Unbalancing
A therapeutic stance originated by humanist, Carl Rogers, and used by therapists in emotionally focused couples therapy in order to create a safe environment where primary feelings can be revealed
Unconditional Positive Regard
From Bowenian family therapy, a phenomenon in which family members are emotionally fused, highly reactive, and structurally chaotic. Emotions overwhelm the intellect and interfere with individual functioning in family members.
Undifferentiated Family Ego Mass
From experiential therapy, originally a concept of Gestalt therapist Fritz Perls, referring to unresolved feelings or disowned parts of the self
Unfinished Business
From narrative therapy, instances in which the client did not experience the problem for which he/she seeks therapy. These exceptions to the problem are highlighted in the therapy to counteract the problem-saturated outlook.
Unique Outcomes
From narrative therapy, those competencies that the client possesses which are not part of his/her dominant story and therefore are not expressed until the dominant story is reconstructed
Unstoried Competencies
From solution-focused therapy one of three ways to characterize the client’s level of participation and commitment to change. This person does not bring a specific problem to therapy and does not have a commitment to participating productively in treatment.
Visitor
The notion that while some people have a predisposition or inherited vulnerability to a mental illness, the actual manifestation of the illness is determined by life events, particularly stressful events in the family
Vulnerability Stress Model
From psychodynamic therapy, insight leads clients to engage in new and more productive ways of behaving and interacting
Working Through
A type of communication that is rich in content such as a child’s Kinetic Family Drawing
Analogic Communication
Also called Coughlan’s syndrome, a type of sexual dysfunction in which a person cannot achieve orgasm, even with adequate stimulation. In males, it is most closely associated with delayed ejaculation. Can often cause sexual frustration. Far more common in females and is especially rare in younger men. Greater in women who are post-menopause
Anorgasmia
From Bowen’s model, consists of the beliefs and convictions held by the person. People at the higher end of the scale of differentiation have formed their own beliefs and tend to be clear about the difference between what they think and how they feel.
Basic Self
Describes a fundamentally different approach to understanding illness from the still-guiding biomedical model: to be scientific, a model for medicine must include the psychosocial dimensions (personal, emotional, family, community) in addition to the biological aspects (diseases) of all patients.
Biopsychosocial Process
This movement (1900s) emerged from Adler’s belief that psychological problems must be viewed in a social context. Was highly influential in the history of family therapy. Clinics were established on the premise that psychological problems begin in childhood and early intervention is the best way to prevent the future occurrence of mental illness.
Child Guidance Movement
From the Contextual model, what one owes within a family system
Debts
States that a genuine systemic analysis must include an understanding of system components, which are the two aspects of an individual’s participation in a system. The focus is both on what passes among individuals and what goes on within the individuals. All behavior is communication; one cannot not communicate.
Decomposition Law
From General Systems Theory and Cybernetics, changes that occur within a system that either promote growth through positive feedback loops, or are corrected by negative feedback loops
Deviations
A type of verbal communication where meaning is perceived or understood solely on meaning of what was communicated
Digital
Addiction is a brain disease characterized by altered brain structure and functioning. Considers addiction irreversible once acquired.
Disease Model of Addiction
From Narrative model, a person holds a dominant narrative that shapes their identity or behavior. Can become problem-saturated.
Dominant Story
When things with a common origin can go in very different directions of development i.e. the same clinical interventions yielding very different outcomes
Equipotentiality
