Theories Flashcards
Beginning: Engagement Phase - Being authentic self; building a trusting warm therapeutic
environment; battle for structure and battle for initiative; assessment of family roles and
structures.
Symbolic Experiential Therapy
Middle Phase - Redefining the presenting problem; focus on family efforts toward
growth; therapist is confrontational; engages in “therapy of the absurd” to disrupt the system
and elicit change.
Symbolic Experiential Therapy
Late Phase: Minimal family interventions are used here as the family becomes more able to
handle their problems in a spontaneous and effective manner.
Symbolic Experiential Therapy
End: Separation Phase - Treatment ends at this point. The family recognizes their ability to use
their own resources and assume greater responsibility for how they choose to live.
Acknowledgement between therapist and family of mutual interdependence and loss.
Symbolic Experiential
Communicate empathy and compassion toward the family.
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Playfully engage with all family members.
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Encourage family members to delve deeper into understanding their relationships.
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Discourage family members from placing blame for problems on one person.
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Symbolic Experiential Therapy
Provide feedback specifically designed to activate conflict/stress within the system.
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Redefine symptoms as attempts to move toward growth.
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Share authentic reactions to what family members express in sessions.
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Focus on the emotional process taking place in the therapeutic setting.
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Use stories and metaphors to help inspire clients toward a new perspective.
Symbolic Experiential Therapy
Treatment Goals
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Initial goal is to increase the family’s level of anxiety.
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Increase each family member’s understanding of their role in creating or perpetuating
the problem.
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Symbolic Experiential Therapy
Disrupt rigid patterns that exist in the family to allow for greater flexibility and room for
growth.
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Assist family in redefining symptoms as an effort for growth/change.
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Increase healthy boundaries between both family members and the family system and
others.
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Increase family’s sense of connectedness while also developing a sense of healthy
separation and autonomy.
Symbolic Experiential Therapy
organizational structure to include clear
boundaries and a proper family hierarchy.
Structural Family Therapy
Help the family understand how family structure (relationships and hierarchies) can be
changed.
● Help create clear and healthier boundaries.
● Strengthen the spousal subsystem and the family’s hierarchy.
● Restructure the family system to allow for symptom relief and constructive
problem-solving.
● Alter dysfunctional transactional patterns.
Structural Family Therapy
Beginning: Joining and accommodating; assess family interactions through use of family
mapping; learn about coalitions, subsystems, alliances; reframe presenting problems as a
function of the system.
Structural Family Therapy
Early/Middle: Highlight and modify interactions; utilize enactments of issues to challenge
participants and unbalance the system.
Structural Family Therapy
End: Review progress made; reinforce structural change; provide tools for future.
Structural Family Therapy
Role of the Therapist
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The therapist works collaboratively with the client and uses a goal-focused approach to
address the symptoms that the client presents
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The therapist creates structured sessions and frequently provides homework for clients
to work on between visits
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Focuses on relationship
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Demonstrates empathy
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Beginning: Establish safe and supportive therapeutic relationships; complete a functional
analysis to assess and define the problem and negative thought patterns; educate and explain
CBT; set collaborative goals.
CBT
Early / Middle: Identify negative thought patterns; uncover negative schemas; assign homework
to self-monitor thoughts, moods, and behaviors; label cognitive distortions; reframe thoughts;
learn and practice new skills and behaviors.
CBT
End: Review gains; identify skills learned; rehearse for new situations; anticipate future
struggles.
CBT
Treatment Goals
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Relieve symptoms or problems
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Cognitive Restructuring: Identify unrealistic automatic thoughts and change them to
create more positive and accurate schemas
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Modify maladaptive behaviors
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Develop positive coping skills and problem-solving strategies
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Change unhealthy schemas
CBT
Theory of Change
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Change occurs through accessing client’s already existing strengths and resources.
Solution Focused Therapy
Beginning: Envision preferred future; begin to identify client’s strengths; use solution-oriented
language; come up with achievable goals by using a miracle question; identify exceptions to
problems.
Solution Focused Therapy
Early/Middle: Identify strengths, resources, and traits the client already has used to deal with
problems; utilize solution-talk; utilize scaling questions to reflect on the nature of change the
client has experienced; feedback to clients that include compliments and tasks; catch and
highlight small changes.
Solution Focused Therapy
End: Assist the client to identify things they can do to continue the changes they have made;
identify hurdles or perceived barriers that could get in the way of maintaining the changes they
made.
Solution Focused Therapy
Humanistic, phenomenological approach.
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Process-oriented therapy that focuses on the client’s present moment experience of self,
family, and world.
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Individuals have an innate capacity for growth or self-actualization.
Gestalt
Change occurs through an increased awareness of the here-and-now experience.
Gestalt
Role of the therapist:
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Authentic other
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Active, with focus on the present moment
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Spontaneous and creative
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Dialogic relationship
Gestalt
Phenomenological Method: Recognizes the importance of understanding and focusing
on the client’s perception of reality.
Gestalt
Dialogic: The idea that a person develops in relationship to others. In therapy, the
relationship between client and therapist provides an environment in which the client can
grow and develop a healthier sense of self.
Gestalt
Paradoxical Theory of Change: When a person is able to accept things as they are, they
are then more willing and able to move toward change.
Gestalt
Treatment Goals:
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Increase awareness of the environment, being present in the moment, and knowing
oneself.
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Increase ability to regulate the whole being, including thoughts, feelings, emotions.
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Assume responsibility for one’s destiny and identity.
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Increase ability to integrate and accept all sides of oneself.
Gestalt
Behavioral reactions used by families that correct departures from the system’s normal state and return the system to its
previous state of homeostasis.
Negative Feedback
