Counseling Families, Diagnosis and Advanced Concepts:

Fastest growing clientele: People experiencing marriage and family problems

AAMFT: American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy
Circular/reciprocal causality: (marriage/family) Everyone is influencing everyone, family dynamics,
Gregory Bateson
Linear Causality: assume a causes b ex: physically abused as a child/physically abusive as parent
Cybernetics: the analysis of info interactions and how the flow of into regulates and controls a system,
family has feedback loops to self-correct a family system.
Norbert Wiener: Cybernetics, initially research was related to machines (gun shooting/moving objects),
Homeostasis: Family is stable and reaches an equilibrium.
Nonsummativity: concept suggesting that any system including the family is greater than the sum of its
parts (indiv in it) and therefore it is necessary to examine patterns rather than merely each indiv
behavior.
Adaptability: family’s ability to change or display flexibility in order to change.
Morphstasis: the ability of the family to balance stability
Morphogenesis: the family’s ability to change
Mandatory ethics: very clear-cut and have no gray areas, guidelines that are strictly enforced, if you
violate there are consequences to your actions.
Aspirational Ethics: ideal or optimal practice
Virginia Satir: Leading figure in Experiential family therapy, family healed with love, major goal of
therapy intrafamily communication (communication between family members), conjoint (two or more
family members in therapy at a time), Family Sculpting: a family members places other family members
in positions that symbolize relationships with other members of the family, identifies family dynamics
that are missing.
4 Basic patterns prevent good communication under stress (defensive postures/stress
positions):
1. Placating: try to please everyone out of fear of rejection, causes the indiv. To sacrifice
his own needs as a way of dealing with stress
2. Blaming: will sacrifice others to feel good about himself, will often say “if it weren’t
for you…”, and will point the finger at others to avoid dealing with his own issues, “it’s
your fault I’m the way I am”
3. Being overly reasonable or Responsible Analyzer: is likely to engage in the defense
mechanism of intellectualization, functioning like a computer to keep his emotions in
check, emotionally detached
4. Being irrelevant: will distract the family from the problem via constantly talking about
irrelevant topics
Salvador Minuchin: Father of structural family therapy, founder of action oriented structural family
therapy, family therapy is a science requiring therapeutic interventions well beyond warmth, approach
posits that an idiv’s behavior can only be interpreted by analyzing family interaction, a change in the
family’s patterns of communication and interaction must occur to create a healthy family.
Joining: the therapist meets, greets, and attempts to bond with the family. The therapist will use
language similar to that of the family and mimesis which means that he will mimic
 communication patterns. Occurs in initial session to boost the family’s confidence in the tmt
process and reduce resistance, subsequent sessions therapist will challenge the dysfunctional
communication patterns and the structure of the family.
Enactment: strategy that allows the counselor to see an instant reply
Boundaries: the physical and psychological entities that separate indiv and subsystems from
others in the family
Changing boundaries/boundary making: therapist attempts to help the family create
healthy boundaries
Clear boundaries: ideal-firm yet flexible
Rigid Boundaries: individuals being disengaged ex: wife is having issues at work,
husband says you are on your own, I have my own issues.
Diffuse Boundaries: spousal system becomes obsessed with parenting, child will be
afraid to experiment and thus mature slowly, child will have issues making friends
outside of the home, when married rely too much on family of origin, grow up to feel
uncomfortable alone.
Carl Witaker: Dean of experiential family therapy or experiential symbolic family therapy, experience not
education changes families, experience goes beyond consciousness and the best way to access the
unconscious is symbolically. Believed in joining the family and experiencing it as if he were a family
member. A co-therapist is helpful. Psychotherapy of the absorb ex: tug of war in couples therapy
Ludwig Von Bertalanffy: System Models Theory, biologist who popularized the notion of connectedness
of all living things. The family is more than merely the separate persons but rather a system with rules,
patterns that connect members.
Murray Bowen: based family therapy on systems theory, known for work in intergenerational family
therapy
Triangulation: when a dyad (i.e. two indiv.) Is under stress a third person is recruited to help
stabilize the difficulty between the original dyad. This could even be a child placed in the middle
of the conflict.
Differentiation: the extent that one can separate one’s intellect from one’s emotional self.
Genogram: three generational pictorial diagram, a family tree relies on lines, words and
geometric figures.
Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy: intergenerational family therapy, give-and-take fairness or relational ethics in
the family
Relational ethics: a healthy family can negotiate imbalances and preserve a sense of fairness and
accountability
Family Legacy: expectations handed down from generation to generation
Family Ledger technique: outlines who gave what to whom.
David Premack’s principle or law: Suggests that a family member must complete an unpleasant task
(known as a low probability behavior=LPB) before he would be allowed to engage in a pleasant task
(known as a high probability behavior= HPB)
Quid Pro Quo: “one thing for another” “something for something” or “this for that”
Behavioral Contingency Contract: one person in the family will do something as long as the other
member agrees to do something comparable.
Behavioristic Family Counselor needs a baseline: the period before the behavior modification begins ex:
how many times a kid says “no” when told to do something charted=baseline)
 Baseline= “A”, Behavior Modification Tmt= “B”
Time Out: a procedure that most behaviorists feel is a form of extinction, when member is isolated or
removed from an environment for a specific period of time so as to ensure that he does not receive
reinforcement for dysfunctional behavior.
Reciprocity: In marriage asserts that in most cases two people will reinforce each other at about the
same level over time. When this doesn’t happen marital discord may result.
Joseph Wolfe: Systemic desensitization pairs feared mental imagery with relaxation to eliminate fear
and relaxation. Ex: couple having sexual problems stemming from anxiety.
Thought Stopping: Yell in mind “stop!” every time you have a particular negative thought.
Gerald Patterson: popularized behavioral parent training in the family’s home
Causal-Comparative or Ex Post Facto: After the fact research. Past research and no control over
independent variable, called a nonexperimental design
Marriage:
-Remarriage is common
-half of all marriages include remarriage for one partner
-in about 25% of all marriages both parties are getting remarried
-50% divorce rate for 1st time, 65% divorce rate for 2nd time
-single life is short-lived for divorced persons
-30% of all divorced persons are remarried within 12 months of being divorced
-forecast that stepfamilies might out number traditional families
-interval for remarrying for men is 2.3 years and 2.5 years for women.
Nathan Ackerman: psychodynamic family counseling, analytically trained, recommended studying the
family and not just the child, interested with internal feelings and thoughts of each indiv. As well as the
dynamics between them, prior to Acherman it was inappropriate to include family members in analytic
tmt sessions.
Object: In psychoanalytic family therapy notion that an idiv. Attempts to establish a relationship with an
object (person or part of the body) to satisfy needs, when it does not occur anxiety manifests.
Introjects: Internalizes the positive and negative characteristics of the objects within themselves,
Eventually these introjects (taking in personality attributes of others that become part of your own self-
image) determine how the indiv. Will relate to others.
Splitting: A client who realistically perceives her therapist as only having good qualities and who sees
therapist as all bad. Occurs when client sees an object (another person) as either all good or all bad.
First Order Change: can be defined as changes that are superficial, changes occur, however system does
not change.
Second Order Change: involves an actual change in the family structure that alters an undesirable
behavior pattern.
Dysthymia: a low level of depression that occurs more days than not for at least one year in kids and
teens and for at least two years in adults.
James Framo and Robin Skynner: Psychodynamic family therapists
James Framo: believes that important objects (usually parents) often fuel “love-hate” feelings in
kids, more pathological in early life experiences than will apply to adult relationships
Robin Skynner: feels that kids who had poor role models as children possess protective systems:
will harbor unrealistic expectations of people in current relationships carried over from
childhood.
Cloe Madanes and Jay Haley: strategic school of family counseling, a symptom controls a situation when
everything else has failed.
Haley: coined the term strategic therapy, influenced by Milton Erickson “designing a strategy for
each specific problem”, had a degree in the arts and communications rather than helping prof,
believes in giving families directives
Double Bind Concept: A no-win situation characterized by contradictory messages such
as never smoke again and then smoke as much as you want
-Speak to the person with the power in the family first as they make and enforce rules
-Strategic counseling is pragmatic and often focuses on abating symptoms
Malfunctioning Hierarchy: evident in most dysfunctional families
The Perverse Triangle: a situation when two members who are at different levels of the
family hierarchy (usually parent and child) team up against another family member the
alliance of the two undermines his power and authority
Madanes: symptoms serve as a function,
Incongruous hierarchy: Normally mother is control of daughter and in this case daughter
is in control of mother
Pretend Techniques: ex a child who has panic attacks pretends to have one during
session and parents pretend to help child through it.
Paradoxical interventions: Prescribes what the client/family would probably do anyway.
Paradox is the direct antithesis of common sense. Defy common sense
Restraining: Helps overcome resistance by suggesting that it might be best if the
family does not change ex: “I don’t know what else you can do to stop the
bickering and fighting in your house.”
Positioning: occurs when a helper accepts the client’s predicament and then
exaggerates the condition. Points out an even more negative picture of the
situation for the client than restraining
Prescribing the Symptom: couple fights at least every evening, therapist says I
want you to have a serious fight twice an evening.
Reframing/Relabeling: when you redefine a situation in a positive context (make
situation seem acceptable to client)
Cultural Encapsulation: a counselor imposing goals from his own culture on people from another
culture. Lacking cultural sensitivity.
African Americans: Fewer are getting married then at any time in history and out of wedlock births
account for two out of three first births to women under the age of 35, Less likely to be concerned about
gender roles (e.g. men and women can cook meals or work outside of the home.)
Family therapy with AA would be best with Bowen’s family therapy, Minuchin’s structural family
therapy or Jay Haley’s strategic family therapy because they are problem focused, brief or
multigenerational.
Asian American families: best approach is solution-focused/problem focused modalities.
Hispanic families: have a high unemployment rate, often live in poverty, and rarely earn high school
diplomas or college degrees.
Best approach is short-term behavioral family therapy or structural approaches.
Native American Families: very diverse group as they belong to over 500 state-recognized tribes,
extended family and the tribe are very significant and a high % of children have been placed in foster
care, residential facilities, or adoption homes that are non-Native American, Native Americans have a
problem with alcoholism and suicide
Olson, Sprenkle and Russell: family functioning described in two dimensions; cohesion and adaptability.
Circumplex family model
Cohesion: the level of emotional bonding between family members, level of enmeshment or
disengagement
Adaptability: how rigid, structured, flexible or chaotic the family is
Alfred Adler: pioneer in the early history of family therapy, opened 30 child guidance clinics in Vienna in
1920’s, often preformed open forum therapy where Adler worked with the family as well as the open
forum of an audience.
Carl Whitaker: atheoretical, theory is often used as an excuse to keep therapist emotionally distant from
the family, promoted “craziness” and creativity of family members.
Solution-Oriented Therapy: focuses primarily on the future, no emphasis on understanding the problem,
center around the future, co-formulates a plan of action with the client/family, may be more than one
course of action
Narrative Theory:
postmodernism/constructivism: client invents the way he perceives the world, client comes up
with a story about their lives and they can re-author these stories in therapy
externalize : separate the problem from the person
Tom Anderson: One way mirror and a reflecting team
Postmodernism: assumes that there are no fixed truths in the word, only people’s indiv perceptions of
what constitutes reality or truth.
Feminist Therapy (gender-fair counseling):
-Criticizes traditional therapy because they are androcentric (they use male views to analyze
personality), they are gendercentric (they assume that there are 2 separate psychological
developmental patterns – one for men and one for women) and they emphasize heterosexism
and debase same-sex relationships.
-Intrapsychic: psychological difficulty can be located in the environ or political system
-gender free
-Use bibliotherapy, appropriate therapist disclosure and assertiveness training.
Steve de Shazer: Brief solution-focused therapy (BSFT) or (BT)
Skeleton Key: A standard or stock intervention that will work for numerous problems.
Compliment: a technique in which the therapist hands the client or clients a sheet of paper with
a compliment on it.
Past Successes: therapist compliment past successes without specifically relating them to
current obstacles.
Most experts predict that in the 21 st century, theories of counseling and psychotherapy will become
more integrative, since about 30 to 50% of all therapists say they are eclectic.
Ecosystems: larger systems often impact client and family functioning
Within-subject design: each subject acts as his or her own control ex:) group of clients get a depression
inventory, have 2 session of brief therapy then take the inventory again
Between-groups design: relies on separate people in the control and experimental groups (more popular
form of research)
Preexperimental design: a single group is used in research or 2 groups that are not equivalent.
 -X stands for treatment
-O stands for observation, measurement or score
-DV: dependent variable
-E: experimental group
-C: Control group
-R: Random sampling
-NR: for no random sampling of groups
Time series design (quasi-experimental design): relies on multiple observations of the dependent
variable (i.e. the thing you are measuring) before and after the treatment occurs.
Solomon four-group: 1 control group receives a pre-test and 1 experimental group receives a pre-test;
the other control group and experimental group do not.
Asian Americans will avoid eye contact during counseling and benefit from assertiveness training.
African Americans will avoid eye contact when listening but not when talking.
Contructivist and Cognitive Approaches: newest career theory
Renee V. Dawis & Lloyd Lofquist (Career Counseling): Person Environment Correspondence (PEC)
-Person must fit the job (correspondence between indiv. and the work must be high and also the work
must meet the needs of the person.
-Higher work satisfaction generally results in greater productivity
-Work adjustment: the match between the expectations of the employee and the expectations of the
place he is working.
Number of multigenerational families with a child, parent and grandparent will increase
The number of single adults is also increasing in the US.
Type I and Type II errors: Like a see-saw one goes up the other goes down.
Coefficient of Determination: correlation coefficient squared. Ex .70 squared
Coefficient of nondetermination: coefficient of determination –100 Ex: 36%-100%= 64%
Kromboltz: Social learning model of career development, built on theory of Albert Bandura, learning not
interests guide people into a certain occupation, changes of interest occur due to learning, career
decisions are influenced by:
A Genetic endowment and special abilities
B Environmental conditions and events
C instrumental learning/association learning
-Self-observation generalizations: in career counseling your primary concern is the manner in which
people view themselves and their ability to perform in an occupation.
-Worldview generalizations: regarding a given occupation and how successful the client would be in the
occupation.
SCCT: Social-cognitive career theory: self efficacy beliefs can influence ones career decisions. Self-
efficacy deals with the personal questions of “Can I really do this and what will happen if I try to do
this?”
Linear: noninteractive approaches to career decision (book, speech video) client has some control over
the process
Nonlinear: interactive approaches (field visit to a business, interviewing a worker) reduce control client
has over the process.
Urie Bronfenbrenner (not a stage theory): Codeveloper of the National Headstart Program
-proposed a theory of development that is an ecological systems theory that stresses the microsystem
(any immediate or close relationships or organizations the child interacts with); the mesosystem ( the
way the Microsystems work together such as family and school); the exosystem (the school, church,
neighborhood, parents places of employment, in the essence other places the child interacts with but
not as often); and the macrosystem ( the largest and most remote system which includes culture, wars,
the federal government, and customs)
Dr. Barbara Rothbaum: Virtual Reality Therapy (VRT), client hooked to a computer with head gear,
computer stimulates real life situations, behavioristic approach, client would have the same
physiological reactions as he would experience in an actual situation such as a higher heart rate and
sweaty palms.
DSM criteria for mental retardation: the client must have an IQ score of 70 or below on an indiv.
administered IQ test and the onset of the condition must be prior to the age of 18. Axis II of DSM.
Central Tendency: used to summarize data, the mean is the only measure of central tendency which
reacts to every score in the distribution.
Daniel Goleman: Believes that EQ (emotional intelligence) is more important than IQ, EQ encompasses
traits such as empathy, impulse control, motivation and the ability to love, wrote Emotional Intelligence:
Why It Can Matter More Than IQ
Interval Scales: deal with time
Ratio Scale: no set schedule or set times that it will work. Completely random.
Karl Pearson: technique of meta-analysis
Meta-Analysis (Metaresearch): occurs when several studies on the same topic are utilized in
order to examine hypothesis.
Barnum Effect: refers to the fact that clients will often accept a general psychological test report,
horoscope or plan reading and believe it applies specifically to them.
Approximately 40% of all elementary schools have shortened recess or student play, counselors are
concerned because some research indicates that recess can have a positive impact since children are
less fidgety on days when they have recess; especially if they are hyperactive.
End of Life issues: Suggests that counselors who are helping terminally ill clients who are thinking of
hastening their own death would have the option of breaking or not breaking confidentiality.
Hermaphrodite: now the term is intersex
Gay men and women basically have the same range of gender role behaviors as do male and female
heterosexuals.
Parametric Inferential Statistic: will use random sampling and the distribution is normal.
-Mean, median and mode are all the same and random sampling has been used.