Chapters 1 and 2 Flashcards by Stephanie Black (2024)

The therapist responds to the client as if they were a significant figure in the counsellor’s past or present life. For example, a counsellor (male) is going through a nasty divorce and ends up working with a client who is going through a divorce (female). He was triggered as the client said they were gonna take everything from their husband. Meanwhile, the counsellor is on the other side; he feels he is being taken for everything. He realized he could not do this and was not a good fit.

book: The process of therapists seeing in their clients patterns of their own behavior, overidentifying with clients, or meeting their own needs through their clients.

• Beliefs and attitudes- who am I, and what can I contribute to this?
• Knowledge- understand different cultural worldviews and understand human behaviour.
• Reflect on the work with clients- ask them how they feel at the session’s end.
• Confer with other colleagues- discuss a case while maintaining confidence.
• Practice self-care. Vicarious trauma is real. Similar to burnout. It happens when working with disadvantaged clients- take on what the client is dealing with, which can affect us. It can be frustrating not to see the change you want to see.

• Rapport and relationship building—A first impression can be a lasting impression. We need to make people comfortable and be comfortable with them. This is the hardest part of counselling.
• Assessment or defining the problem. Counselling does not do as much assessment- more in psychotherapy. Instead, we help them define their problem. Talk therapy- help people talk through it. One can often figure it out just by talking thoroughly, but it helps to have someone there to listen.
• Goal Setting. (All these steps work together; the relationship must continue throughout.) Ask: Do you want to stay with your partner or leave? What is the goal?
• Initiating Interventions: What do they need to do? If something is debilitating, intervention may be necessary. For example, taking steps to overcome social anxiety—saying hi to someone in class—encourages them to do things. In the above example, go to a party.
• Termination and follow-up. The issue may return, and they may need to come back.

• Challenges/Choices/Changes.
• Feeling a challenge in their life. Relationships, work, family, etc.
  oUsually a combination. Challenges could require them to make a choice or a change.
• Adapting to the change that has been made.

• First Force- Psychodynamic approaches.
• Second Force- Behavioral approaches.
• Third Force- Existential /Humanistic approaches.
• Fourth Force- Systemic approaches (multicultural/family/feminist/postmodern)
• Fifth force- neuroscientific approaches.

(psychodynamic approach) Founder: Sigmund Freud. A theory of personality development, a philosophy of human nature, and a method of psychotherapy that focuses on unconscious factors that motivate behavior. Attention is given to the events of the first six years of life as determinants of the later development of personality.

Human beings are basically determined by psychic energy and by early experiences. Unconscious motives and conflicts are central in present behavior. Early development is of critical importance because later personality problems have their roots in repressed childhood conflicts.

(psychodynamic approach) Founder: Alfred Adler. Key Figure: Following Adler, Rudolf Dreikurs is credited with popularizing this approach in the United States. This is a growth model that stresses assuming responsibility, creating one’s own destiny, and finding meaning and goals to create a purposeful life. Key concepts are used in most other current therapies

Humans are motivated by social interest, by striving toward goals, by inferiority and superiority, and by dealing with the tasks of life. Emphasis is on the individual’s positive capacities to live in society cooperatively. People have the capacity to interpret, influence, and create events. Each person at an early age creates a unique style of life, which tends to remain relatively constant throughout life.

(Experiential and Relationship-Oriented) Key figures: Viktor Frankl, Rollo May, and Irvin Yalom. Reacting against the tendency to view therapy as a system of well-defined techniques, this model stresses building therapy on the basic conditions of human existence, such as choice, the freedom and responsibility to shape one’s life, and self-determination. It focuses on the quality of the person-to-person therapeutic relationship.

stresses a concern for what it means to be fully human. It suggests certain themes that are part of the human condition, such as freedom and responsibility, anxiety, guilt, awareness of being finite, creating meaning in the world, and shaping one’s future by making active choices

a philosophy of counseling that stresses the divergent methods of understanding the subjective world of the person

The central focus is on the nature of the human condition, which includes a capacity for self-awareness, freedom of choice to decide one’s fate, responsibility, anxiety, the search for meaning, being alone and being in relation with others, striving for authenticity, and facing living and dying.

(Experiential and Relationship-Oriented) Founder: Carl Rogers; Key figure: Natalie Rogers. This approach was developed during the 1940s as a nondirective reaction against psychoanalysis. Based on a subjective view of human experiencing, it places faith in and gives responsibility to the client in dealing with problems and concerns.
rooted in a humanistic philosophy, places emphasis on the basic attitudes of the therapist.

It maintains that the quality of the client–therapist relationship is the prime determinant of the outcomes of the therapeutic process.

Philosophically, this approach assumes that clients have the capacity for self-direction without active intervention and direction on the therapist’s part.

Positive view of people; we have an inclination toward becoming fully functioning. In the context of the therapeutic relationship, the client experiences feelings that were previously denied to awareness. The client moves toward increased awareness, spontaneity, trust in self, and inner-directedness.

(Experiential and Relationship-Oriented) Founders: Fritz and Laura Perls; Key figures: Miriam and Erving Polster. An experiential therapy stressing awareness and integration; it grew as a reaction against analytic therapy. It integrates the functioning of body and mind and places emphasis on the therapeutic relationship.

a range of experiments to help clients gain awareness of what they are experiencing in the here and now

therapists tend to take an active role, yet they follow the leads provided by their clients.

The person strives for wholeness and integration of thinking, feeling, and behaving. Some key concepts include contact with self and others, contact boundaries, and awareness. The view is nondeterministic in that the person is viewed as having the capacity to recognize how earlier influences are related to present difficulties. As an experiential approach, it is grounded in the here and now and emphasizes awareness, personal choice, and responsibility.

(Cognitive Behavioral Approach)Founders: Albert Ellis and A. T. Beck. Albert Ellis founded rational emotive behavior therapy, a highly didactic, cognitive, action-oriented model of therapy, and A. T. Beck founded cognitive therapy, which gives a primary role to thinking as it influences behavior. Judith Beck continues to develop CBT; Christine Padesky has developed strengths-based CBT; and Donald Meichenbaum, who helped develop cognitive behavior therapy, has made significant contributions to resilience as a factor in coping with trauma.

learning how to challenge inaccurate beliefs and automatic thoughts that lead to behavioral problems.

Individuals tend to incorporate faulty thinking, which leads to emotional and behavioral disturbances. Cognitions are the major determinants of how we feel and act. Therapy is primarily oriented toward cognition and behavior, and it stresses the role of thinking, deciding, questioning, doing, and redeciding. This is a psychoeducational model, which emphasizes therapy as a learning process, including acquiring and practicing new skills, learning new ways of thinking, and acquiring more effective ways of coping with problems.

(Cognitive Behavioral Approach) Key figures: B. F. Skinner, and Albert Bandura. This approach applies the principles of learning to the resolution of specific behavioral problems. Results are subject to continual experimentation. The methods of this approach are always in the process of refinement. The mindfulness and acceptance-based approaches are rapidly gaining popularity.

doing and on taking steps to make concrete changes. A current trend in behavior therapy is toward paying increased attention to cognitive factors as an important determinant of behavior

Behavior is the product of learning. We are both the product and the producer of the environment. Traditional behavior therapy is based on classical and operant principles. Contemporary behavior therapy has branched out in many directions, including mindfulness and acceptance approaches.

Founder: William Glasser. Key figure: Robert Wubbolding. This short-term approach is based on choice theory and focuses on the client assuming responsibility in the present. Through the therapeutic process, the client is able to learn more effective ways of meeting her or his needs.

focuses on clients’ current behavior and stresses developing clear plans for new behaviors.

Based on choice theory, this approach assumes that we need quality relationships to be happy. Psychological problems are the result of our resisting control by others or of our attempt to control others. Choice theory is an explanation of human nature and how to best achieve satisfying interpersonal relationships

(Systems and Postmodern Approach) This approach grew out of the efforts of many women, a few of whom are Jean Baker Miller, Carolyn Zerbe Enns, Oliva Espin, and Laura Brown. A central concept is the concern for the psychological oppression of women. Focusing on the constraints imposed by the sociopolitical status to which women have been relegated, this approach explores women’s identity development, self-concept, goals and aspirations, and emotional well-being.

Feminists criticize many traditional theories to the degree that they are based on gender-biased concepts, such as being androcentric, gendercentric, ethnocentric, heterosexist, and intrapsychic. The constructs of feminist therapy include being gender fair, flexible, interactionist, and life-span-oriented. Gender and power are at the heart of feminist therapy. This is a systems approach that recognizes the cultural, social, and political factors that contribute to an individual’s problems.

A number of key figures are associated with the development of these various approaches to therapy. Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg are the cofounders of solution-focused brief therapy. Michael White and David Epston are the major figures associated with narrative therapy. Social constructionism, solution-focused brief therapy, and narrative therapy all assume that there is no single truth; rather, it is believed that reality is socially constructed through human interaction. These approaches maintain that the client is an expert in his or her own life.

Based on the premise that there are multiple realities and multiple truths, postmodern therapies reject the idea that reality is external and can be grasped. People create meaning in their lives through conversations with others. The postmodern approaches avoid pathologizing clients, take a dim view of diagnosis, avoid searching for underlying causes of problems, and place a high value on discovering clients’ strengths and resources. Rather than talking about problems, the focus of therapy is on creating solutions in the present and the future.

A number of significant figures have been pioneers of the family systems approach, two of whom include Murray Bowen and Virginia Satir. This systemic approach is based on the assumption that the key to changing the individual is understanding and working with the family.

The family is viewed from an interactive and systemic perspective. Clients are connected to a living system; a change in one part of the system will result in a change in other parts. The family provides the context for understanding how individuals function in relationship to others and how they behave. Treatment deals with the family unit. An individual’s dysfunctional behavior grows out of the interactional unit of the family and out of larger systems as well.

stresses the importance of understanding individuals in the context of the surroundings that influence their development. To bring about individual change, it is essential to pay attention to how the individual’s personality has been affected by his or her gender-role socialization, culture, family, and other systems.

challenge the basic assumptions of most of the traditional approaches by assuming that there is no single truth and that reality is socially constructed through human interaction. Both the postmodern and the systemic theories focus on how people produce their own lives in the context of systems, interactions, social conditioning, and discourse

Learn more about how your own cultural background has influenced your thinking and behaving. Take steps to increase your understanding of other cultures.

Identify your basic assumptions, especially as they apply to diversity in culture, ethnicity, race, gender, class, spirituality, religion, and sexual orientation. Think about how your assumptions are likely to affect your professional practice.

Examine where you obtained your knowledge about culture.

Remain open to ongoing learning of how the various dimensions of culture may affect therapeutic work. Realize that this skill does not develop quickly or without effort.

Be willing to identify and examine your own personal worldview and any prejudices you may hold about other racial/ethnic groups.

Learn to pay attention to the common ground that exists among people of diverse backgrounds.

Be flexible in applying the methods you use with clients. Don’t be wedded to a specific technique if it is not appropriate for a given client.

Remember that practicing from a multicultural perspective can make your job easier and can be rewarding for both you and your clients.