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MARRIAGE & FAMILY COUNSELING:Concepts Related to Circular Causality

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Theory and Practice of Counseling - PSY632
VU
Lesson 41
MARRIAGE & FAMILY COUNSELING
Family Counseling
·
Families enter counseling for a number of reasons. Usually, there is an identified patient (an
individual who is seen as the cause of trouble within the family structure) that family members use
as their ticket of entry. Most family counseling practitioners do not view one member of a family as
the problem but instead work with the whole family system.
·
Family counseling has expanded rapidly since the mid-1970s and encompasses many aspects of
couples counseling. While a few family counselors are linearly based and work on cause-and-effect
relationships, most are not. Family therapy deals with problems involving family structure and
family interaction patterns. Many family therapists assume that family members fall into rigid roles -
with one person "designated" as the scapegoat (i.e., as the "disturbed" family member). Majority
operate form a general systems framework.
Goals:
·
Improving communication between family members.
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Deemphasize individual problems and emphasize joint problems of family.
The Concept of Communication in Family Therapy
·
Pathology develops with communication failure among family members.
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Deals with relationship between individual member and family system.
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Therapy works on correcting information or changing manner of feedback.
·
Ackerman believes that a constant interchange between client, family, and society gives better
output.
Uses:
·
To increase marital intimacy, to treat adolescent drug abusers, to treat anorexics, and to deal with
bereavement issues after the death of some family member, conflict values in family, and significant
marital problems, etc.
·
Individual person's problems in family approach are considered secondary problems because focus
is on joint problems faced by every member in family.
·
Began with an adolescent as principle patient.
Circular Causality Versus Linear Thinking
Family approaches stress the structural causality: the idea that events are related through a series of
interacting feedback loops.
B
A
Circular Causality
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B
A
Linear Causality
Concepts Related to Circular Causality
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Nonsummativity:
The family is greater than the sum of its parts. It indicates that it is necessary to see the
o
patterns rather than the actions of any specific members alone.
·
Equifinality:
Families that experience a natural disaster may become stronger or weaker as a result.
o
Likewise, healthy families may have quite dissimilar backgrounds. Therefore, the focus of
treatment is on interactional family patterns rather than particular conditions or events.
·
Communication:
It is important to attend to the two functions of interpersonal messages: content (factual
o
information), and relationship (how the message is to be conveyed).
·
Family rules:
A family's functioning is based on explicit and implicit rules. Family rules provide
o
expectations about roles and actions that govern family life. To help families change
dysfunctional ways of working, family counselors have to help them define or expand rules
under which they operate.
·
Morphogenesis:
The ability of the family to modify its functioning to meet the changing demands of
o
internal and external factors is known as morphogenesis. Instead of just talking, family
members may need to try new ways of behaving.
·
Homeostasis:
Like biological organisms, families have a tendency to remain in a stable state of
o
equilibrium unless otherwise forced to change. When a family member unbalances the
family through his or her actions, other members quickly try to rectify the situation
through negative feedback.
Often, a genogram is constructed to help family members to detect intergenerational patterns of family
functioning that have an impact on the present.
Different Forms of Family Therapy
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Psychoanalytic Family Counseling
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Behavioral Family Counseling
·
Structural Family Counseling
·
Strategic Family Counseling
·
Solution-focused Family Counseling
Psychodynamic Family Counseling
·
As traditionally practiced, psychoanalysis concentrates on individuals rather than social systems
such as family. However, it broke the tradition by working with intact families. An initial goal of
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psychodynamic family counseling is to change the personalities of the family members so they can
work with one another in a healthy and productive way.
·
Object relations are internalized residues of early parent-child interactions. In dysfunctional
families, object relations continue to exert a negative influence in present personal interpersonal
relationships.
·
Psychodynamic family counselors concentrate on helping family members obtain insight and
resolve family-of-origin conflicts or losses, eliminating distorted projections, reconstructing
relationships, and promoting individual and family growth.
Structural Family Counseling
·
Structural family counseling is based on general system theory. In working with families, structural
family counselors join with the family in a position of leadership. Counselors map within their mind
the structure of the family and determine how it is stuck in a dysfunctional pattern. They then
employ a number of techniques aimed at getting the family to change the way it operates.
·
Techniques:
Working within the family interaction:
o
One primary technique is to work with the family's interaction. When family members
repeat nonproductive sequences of behavior or demonstrate a detached or enmeshed
position in the family structure, the counselor will rearrange the physical environment so
they have to act in a different way.
Reframing
o
Structural family counselors also use reframing, a technique that involves helping the
family see its problem from a different and more positive perspective. For example, if a
child is misbehaving, the behavior may be labeled as a naughty rather than crazy, so child's
behavior may be considered less pathological.
Strategic Family Counseling
·
Strategic counselors take a systemic view of problem behavior and focus on the process rather than
the content of dysfunctional interactions. They strive to resolve presenting problems and pay little
attention to instilling insight.
·
Techniques:
One technique is to prescribe the symptom.
o
Original Homework assignments are to be completed between sessions.
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Overall treatment is short term and pragmatic.
o
Solution-focused Family Counseling
It traces its roots to the work of Milton Erickson (1954), particularly his utilization principle.
·
The essence of solution focused family counseling is that clients create problems because of their
perceptions such as "I am depressed". To treat and sove problems, concentration should be on
some exceptional time when the person is not depressed.
·
Client families are directed toward solutions to situations that already exist in the exceptions
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One way of helping individuals change perspective (from concentrating on the negative to
emphasizing the positive) is called miracle question. In this intervention clients are asked to imagine
that the problem is already solved. What will happen in regard to their behavior? And how will they
know that the problem is solved?
Varieties of Family Counseling
·
Conjoint Family Counseling
In its process entire family is seen by the counselor at the same time. Counselor assigns tasks and
imparts direct instruction regarding human relationship. Satire (1967) sees counselor as the resource
person and model of communication. Through clear, crisp communication and by assigning tasks
to different members, counselor plays active role during therapy sessions.
·
Concurrent family counseling
In the process of concurrent family counseling one counselor sees all family but in individual
sessions.
·
Collaborative family counseling
In collaborative family counseling each family member sees a different counselor. Then counselors
collaborate and discuss family as a whole.
Career Counseling
Historical Perspective
·
Systematic vocational guidance BY Frank Parsons.
He differentiates counseling from other similar helping professions.
He coined the term counselor and talked about 3 elements pertaining to career selection in his
book "Choosing a Vocation". These three elements are: traits of the individual, demands of the job,
and the congruence between the both. He is known as the father of systematic vocational guidance.
His conceptualization provided the basis for a major early theoretical approach, the trait-factor
theory.
·
What used to be called vocational guidance at that time is now referred to as career counseling. In
career counseling, all aspects of individual needs (including family, work and leisure) are recognized
as integral parts.
·
Career counseling includes all counseling activities associated with career choices over a life span.
Interchangeable terms are job, occupation and vocation but they refer to different job positions and
activities of employment, but career is much broader.
Importance of Career Counseling (Crites, 1981)
Crites lists important aspects of career counseling which includes the following:
·
Career counseling can deal with the inner and outer world of individuals, whereas other counseling
approaches deal only with internal events.
·
"Career counseling can be therapeutic." Super (1957), Williams (1962), Williams and Hills (1962),
Crites (1969), and Krumboltz (1994) have all found a positive correlation between career and
personal adjustment.
·
"Career counseling is more difficult than psychotherapy" Crites states that to be an effective career
counselor a person must deal with both personal and work variables and must know how the two
interact.
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Career Counseling Theory
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A theory of career development can be defined as a conceptual system that identifies, describes,
and interrelates important factors affecting lifelong human involvement with work.
·
Five major types (Herr & Cramer, 1984)
The trait-factor approach
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Decision theory
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Situational approaches
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Psychological-personality based approach
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Developmental approach
o
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Table of Contents:
  1. INTRODUCTION:Counseling Journals, Definitions of Counseling
  2. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND COUNSELING & PSYCHOTHERAPY
  3. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 1900-1909:Frank Parson, Psychopathic Hospitals
  4. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND:Recent Trends in Counseling
  5. GOALS & ACTIVITIES GOALS OF COUNSELING:Facilitating Behavior Change
  6. ETHICAL & LEGAL ISSUES IN COUNSELING:Development of Codes
  7. ETHICAL & LEGAL ISSUES IN COUNSELING:Keeping Relationships Professional
  8. EFFECTIVE COUNSELOR:Personal Characteristics Model
  9. EFFECTIVE COUNSELOR:Humanism, People Orientation, Intellectual Curiosity
  10. EFFECTIVE COUNSELOR:Cultural Bias in Theory and Practice, Stress and Burnout
  11. COUNSELING SKILLS:Microskills, Body Language & Movement, Paralinguistics
  12. COUNSELING SKILLS COUNSELOR’S NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION:Use of Space
  13. COUNSELING SKILLS HINTS TO MAINTAIN CONGRUENCE:
  14. LISTENING & UNDERSTANDING SKILLS:Barriers to an Accepting Attitude
  15. LISTENING & UNDERSTANDING SKILLS:Suggestive Questions,
  16. LISTENING & UNDERSTANDING SKILLS:Tips for Paraphrasing, Summarizing Skills
  17. INFLUENCING SKILLS:Basic Listening Sequence (BLS), Interpretation/ Reframing
  18. FOCUSING & CHALLENGING SKILLS:Focused and Selective Attention, Family focus
  19. COUNSELING PROCESS:Link to the Previous Lecture
  20. COUNSELING PROCESS:The Initial Session, Counselor-initiated, Advice Giving
  21. COUNSELING PROCESS:Transference & Counter-transference
  22. THEORY IN THE PRACTICE OF COUNSELING:Timing of Termination
  23. PSYCHOANALYTIC APPROACHES TO COUNSELING:View of Human Nature
  24. CLASSICAL PSYCHOANALYTIC APPROACH:Psychic Determination, Anxiety
  25. NEO-FREUDIANS:Strengths, Weaknesses, NEO-FREUDIANS, Family Constellation
  26. NEO-FREUDIANS:Task setting, Composition of Personality, The Shadow
  27. NEO-FREUDIANS:Ten Neurotic Needs, Modes of Experiencing
  28. CLIENT-CENTERED APPROACH:Background of his approach, Techniques
  29. GESTALT THERAPY:Fritz Perls, Causes of Human Difficulties
  30. GESTALT THERAPY:Role of the Counselor, Assessment
  31. EXISTENTIAL THERAPY:Rollo May, Role of Counselor, Logotherapy
  32. COGNITIVE APPROACHES TO COUNSELING:Stress-Inoculation Therapy
  33. COGNITIVE APPROACHES TO COUNSELING:Role of the Counselor
  34. TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS:Eric Berne, The child ego state, Transactional Analysis
  35. BEHAVIORAL APPROACHES:Respondent Learning, Social Learning Theory
  36. BEHAVIORAL APPROACHES:Use of reinforcers, Maintenance, Extinction
  37. REALITY THERAPY:Role of the Counselor, Strengths, Limitations
  38. GROUPS IN COUNSELING:Major benefits, Traditional & Historical Groups
  39. GROUPS IN COUNSELING:Humanistic Groups, Gestalt Groups
  40. MARRIAGE & FAMILY COUNSELING:Systems Theory, Postwar changes
  41. MARRIAGE & FAMILY COUNSELING:Concepts Related to Circular Causality
  42. CAREER COUNSELING:Situational Approaches, Decision Theory
  43. COMMUNITY COUNSELING & CONSULTING:Community Counseling
  44. DIAGNOSIS & ASSESSMENT:Assessment Techniques, Observation
  45. FINAL OVERVIEW:Ethical issues, Influencing skills, Counseling Approaches