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425 Cards in this Set

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ABC-X Family Crisis Model
Reuben Hill's model used to explain whether or not a stressfull 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 fo the stressor, and X = the crisis )see Double ABC-X Family Stress Model
Accommodation
Describes a variety of engagement techniques, such as joining, used principally by structural family therapists in which the therapist adapts himself to the family's style of interacting.
AAMFT
American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, Inc., the primary national professional association of MFTs. AAMFT is located in Washington, DC. Although AAMFT makes no direct contribution to the licensing exam, many senior members have contributed test items. AAMFT wrote the Code of Ethics, which is the basis or the MFT ethical codes in all states.
AAMFT Code of Ethics
A set of ethical guidelines and rules that all members of AAMFT are required to understand and follow. The functions of the AAMFT ethical code are to deine the role of the professional, help guide professional conduct, and serve as a basis for sanctions. Many states have adopted these guidelines as part of the regulation of marriage and family therapists.
Acculturation
The process by which immigrant group members adjust to the culture of their new country.
Adaptability
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.
AIDS - Auto-Immune_Deiciency Syndrome
A chronic and infectionus disease in which the body's immune system is damaged, making a person vulnerable to a number of serious, sometimes, infections and cancers
Alcoholics Anonymous - AA
A self-help group that uses a 12-step program ofr recovery from alcohol addiction.
Alliance
structural and strategic models, a bond or affiliation b/w two or more family members. Alliances differ from coalitions in that they are generally within a subsystem and not hidden.
Alliance - Domestic Violence
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.
Allopoetic Systems
Originated by postmodern chilean biologist, maturnana: systems that can be controlled from the outside, such as machines.
Analysis of Variance - ANOVA
A method of statistical analysis which enables researchers to deternmine the likelihood that a variable being measured (dependent variable) is associated with a second variable (independent variable) by chance alone. If the deviation (variance) from the norm (frequency of association expected by chance alone) is suficiently large, the variables are likely to be causally related.
Antilibidinal Ego
object relations - the part of the ego that is formed from interactions witht eh rejecting object.
Antilibidinal System
object relations:
a repressed system within the ego characterized by aggression, rage, and contemp
As If Structure
From symbolic-experiential therapy, family members are encouraged to freely experiment as if they were in the role of the other, so long as the understand that the role-play is symbolic. The process allows family members to alternately experiment and return to their secure roles.
Autopoetic Systems
Originated by postmodern chilean biologist, Maturana, sysstems that are self-organizing and self-maintaining, such as biological and human systems. Autopoetic systems can be described as SECOND-ORDER CYBERNETICS
Avoider
From Satir's experiential family therapy, one of five communicationstyles. The avoider tends to distract others rom potential conflict by acting helpless, weak, nd lacking an understanding.
Balancing power
Equalizing access to power in a couple which is overly organized by a hierarchy
Baseline
A beginning observable, stable performance measure against which change, particularly behavioral change, can be measured.
Battle for Initiative
ormulated by Whitaker (symboolic-experiential therapy), the Battle for Initiative follows the battle for structure. In this second battle, 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 Sructure
Described by Whitaker (symbolic-experiential) as the therapist's demand that the family capitulate to his way of conducting the therapy, particularly during the initial stages. It isfollowed by the battle for initiative.
Beavers-Timberlawn Model
An assessment tool used to rate the dimensions of competence and style in a family's functioning. competence dimensions are: adeuate, optimal, midrange, borderline, and severly dysfunctional. Stylistic dimensions are: centripetal, centrifugal, and mixed.
Behavioral Exchange Theory
From behavioral family therapy, a way of describing relationships in terms of costs and benefits. Functional relationships have plentiful access to rewards and relatively few costs, while distressed relationships have a scarcity of rewards relative to costs.
Behavioral Family Therapy - BFT
Atheory and therapeutic model developed by Patterson, Reid, and others, based on principles of learning and behavior change. In BFT, all family memebers are seen as part of the problem and symptoms are reformulated into concrete observalbe behaviors, eachh of which will either be rewarded or extinguished.
Behavioral Parent Training - BPT
A program for trining parents in the use of contingency management to modify or extinguish unwanted behaviors and reinforce desirable behaviors in children.
Bicultural
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
Bilateral Pseudo-Therapy
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.
Biobehavioral
Biological factors that influence behavior, e.g. depression, that is caused, in part, by faulty neurochemistry.
Bi-Modal Feedback Mechanism
From Ashby, the rule-bound mechanism by hwich 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 either breaks down or it makes a leap into new levels of functioning. The change results in a new set of patterns which, like the old pattern is also bound by rules, and it, too, remains unchanged, so long as the environment is stable.
Binuclear Family
Families in which the parents are divorced, have remarried, and formed two intact nuclear families.
Blamer
From Satir's experiential family therapy, one of five communication styles. The blamer judges and complains, ofter for the purpose of bullying other into accepting his/her preference.
Boundary
In Minuchin's structural family therapy, boundaries are hypothetical dividers b/w or among subsystems withing the family or b/w systems. They are defined spatially by the ways family members align with one another. They are set by the implicit or explicit rules concerning who participates in which subsystem and in what manner. Boundaries and the subsystems they define may change over time and with variable circumstances. In the structural model, boundaries are described as either rigid, clear, or diffuse.
Boundary interface
The regions b/w each subsystem of the family and b/w the family and the suprasystem. In family systems therapy this interface is referred to as the familial boundary
Boundary Making
A structural technique in which the therapist establishes a functional semi-permeable (clear) boundary where either a rigid or diffuse boundary had existed previously.
Bowenian Family Therapy
Bowen's theory and therapeutic model is based on the family's emotional system, the differentiation of self within one's family, and the multigenerational transmission of emotions and family patterns.
collaborative
couple treatment in which each partner is seen by his/her own therapist
concurrently
couples therapy in which one therapist works with both spouses at different times
conjoint therapy
Therapy that involves two or more family members, introduced by MRI psychiatrist, Don Jackson in 1959 to describe marital therapy in which the spouses were seen together
field theory
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. Posistively valued objects are approched, while negativel valued ones are avoided. Closely related to Gestalt psychology in its interest in how attention to objects is determined.
content
the topics that people in therapy are discussing
process
The dynamics of a system, often contrasted with content.
psychodrama
A combination of group therapy and theatrical techniques created by Moreno. Participants engage in lively enactments fo troubling events, exploring themselves and their histories in new ways. Many of Moreno's role-playing techniques have been adapted by family therapists.
General Systems Theory
The study of how living systems organize, maintain, and regulate themselves, emphasizing the unity and interrelated hierarchial structure of the parts. Adpted from the biological, physical, and communication sciences, primarily through the work of von Bertalanffy
multiple family group therapy
Therapy with several families with similar problems.
family group therapy
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 other groups, Bell found that families in therapy proceed through stages, and he structured his work to concentrate on those stages.
Cybernetics
The study of how systems are controlled by information and feedback loops and the means by which they work
Marital Skew
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.
homeostasis
The tendency of a system to strive for balance in order to achieve stability and limit the range of behavioral variability
double bind
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. Researchers originally hypothesized that the double bind was a disordered family communication style that ed to the development o schizophrenic symptoms
brief therapy
A model of problem-focused and time-limited therapy developed by the Mental Research Institute in Pal Alto, CA. Milton Erickson and other
directives
An intervention developed primarily by Haley and Madanes in which the therapist gives the family a task with the intent of changing stuck sequences. There are two types of directives: straightforward and indirect. Straightforward directives are not paradoxical, and the therapist expects the family to carry our the task as given. Indirect directives are paradoxical and the therapist expects the family to resist the task. With all directives, the process of negotiating relationships and behavior is more important the whether they are carried out.
therapeutic paradoxes
From strategic family therapy, an intervention which entails maneuvers that appear to contradict the goals of therapy, yet are actually designed to the achieve them.
paradoxical techniques
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 depression. If he rebels, the symptom must be given up. If he complies, the symptom has come under his conscious control.
schizophrenogenic mother
A now-discredited notion by Fromm-Reichmann regarding the origin of schizophrenia, in which she describes a domineering rejecting mother whose behavior was thought ot contribute to her child's mental illness.
marital schism
From Lidz, a dysfunctional marriage in which each partner is centered on him/herself, undermines the other, and makes frequent threats of divorce.
Pseudomutuality
Frym Wynne, a collusive family manuever for the purpose of maintainng homeostasis, in which family members present a falsely harmonuous picture, masking dysfunction.
Pseudohostility
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.
Rubber fence boundary
Wynne's term for the type of boudaries 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 contant flux.
Emotional divorce
From Bowen's family therapy, the cool distance between the parents whose relationships vacillated between overcloseness and overdistance.
Differentiation of self
Bowenian - Transgenerational: the separation of intellectual and emotional functioning, which results in being less reactive to family system dynamics.
Undifferentiated ego mass
From Bowenian family therapym 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.
Triangulation
Bowenian - A dysfunctional process in which an unresolved conflict between two people (oten parents)is extended to include a 3rd person (often their child), whose loyalty is fought over.
Symbolic-Experiential Family Therapy
Whitaker - Therapist uses his/her own experience and craziness, to influence family members' internal meanings, thereby changing dysfunctional patterns.
Craziness
Whitaker - Symbolic-Experiential: 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 antasy freely, to function at a regressed level whin it serves the therapy, and to be mature enough to be immature.
Network Therapy
Speck, Attneave, and Ruevini
Treatment includes people from a client's social network (often a large group, including family, friends, and neighbors) as well as a team off therapists that come together to solve the client or family problem. Treatment consists of six phases: retribalization, polarization, mobilization, depression, breakthrough, and exhaustion-elation
Contextual Therapy
Boszormenyi-Nagy: Theory 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
Multigenerational Ethical Accountability
part of Multigenerational Family Therapy - a diverse grouping of theories and models based on psychodynamic principles developed by Ackerman, Bowen, Nagy, Framo, Paul, and others, which identify amily patterns that repeat across generations
Relational Ethics
Contextual - Nagy
The fundamental dynamic force that holds families and communitites together through reliability and trustworthiness.
Loyalty
Contextual - Nagy
A central concept, the internalized set of expectations, injunctions, and obligations deriving from interactions with one's family of origin
Ledger of accountability
Contextual - Nagy
An internal system in which the relative balance of debts and etitlements 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 of indebtedness
Contextual - Nagy
Multidirectional partiality
Contextual - Nagy
The clinical stance of the therapist in which the therapist is accountable to, and supportive of, every relevant member, even when it necessitates acceepting contradictory positions within a conflict. The therapist strives for neutrality, joins with each family member, and keeps communication open with all members.
Structural Family Therapy
Salvador Minuchin
Focuses on family organization and boundaries and the ways in which these structures govern interactional patterns. Dysfunction stems from boundaries that are either too rigid or too diffuse, both of which prevent the system and its subsystems from achieving goals.
Enmeshment
Structural - Minuchin
A loss of autonomy due to diffuse boundaries, resulting in family members being overly involved in one another's emotional lives
Diffuse Boundaries
Structural - Minuchin
Boundaries that are not clearly defined or maintained, resulting in blurred generational roles and responsibilities. Often lead to enmeshed relationships.
Disengagement
Structural - Minuchin
Emotionally distant and uninvolved family members with overly rigid boundaries in which members are isolated and disconnected from one another.
Join
A structural family therapy engagement technique in which the therapist accepts and accomodates to the family and engages with each family member. The goal of joining is to establish a trusting and familiar connection with the family so that the therapist can effect changes from within the system.
Integrative Couples Therapy
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 formulaiton 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 agains a common enemy. the couple uses behavioral exchange process such a s quid pro quo and good faith contracts, but is also taught to make I-statemnets, to listen and to express themselves in direct but non-blaming ways.
Family Sculpting
Psychodynamic 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.
Milan Systemic Therapy
Influenced by Bateson and the MRI Group, originally developed by Palazzoli, Boscolo, Cecchin, and Prata. Primary techniques: rituals and positive connotations.
Conductors
A therapist whose stance is to be aggressive, confrontational, and charming
Reactors
A therapeutic stance in which the therapist would be more likely to respond to other than to direct them.
Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP)
1970's - Focus on the hidden efects of language, the meaning of non-verbal behavior, and the utilization of communication and trance to create change.
Circular Questions
A technique for interviewing and hypothesis validation designed by the Milan systemic group, based on Bateson's idea that people learn by perceiving differences. 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.
Feedback loops
A circular mechanism whereby feeback is reintroduced into the system, in a looping chain of events that influence one another.
Prescribing the symptom
A paradoxical strategic 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.
Reframing
Strategic - techniques in which the therapist's language and how he/she labels events gives new, often poitive, meaning to a situation. This alteration of meaning invites the possibility of change. Reframing usually refers to a larger context while relabeling refers to a single event
Rituals
Milan systemic - 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.
Positive connotations
Milan Systemic - complex paradoxical reframing technique which includes all family members and the system itself. Each member's contribution to the problem is reframed as an effort to solve problems and help meet the family's needs.
Invariant prescription
Milan systemic - 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.
Dirty game
Milan Systemic - the unacknowledged power struggle between parents and the symptomatic child.
Irreverence
Neutrality, Curiosity
Modernism
From philosophy, a position in which "truth" consists of a tangible, knowable set of observable or deducible facts. It is assumbed that there are universal principles that would guide researchers and therapists toward theoretic tenets, diagnoses, and treatment.
Postmodernism
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. Constructivist, narrative, and solution-focused are examples. 80's and 90's
Epistemology
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.
Social Constructionist
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, marrative, reflexive, and second-order cybernetic.
Narrative therapy
White and Epston - postmodern model which centers on narrative metaphor. The family member's sense of reality is organized around the stories (personal narratives) he tells about himself and the world. Each culture forms dominant narratives, which inluence personal narratives, and therapists and clients discuss their impact.
Solution-Focused Therapy
Berg and de Shazer - Focuses on finding solutions rather than understanding the problem. The model evolved rom the MRI group's focus on problems and rom the postmodern interest in the construction of reality. Clients are encouraged increase behaviors that work well and notice situations in which the problem does no occur.
Collaborative Language Systems
Goolishiam and Anderson - model 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 know stance, designed to draw out the client's own views of the problem. The problem is "dissolved" as new meanings and actions evolve.
Not Knowing
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 te family and therapist might discover through their conversations. The therapis and client engage in conversation and inquiry as partners. The therapist is not separate from the problem system.
Managed Care
A service delivery system in which the third-party payer controls the cost, quality, quantity, and terms of treatment.
Who is the father of GST?
Ludwig von Bertalanffy, 1940
Emergents
GST - Bertalanffy - Distinct entities of the whole family or group, not present in its parts.
Isomorphism
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 supervissor mimc those of the family being discussed.
Open Systems
GST - Bertalanffy: A living system, (including families) with funtionally poorous or flexible boundaries, permitting the free exchange of information and resources with other systems.
Closed Systems
GST - BertalanffyA self-contained system with impermeable boundaries which resists change an doperates with minimal interactions with its outside environment, thereby increasing its dysfunction.
Entropy
GST - Bertalanffy: The measure of sidorder in a system that occurs without imposed controls and inputs. A family functioning randomly might be considered highly entropic.
Negative entropy (Negentropy)
GST - Bertalanffy: The measure of organization in a system. A well-organized system would have high levels of negentropy.
Equifinality
Cybernetics principle: A similar outcome may result from many different initial events.
Equipotentiality
Cybernetics principle: Differnt end states may occur from the same initial conditions.
Feedback
cybernetics: Information which is retrued to the system and which exerts a controlling influence on it
Amplifying or Positive feedback loops
Cybernetics: The flow of information back into the system that works to amplify deviations which increases instability and facilitates change toward meeting new goals. Not homeostatic
Attenuating or negative feedback loops
Cybernetics: Corrective information that flows back into the family system which serves to minimize deviation, keep the system functioning within prescribed limits, and discourage change. Is Homeostatic
Metaphor
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.
Morphogenesis
Cybernetics: A system's tendency to change its basic organization and structure
Morphostasis
Cybernetics: A system's tendency to maintain its basic organization and structure
Recursiveness
Reciprocal or circular causality
Ripple effect
Refers to how a change that occurs at one level of a system results in changes at other levels of the system.
Structures
The interrelationship among system elements that make up the organizationof the system. In first-order change, structures can be affected without altering hte organization of the system; whereas in second-order change the organization's rules and structure are changed.
System
A bounded set of interrelated elements with coherent and patterned behavior
GAP Report
In 1970, the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (GAP) published a report with a primary finding that demonstrated that the majority of therapists who worked with families identified improved communication as their primary treatment goal.
Cognitive Maps
Mental models by which incoming inormation is perceived, understood, transformed, and stored, together with a corresponding repertoire of behavioral options. Mars are based on the integration of experiences. Each part forms the individual's internal representation of reality. Maps shape actions and communication. May be flexible, able ot change and expand cumulatively with new information and experiences, or they may be rigid and limiting. Maps have bboth language and spatial aspects with a private vocabulary an imagery that determines how incoming communication is interpreted.
Communication Theory
Originated the MRI group, the study o the porcess by which veral and non-verbal information is exchanged within a relationship. Communication can be analogic or digital.
4 types of communication: Haptic, kinesthetic, paralinguistic, and streptic.
Proxemics
From communication theory, interpersonal spatial relations, including body language, stance, and preferred physical distance.
Streptic Communication
Communication theory: communicating through sounds such as whistles and claps
Haptic (or symbolic) communication
Communication theory: communication through touch
Paralinguistic communication
Communication theory: communication through tone, pace, and inflexion
Kinesthetic communication
Communication theory: communication through body motion
analogic
Communication that is rich in structure but has little structure
digital
verbal communication perceived and interpreted based on meaning
Metacommunication
Communication messages, usually nonverbal, that qualify or clarify another communication. The nonverbal message may be congruent with the message or incongruent. With incongruent metacommunication, usually the noverbal message settles the discrepancy.
Solid Self
Bowenian - Trangenerational:
A person who is well differentiated and is able to function based upon a personally defined set of values, beliefs, convictions, and life prinicples.
Pseudo Self
Bowenian - Trangenerational:
A person who is not diferentiated may be fused with another person. As a result he does not reason from his own values, but instead borrows the values of the person with whom he is fused and commonly makes emotionally reactive choices.
Family Projection Process
Bowenian - Trangenerational: 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 are transmitted from parents to children.
Nuclear Family Emotional System
Bowenian - Trangenerational:A fused family that is unstable and unable to cope with stress. Charcterized by conflict and dysfunction which are transmitted across generations.
Emotional Cut-off
Trangenerational: 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.
Multigenerational Transmission Process
Bowenian - Trangenerational: The process by which roles, patterns, emotional, reactivity, and family structure are passed from one generation to another. Poorly diferentiated individuals tend to marry one another and over several generations produce offspring who are increasingly less diferentiated and as a result sufer rom sever mental disorders including schizophrenia.
Genogram
Bowenian - Trangenerational: a multigenerational schematic diagram of the family system used to depict individual and relationship characteristics and behavioral patterns.
Person-to-Person interactions
Bowenian - Trangenerational:
interactions that characterize differentiated relationships in which individuals talk rationally to one another without blaming the other and handle conflict wiout attempting to triangulate a third person.
Coaching
Bowenian - Trangenerational: (used by other models as well), 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 famiily from seducing the person back into older, dysfunctional behaviors. The therapist takes an educative role, rather than an emotional one.
I-Position
Bowenian - Trangenerational: Statements that reflect the speaker's own thoughts and feelings, instead of attempting to blame others.
Highly Differentiated
Bowenian - Trangenerational: A person who is able to react to the world rationally and enter into relationships wile balancing competing needs for belonging and individuality.
Poorly Differentiated
Bowenian - Trangenerational: A person with a pseudo self who is ruled by his emotions. He adopts values and attitudes of significant others in order to be accepted and loved.
Displacement Story
Guerin (Bowen follower) Transgenerational:
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 migh discuss another couple wiht similar problems or use films to illustrate an issue.
Projective Hypothesis
Transgenerational:
The notion that the infomration 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.
Equitable Asymmetry
Contextual - Nagy: The unequal, but healthy, degree of care and consideration given by parents toward children.
Triangle
Bowenian - Transgenerational: 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.
Entitlements
Contextual - Nagy: What each person is inherently and fairly due and whateach accrues based on his behavior toward other and other's behavior toward him.
Ledger
Contextual - Nagy: 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.
Facts
Contextual - Nagy: The attributes that people are born with (gender, ethnicity, birth defects, etc) and their life experiences (parental divorce, abuse)
Psychology
Contextual - Nagy: What happens within a person such as thoughts, fantasies, emotions, and the meanings that he ascribes to the FACTS of his life.
Transactions
Contextual - Nagy: The patterns of amily organization - hierarchy, triangle, and transactional sequences.
Legacy
Contextual - Nagy - Transgen.:
All humans, by virtue of being born to parents, have a legacy from the interactions with them.
Merit
Contextual - Nagy - Transgen.:
What is earned through the accumulation of care and concern toward others.
Filial loyalty
Contextual - Nagy - Transgen.:
The loyalty inherent in children toward parents. The care and concern given to children, in turn, results in filial responsibility toward parents.
Split Filial Loyalty
Contextual - Nagy - Transgen.:
If parents require the child to choose between them, the child must be loyal to one at the expense of his loyalty to the other. The child becomes symptomatic as he attempts to bring the parents together.
Rejunctive Moves
Contextual - Nagy - Transgen.:
Moves toward trustworthy relatedness.
Disjunctive Moves
Contextual - Nagy - Transgen.:
Moves away from trustworthy relatedness
Exoneration
Contextual - Nagy - Transgen.:
The goal of treatment in which the therapist attempts to help the client see the positive intent an dintergenerational loyalty issues behind even the destructive behaviors of previous generations. Alo thought of as forgiveness based upon understanding th epast. If the behavior can be seen in a human context, the hold of the past is loosened.
Tranference
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)
Destructive Entitlement
Contextual - Nagy - Transgen.:
The development of symptomatic behaviors in the pursuit of self-justifying and harmful means to satisy the perception of what is due as a result of deficient caring and responsibility in parenting.
Parentification
Contextual - Nagy - Transgen.:
The subjective distortion o a relationship that induces one's spouse or child to assume parental responsibilities fo rthat person. These distortions can be achieved either by "wishful fantasy" or by the use of dramatic dependent behavior. Parentification is part of the loyalty system of the family. A modest amount is necessary in helping children eventually assume responsible adult roles. When it is extreme and reinforced by guilt or obligation, the child is trapped. When an adult parentifies another adult, it is usually done through unconscious regressive fantasy.
Object Relations/Psychodynamic Family Therapy
Developed by Scharff & Scharff; based on principles in oject relations theory that emphasize the internalization of experience as the developmental foundation on which humans form relationships and attachments.
Rejecting object
Object Relations-Transg:
The rejecting object gives rise to the antilibidinal ego.
Exciting object
Object Relations-Transg:
The exiting or overstimulating object gives rise to the libidinal ego.
)bject Relations Theory
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.
Exciting Ego
Object Relations-Transg:
One of three parts of the ego. It is unconscious, inflexible, and in a state of longing for a tempting buy unsatisfying object.
Rejecting Ego
Object Relations-Transg:
One of 3 parts of the ego. It is unconscious, inflexible, and frustrated by its rejecting object.
Libidinal Ego
Object Relations-Trangen.
An exciting or overstimulating object gives rise to the libidinal ego.
Libidinal System
Object Relations-Trangen.
A repressed system within the ego characterized by need, excitement, and longing.
central ego
Object Relations-Trangen.
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.
Ideal object
Object Relations-Trangen.
A neutral object freed from exciting and rejecting aspects. Maintained by the central ego.
Projection
Object Relations-Trangen.
An unconscious defense in which unwanted feelings or beliefs about oneself are split off and then attributed to others.
Projective Identification
Object Relations-Trangen.
An interactive and dysfunctional defense mechanism in which unwanted characteristics of the self are unconsciously projected onto another personwho colludes by behaving as if these projections are true of them.
Insight
Object Relations/Psychodynam.-Trangen.
One of the central goals. Clients gain an understanding of the underlying, unconscious dynamic issues that affect their relationships.
Working Through
From psychodynamic therapy, insight leads clients to engage in new and more productive ways of behaving and interacting
Interpretation
Object Relations-Trangen.
One of the primary techniques. Therapist makes clarigying statements regarding clients' unconsious motives and processes in order to help them understand the significance of the material uncovered. The purpose of interpretations in insight and working through.
Introject
Object Relations-Transgen.:
Hypothetical construct refferring to the internalized images and memories ffrom past relationships, particularly parents, who continue to exert an influence on current thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviors.
Therapeutic Neutrality
Object Relations-Transgen:
An atmoshpere of nonjudgmental exploration. The therapis is not tied to a specific outcome other than insight and working through.
The dirty middle
Framo-Transgenerational:
An impasses 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 wants from one another and from the marriage.
Strategic Family Therapy
Developd by Haley and Madanes, with intervention that focus directly on changing the presenting problem. Therapy typically begins with the therapist first assessing disorders in the system's hierarchies and the dysunctional coalititons 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
Mental Research Institute (MRI)
A center fo rhte sudy of families in Palo Alto, CA whose researchers and practitioners, Bateson, Satir, and Haley - studied schizophrenia na dfamily interactions, communcation and cybernetic theory. They emphasized process and interactional sequences rather than structure, and distinguished b/w first and second-order change. Developed a version of brief family therapy based on the notion that the "problem" or treatment focos, stems from the failed solution previously attempted by the family. later practitioners include Watzlawick, Weakland, and Fisch.
First order change
MRI/Strategic:
Adaptation and changes in families which may change behavior, but do not affect the system's organization.
Second-order change
MRI/Strategic-:
A cange in the rules that govern the emotions and behavioral patterns of the system, resulting in fundamental system reorganization and permanent changes in interactions.
Family rules
Strategic-Haley/Madanes: Rules that govern family members' behavior or promote specific reactions
Restraining Techniques
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 ambivalences that resists change so that the family will align with the side that wishes to change.
Positioning
MRI Strategic:
A paradoxical intervention in which the therapist amplifies or exaggerates the family's explanation of the problem to such a point that the family with disagree.
Therapeutic double bind
MRI Strategic:
A type of paradoxical tecnique in which clients are instructed to continue to have the symptom. They are thenn causght in a bind since to continue the symptom willfully demonstrates that they have control over a sympotm that they previously experienced as involuntary.
Hierarchy
The control and decision-making structure of a family, which may be based on age, gender, roles, or education. In structural and strategic, disordered hierarchies result in dysfunction.
Incongruous hierarchies
Madanes-Strategic:
A dysfunctional structure in which children use symptoms to try to change their parents.
Ordeals
Strategic:
A directive that is aimed at making the symptom harder to keep than give up. The ordeal requires the family member or members to do something they do not want to do, but is something that would benefit them in some way.
Strategic Humanism
Haley and Madanes:
More recent model of therapy which is oriented toward increasing family member's ability to soothe and love rather than to gain control over one another.
Dramatizations
Madanes-Strategic:
Therpeutic technique in which a parent is dircted to request that the child intentionally perform the problem behavior. In this way the sympotm will not draw as much parental attention, and if it no longer serves a purpose, it can be dropped.
Pretending
Madanes-Strategic: Clients are instructed to pretend to have thesymptom. By pretending to have the symptom, it becomes voluntary, unreal, and subject to be changed.
Make-Believe Play
Madanes-Strategic:
Parnets 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.
Homeostasis
The tendency of a system to strive forbalance in order to achieve stability and limit the range of behavioral variability.
Crises of accession and dismemberment
Hoffman
Discontinous changes in families, like symptom development, often occur at times of stress. changes in the family compostition are particularly demanding. Accession: somone joins family, Dismemberment: someone leaves family
Sweat Boxes
Hoffman:
Mild or sever threat to the continuity of the relationship nd the system, a possible precondition to morphogenesis.
Simple Bind
Hoffman:
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 reqarded. A double bind is a simple bind that is continuall imposed and then continually lifted.
Hypothesizing
Milan Systemic:
A trial and error process by which the therapist makes initial suppositions abou the presenting problem, then tests the supposition by asking questions or maiking an interntion based on that hypothesis. The original supposition is then revised according to the new information. This cybernetic process makes use of information resulting rom completed feedback loops.
Cirularity
Milan Systemic:
Causality in families bannot be thought of as a simple, single cause and effect relationship. Instead, events, behaviors, and interactions are seen in a more comples way, as mutually influencing one another (feedback loops). Each is the efect of a prior cause and in turn influences future behaviors. Family system evens create and endless circular chain. It is meaningless to identify an individual as having caused or started problem. All elements of the problem coexist and are reciprocally reinforcing. Problem could not be maintained if any one element were to be removed.
Neutrality
Milan systemic:
Technique and stance with the family in which the therapist withholds judgment, either positive or negative, in an effort to avoid becoming part o the family's struggles. The therapist is indifferent to treatment outcome, recognizing that his role is simply to have an impact on the system.
Odd day/Even day ritual
Milan Systemic:
Techniue to encourage irrecerence or a more flexible view of thefamily. The family is given a directive that on odd days one set of opinions would be true, but on even days, falsse. On the seventh day, the family should act spontaneously.
Second-order cybernetic
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 reating professional is an equal and active contributor. they system does not creat a problem; the problem creates a system.
Logical connotation
Milan systemic:
Therapist cummunicates that the development off a symptom is understandable, fiven the context. There is no implication that a probem is useful, beneficent, or functional, only that people have gotten used to it and that habits are hard to change.
Detouring
Structural-Minuchin:
When 2 family members attemp to preserve their relationship by defining their conflict as a disagreement about a third person, keeping the focus on that jperson rather than themselves and their problem
dysfunctional hierarchies
Strategic-Haley:
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
Coalitions
Structural-Minuchin:
Two family members form a covert alliance, either temporary or durable, against a third. Usuaaly form across generational boundaries. Create power blocks in families which serve either to balanc another coalition or establish control.
Subsystems
Structural-Minuchin:
An organized componenet of a system which has a specfic role in the functioning o hte larger system and is somewhat autonomous from it, for example, a parental subsystem or sibling subsystem
Cross generational coalition
Structural-Minuchin:
A stable coalition b/w a parent and child against the other parent.
Enactment
Structural-Minuchin:
Technique used both in assessment and treatment of families. Members are instructed to demonstrate their problem during hte therapy session, allowing the therapist to observe the problem and develop strategies to change it.
Mapping the system
Structural-Minuchin:
Assessment tool (structural map) used to depict a family's organization and gain an understanding of its complex structures and sequences (triangles, coalitions, emotional cut-offs)
Intensity
Structural-Minuchin:
Therapeutic stance and technique in which the therapist regulates the degree of impact of his messages. Can be regulated, for example, by increasing the length of a transaction or repeating the message. Tone, pacing and volume are the tools of intensity.
Shaping Competence
Structural-Minuchin:
A method of increasing family members' conidence in being able to solve their problems by pointing out what they have done right, rather than focusing on mistakes.
Unbalancing
Structural-Minuchin:
Technique designed to disrupt a dysfunctional sequence by lending greater support to one side of a conflict than the other.
Countertransference
A concept from analytic theory that relates to the therapist's unconsious emotional reactions to the client which derive rom the therapist's own history.
Experiential Family Therapy
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 though; the importance of experiencing a full 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;.
Unfinished business
Experiential Therapy:
Originally a concept of Gestalt therapist Fritz Perls, referring to unresolved feelings or disowned parts of the self.
Fixation of triangle
Symbolic-Experiential-Whitaker:
A clash of family of origin cultures. The weakest famliy member is vulnerable to pathology arising out of family mythology.
Human Validation Process Model
Experiential-Satir:
The therapist and fami.ly work together to promote open communication and authentic emotional experiences.
Existential Encounters
Symbolic-experiental-Whitaker:
The therapeutic stance in which the therapist is willing both to receive the family members' reactions to him and to fully disclose his reactions to them.
Teaming roles
Symbolic-Experiential-Whitaker:
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.
Inconsistency
Symbolic-Experiential-Whitaker:
An attitude by therapist in which they do not delude themselves into beleiveing that they are consistent with families. Accpt it and realize that it helps undermine the family's attempt to maintain a rigid pattern of living.
Interactional Insight
Symbolic-Experiential-Whitaker:
Occurs as a result of expanded emotional interactions within the session resulting in less inhibition. Can be a by-product of change, but is not a curative factor.
Parts Party
Experiential-Satir:
Technique to help clients experience the different parts of their personalities and enable them to see how they operate as an intergrated wole. Family member directs others to act out the specific parts, fostering new personal experience, and insight.
Temerature Reading
Experiential-Satir:
Technique in which family members express hopes and wishes each day between sessions to show their appreciation of one another and discuss complaints and solutions.
Placater
Experiential-Satir:
One of five communication styles. Attempts to pacify and smooth over conflict by being "nice," defending and covering up for others.
Computer
Experiential-Satir:
One of the five communcation styles. Is rational, but often attempts to sway others by referring to outside "authorities"
Leveler
Experiential-Satir:
1 of 5 communication styles. Reacts appropriately to the situation in a flowing and authentic manner.
Conjoint marital therapy
Experiential-Satir:
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
Model Integration Analysis
Experiential-Satir:
The child's method for making sense of his 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 diappointed. In treatment, the assessment of these images is called Model Integration Analysis
Role-Function Discrepancy
Experiential-Satir:
Role-inappropriate relationhsips between the husand and wife who are not only marriage partners, but also form parent/child or sibling/sibling relationships as well
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
An experiential/humanistic couple therapy model from Greenburg and Johnson which posits that problems often stem from an attempt to hide primary emotions such as fear and need for attachment and instead used defensive and coercive reactions known as secondary reactive emotions. The relationship is characterized by negative interactions such as pursuer/distancer or blame. The negative itneractions lead to greater suspicion, more fear, and more negative reactions. In therapy the couple accesses the primary emotions so that they are able to reframe their relationship and alter their negative interactions and simultaneiously strengthen their emotional bond.
Constrctivist Family Therapy
A variety of models based on postmodern philosophy, which emphaasizes the concept that a person's knowledge of the world is based on his perception and internal construction of the "truth" and the belief that reality can never really be known.
Formula first session task
Solution-focused:Insoo-Berg-Constructivist:
1st intervention in tx in which clients are asked to observe their lives b/w the 1st and 2nd session to notice what has happened that they would like to continue to have happen so that they begin to identify their strengths.
Miracle question
Solution-focused:Insoo-Berg-Constructivist:
Used to clarify goals. Clients are asked, "Suppose one night, while you were asleep, there was a miracle and this problem was solved. How owuld you know? What would be different when you wake up?"
Exception question
Solution-focused:Insoo-Berg-Constructivist:
Technique used to offset family's tendency to focus on what is wrong in their lives. Therapists ask clients to recall the times when they did not have the problemm when they ordinarily would or times when they had the problem, but solved it.
Scaling question
Solution-focused:Insoo-Berg-Constructivist:
Used when presenting problems are vague and golas are difficult to specify. Therapist asks clients to rate on a scale of 0-10, how they are currently feeling compared ot an earlier time. If they report feeling better, therapist asks them how they achieved the improvement. Might ask how confident they are that they can maintain the change.
Visitor
Solution-focused:Insoo-Berg-Constructivist:
Does not bring a speciic problem to therapy and does not have a commitment to participating productively in treatment.
Complainant
Solution-focused:Insoo-Berg-Constructivist:
One of three ways to characterize the level of participation and commitment to change. Client brings a speciic problem, but is currently unwilling to focus on a solution.
Customer
Solution-focused:Insoo-Berg-Constructivist:
This client brings a problem and a willingness to work toward its resolution.
Fixed linguistic statement
Solution-focused:Insoo-Berg-Constructivist:
The idea that when families begin tx they often characterie the problem as though it were an immutable face, generating a sense of hopelessness. To reverse this tendency, the therapist begins by eliciting information about what happens when the problem does not occur.
Leagues (Commitment of Concern)
Narrative:White & Epston:Contructivist:
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.
Problem-Saturated Stories
Narrative:White & Epston:Contructivist:
Constructing a story about oneself by emphasizing problematic experiences and ignoring competencies. Individuals and families hten function under the influence of such problem filled stories.
Dominant Cultural Discourses
Narrative:White & Epston:Contructivist:
Sociocultural norms that can become internalized and have a controlling effect on one's story of oneself. In tx, these norms are personified and their impact is discussed.
Externalizing the problem
Narrative:White & Epston:Contructivist:
A problem or symptom is conceptualized and sicussed as though it originated outside the family. The problem is personified, and its powers and designs for the family are explored.
Constitutionalist Self
Narrative:White & Epston:Contructivist:
The view of self is plastic and continuously deconstructied and reconstructed through interactions. The sense of sel derives from experiences that fit into the dominant narrative. Therapist and client co-construct a new sel tat is more congruent with the client's preferred outcome.
Subjugated Stories
Narrative:White & Epston:Contructivist:
Stories about the client that are obscurred by the dominant story. Some are helpful and others are not. Therapists help clients construct a new, more helpful story, which includes unstoried competencies.
Unstoried competencies
Narrative:White & Epston:Contructivist:
Those competencies that the client possesses which are not part of his dominant story and therefore are not expressed until the dominant story is reconstructed.
Landscape of action
Narrative:White & Epston:Contructivist:
Questions the therapist asks to gather information about the times in clients' lives that they were able to resist the effects of the problem.
Sparkling events (unique outcomes)
Narrative:White & Epston:Contructivist:
Instances in which the client did not experience the problem for which he seeks therapy. These exceptionsare highlighted in the therapy to conteract a problem-saturated outlook.
Landscape of meaning
Narrative:White & Epston:Contructivist:
Questions to help clients consider a new, more heroic self view.
Therapeutic certificates
Narrative:White & Epston:Contructivist:
Given to the client or family announcing the client's victory over the problem, which he shows to others and reviews, if he again feels the effects of the problem.
Therapeutic letters
Narrative:White & Epston:Contructivist:
A procedure by Epston, used to extend the therapy in which the therapist summarizes in writing the client's competencies with respect to evercoming the problem and acknowledges the sparkling events.
Mapping relative influence
Narrative:White & Epston:Contructivist:
Therapeutic technique of asking about the eect 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 a new responses.
Mulit-Partiality (Plurality)
Social Contructivist: Hoffman:
The therapist's stance in which he 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
Problem-Determined system
Collaborative Lang.: Anderson & Goolishian: Constructivist:
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. People who are interested in talking about the problem constitute the system.
Reflexive questions
Inventive Questions: Tomm: Constructivist:
Questions designed to inspire families not only to reflect on the meaning of their current perspectives, but also to consider new options.
Family therapy reflecting team
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.
Cognitive-Behavioral Family Therapy (CBT)
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
Classical Conditioning
A learning paradigm studied and practice in a loboratory or other controlled environmnet in which the US that naturally an UCR, is paired with a newtral stimulus that does not initially elicit a response. Through the repeated pairings, the nuetral stimulus (now the CS) begins to elicit the CR
Systematic Desensitization
Wolpe: Behavioral:
Technique for reducting the capacity of conditioned stimuli or activites to evoke anxiety. Therapis first instructs the client to arrange various anxiety-provoking stimuli or activites on a hierarchy rated according to a SUDS. Therapist teached client to induce a state of relaxation, the pairs the relaxation response with the anxiety-provoking stimuli, working progressively up the hierarchy.
Subjective Units of Discomfort (SUDS)
Behavioral scale showing levels of anxiety that objects or activities invoke.
Operant Conditioning
A behavioral learning paradign in which a naturally occurring response is reinforced, increasing the probability that it will be repeated.
Negative reinforcers
Operant Conditioning: Behav.:
A procedure for strengthening a behavior. A stimulus, often aversive, is removed once a target behavior is exhibited.
Social reinforcer
Operant Conditioning: Behav.:
Social interactions such as praise, approval, nagging that increase the frequeny of the behavior.
Primary reinforcer
Operant Conditioning: Behav.:
Biologically determined reinforcers such as food and sex.
Secondary Reinforcer
Operant Conditioning: Behav.:
Items that have acquired reinforcing properties to be exchanged for actual goods.
Punishment
Operant conditioning: Behav.:
A process for decreasing an undesirable behavior by applying an aversive stimulus immediately following the target behavior.
Discriminative stimulus
Operant Conditioning: Behav.:
A cue that signals the availabilty of a reinforcer.
Extinction
Operant Conditioning: Behav.:
When a previously learned and reinforced behavior is no longer reinforced it eventually disappears.
Schedules of Reinforcement
Operant Conditioning: Behav.:
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 unpredictabley are the most resistant to extinction.
a
a
Coercion or Aversive Conrol
Behavioral Therapy:
One person uses aversive stimuli to control the behavior of another.
Modeling
From social learning theory, learning new behavior or extinguishing old behavior by observing the reinforcement contingencies of the behavior in another person.
Reciprocity
Behavioral Family Therapy:
The likelihood that the members of a dyad will equitably reinforce one another over time.
Premack principle
Behavioral:
Techniques in which a high probability behavior is used to reinforce a low probability target behavior in order to increase the frequency of the target behavior.
Time out (From Reinforcement)
Behavioral technique used to extinguish undesirable behaviors by removing the person from a situation in which the behavior is unlikely to be reinforced.
Functional Analysis of behavior
Behavioral assessment technique used to determine the interpersonal or environmental contingencies that maintain the problem.
Shaping
Behavioral procedure in which successive appoximations to a desired, often more complex, behavior are reinforced until the desired behavior is achieved.
Token Economies
Behavioral program in which tokens are dispensed for desirable behaviors. Tokens can later be redeemed for desired items.
Contingency Contracting
Behavioral: An agreement b/w 2 or more familiy members aimed at increasing mutually reqarding behaviors. The contract, which is usually written, specifies the desied behaviors each will do and under what circumstances.
Caring Days
Behavioral: Liberman/Stuart:
Each partner identifies behaviors that his/her partner finds enjoyable and makes a commitment to increasing those behaviors.
Love Days
Behavioral: Liberman/Stuart:
On speciic days one partner non-contingently increases those behaviors the other partner finds pleasurable.
Quid pro quo contract
Behavioral: A for of behavioral contingency contract in which one family member agrees to change a behavior or engage in a desired behavior after the other partner has made a desired change. Behaviors are mutually positively reinforced.
Parallel (good faith) contract
Behavioral: A contract in which the behavior of each partner is not contigent on the other.
Marital Adjustment Scale
An assessment inventory used to determine the relative strenths and weaknesses of a marriage
Functional Family Therapy
(Orignally Systems Behavioral Therapy): Congitive-Behavioral:Alexander:
Integrats systems theory, behaviorism, and cognitive therapy. The two-step therapy includes cognitive work and psychoeducation and is most often applied ot adolescents and their families.
Rational Emotive Family Therapy
Cognitive-Behavioral: Ellis:
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). Goal is to identify irrational beliefs.
Survival Skills Workshop
Psychoeducational:Foolon, Anderson:
For families coping with mental illness in a member. Groups of famiies learn etiology, prognosis, psychobiology, and tx of the illness and learn ways the family can deal with its demands
Parent Management Training (PMT)
Psychoeducational: Program in which parents learn behavior management techniques to reduce the prevalence of troublesome behaviors and increase frequency of more desired behaviors. Goal is to reduce distress and conflict and increase cohesiveness and expressiveness
Collaborative Family Health Care
Bloch and his followers use teams with other medical care providers - nurses, physicians, or rehabilitation specialists - to help families cope more effectively with the consequences of medical illnes..
Relationship Enhancement (RE)
Bernard Guerney: 10 session psychoeducational program for couples emphasizing empathy, genuineness, and positive regard. Therapists teach clients ot recognize and acknowledge feelings and to express them openly. Program is designed to create a context in which positive changes can occur. Therapist and client share treatment planning an decision-making.
PREPARE:
Preventive Intervention and Relationship Enhancement Program: Floyd, Markman, Kelly, Blumberg, Stanley:
Psychoeducational program for married couples to improve their relationships before problems set in. Learn communication and cnflict resolutions skills and discuss expectiations for marriage. Program can be held weekly or in a weekend marathon session.
Marriage Encounter
Father Gabriel Calvo: Psychoeducational weekend couple's retreat for improved communication, problem solving, sexual intimacy, and spiritual health. Originally for Catholics, and later adapted for Protestant and Jewish.
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
Richard Schwartz: integrated collaborative therapy model applying systems concepts and techniques (Gestalt, structural, strategic, experiential) to intrapsychic processes. Therapists and clients co-create changes in life stories. Goal of indiv. therapy is to help client differentiate core Self and heal the parts. Goal of fam. therapy is to elicit members' Selves and collaboratively deal with the parts of each that are involved in the problem. Memebers can have Self-to-Self interactions.
Metaframeworks Model
Integrative: Breunlin, Schwartz, Kune-Karrer:
Wide-ranging model that addresses 6 core domains of human experience: organization, sequences, development, cultur, gender, and internal processes. Each person has capacity to interact positively and harmoniously unless they are being constrained. Goal is to relase constraints,not to focus on deficits.
Intergrative Problem-Centered Therapy (IPCT)
Pinsof: Model where various approaches are used in sequence, progressing from the simplest here-and-now interventions from structural, strategic, cog-beh., solution-focused or meds. I those are unsuccessul, therapist moves deeper into intergenerational issues or object relations. May use a team approach, bringing in eperts in various techniques or assigning members' individual therapists.
Narrative Solutions Approach
Eron and Lund: Therapists use MRI reframing techniques, narrative therapy tech., and elements of solution-focused therapy. Therapist believes that people have a preference for how they would like to view themselves and othersm which they call the preferred view. Ask clinets questions about preferred view and about thier vision of a future w/out the problem. Asks mystery questions such as "How did a person who is so hard-working wind up feeling listless and depressed?
Network Effect
Network: Speck, Atteneave, Ruevini:
A euphoric connectedness to others, likened to the energy and feelings of connectedness that can occur at religious revivals and rock concerts. Result is to bind the group together into a supportive, purposeful, goal-oriented social network.
Multi-conductor model
Network: Speck, Atteneave, Ruevini:
Multiple therapists who share the group leadership as a team.
Confidentiality
Refers to the ethical obligation of the therapist ot protect the client's identity and other personal information. Therapist may not reveal info w/out client's consent to third parties except as allowed by the governing licensing body and/or as outlined in the Ethical Guidelines of the AAMFT
Privilege
A legal right that state law gives to clients stating that communications b/w therapist and client are protected by the law from forced disclosure. Only the client, not the therapist, has the legal right to disclose communications that take place within such a relationship.
Ethics
A set of commonly agreed upon rules and standards for proper professional conduct. Distinguished from law in which a governmental body legislates criteria for professional behavior, the violation of which may result in criminal or financial penalties.
Informed Consent
The legal right of clients or research subjects to be told of the purpose and risks prior to agreeing to participate.
Double ABC-X family stress model
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.
Sex Therapy
Pioneered by Masters and Johnson, Kaplan, and LoPiccol. Tx that focuses on the client's or couple's sexual functioning; often combined with couple's therapy.
Sensate Focus
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 ffeels good, but without the expectation of sexual perormance or orgasm.
Compulsive Sexual Disorder
Debate over what constitutes. DSM does not classify hypersexuality as disorder. Thought to be means of reducing anxiety. TX is 12-step program or meds.
Dyspareunia
Male or female ginital pain with intercourse
Excitement phase disorder
Women: female arousal d. or inhibited sexual excitement: inadequate lubrication and swelling in response ot sexual excitement. Rare.
Men: erectile disorder, inhibited excitement or impotence: inability to bring on on or maintain an erection

Disorder is likely to have organic cause, such as a defiency in sex hormone levels or vasocongestion, but can also stem from psychological or relational problems
Female orgasmic disorder
Persistent inability to reach orgasm following a normal excitement phase. Should not automatically be considered a dysfunction, but rather secondary to the situation or technique, often due to lack of information.
Hypoactive Sexual Desire
Persistent or recurrent deficiency of desires and fantasies, common among both men and wome. Etiology may be organic or psychology
Orgasm Phase disorders
Delayed, or lack or orgasms in women. Premature, retarded, or rarely, partially retarded orgasms in men.
Paraphilias
Intensely arousing stimuli that are 1.non-human(fetish, transvestism) 2. suffering or humiliation of oneself (masochism) or one's partner (sadism) or 3.children(pedophilia) or non-consenting adults. Exhibitionism is also classified as a paraphilia.
Performance Anxiety
Excessive concern with sexual achievement and adequacy, often due to a ear of failure or a partner's demand for perormance.
Tarasoff v. Regents of University of California (Duty to Warn)
A court ruling, adopted by most jurisdictions, that states that when a therapist determines, or should determine, that his client presents a seroius threat of harm to a specifically identified other person, he has an obligation to use reasonable care to protect the intended victim against such danger.
Case-Specific Symptom Prescription
Strategic:
symptomatic or other undesirable behaviors are paradoxically encouraged in order to lessen such behavior or bring it under conscious control
Center for Disease Control - CDC
Agency that trck the incidence of communicable diseases and defines crieria for diagnosis of AIDS
Centrifugal
Defined by Beavers as part of the Beavers-Timberlawn Model. a family system dynamic in which members are expelled or encouraged to operate a the outer periphery and seek gratification outside the familiy
Centripetal
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.
Change
1. Structual: perpective change is the process by which elemnts of a system are transormed to new states or levels of organization

2. Developmental system change refers to the family life cycle and the transition of the family from one stage of development to another.

Strategic models see change as occurring suddenly; structual nad transgenerational models see it as occurring through a gradual learning process
Circumplex Model
graphic model for observing and assessing families designed by Olsen. Measures levels of cohesion and adaptability. Evaluation tool, FACES, is used to apply the model to family assessment.
Coding Schemas
Establish an organized and consistent approach to idnetifying and counting clinical phenomena.
Cohesion
Circumplex Model:
Measure of strenth of the emotional bonds b/w and among family members
Collusion
Family system defense mechanism in which members cooperate unconsciously sharing thoughts and feelings. Used to protect family members from threatening outside forces.
Complementarity
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.
Conjoint
Therapy that involves 2 or more family members, introduced by MRI psychiatric, Don Jackson in 1959, to describe marital therapy in which the spouses were seen together.
Content
Term that describes the topics that people in therapy are discussing
Co-Therapy
Technique introduced by Whitaker, in which 2 therapists work together as a team
Cross-Sectional Studies
Research design which examines subjects at a single point in time
Culture
Set of shared beliefs, behaviors, values, customs, meanings, symbols, and the like, transferred from one generation to the next and drom the social groups to which the person belongs.
Cutural Sensitivity
Sensitivity to the existence and impact o the family's cultural rules and values. Enables easier engagement, reduces misunderstanding and mininterpretation of family members' behavior, and facilitates the development of trust. Should be aware of their biases regarding the cultural background of others and their own.
De-catastrophizing
Behavioral technique in which the therapist teaches the client to challenge his tendency to have catastrophic expectations.
Deconstruction
Postmodern process of constructing new meanings by examining implicit assumptions
Defense mechanism
Analytic concept describin the unconsious process by which the ego protects the person from consious awareness of anxiety provoking, threatening thoughts and memories.
Detriangle
Bowenian concept of withdrawing from an existing triangle so that the person in not drawn into the conflict b/w the other two, often the parents.
Directed Masturbation Training
From LoPiccolo, method of tx primary inorgasmic or preorgasmic dysfunction. Woman taught to become familiar, more comfortable with, and more accepting of body and sexuality. Encouraged to explore genitals for tactile quality then for pleasur; to use erotic materials and fatasy; to use orgasm triggers, as if necessary to use a vibrator. Then teaches partner what she finds pleasurable.
Discontinuous change
Sudden, unanticipated change in family organization usually brought on by a crisis (may be therapeutically induced), which cuases a change in perception, beliefs, or perspective
Distancing
Structural:
process of creating emotional space, often in response to enmeshment due to diffuse boundaries.
Dyad
A temporary or permanenet connection b/w 2 persons
Dysfunction
A breakdown in the ability of a structure to achieve its goals.
Ecosystemic Approach
The therapeutic view that it is important to attnd to the family's relationship to the larger systems - community, school, and work
Ego
Analytic concept referring to a hypothetical internal mental structure that both contains the individual's perception of himself and is also the rational mediator b/w the id and the super-ego.
Egodystonic
Phenomena or experiences at odds with an individuals self-perception
Egosyntonic
Phenomena or experiences consistent with the perceived nees, self-perception, or ideals of an individual
Ethnicity
Ethnic origin of a family which incorporates a value system, consciousn and unconscious porcesses, and from which members often derive a sense of identity and belonging
Expressed emotion (EE)
Degree of emotion expressed by family members. Has been observed that families with a schizophrenic member tend to have a high degrree of intense and negative emotional interactions
FACES (Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales)
Designed by Olsen and others. Questionnaire designed to measure a family's qualities, including cohesion and adaptability
Family Emotional System
Bowenian:
Recurrent pattern of emotional reactivity linking family members
Family Group Therapy
Model of early therapy created by Bell in which the therapist stimulates open discussions, leaving the family to solve its own problmes. Bell found that families in therapy proceed through stages and he structured his work to concentrate on those stages.
Family Life Cycle
Series of sequntial 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 of Origin
The family into which the person is born or adopted, used most extensively tby transgenerational models
Family Systems Theory
Broad range of theories and therapeutic models that view the family as an open system that functions in relations to its larger enviornment and define indiviual problems in the context of family dynamics.
Family Typologies
A way of classifying families which illustrates members' similarieties and differences, and which may queickly enable the therapist to identify therapeutic goals.
Feminist Family therapy
Treatment philoshophy with a nonsexist, egalitarian view in which the social and familial gender roles of women and men are actively considered, including the perpective that social and cultural structures often give men a greater amount of power nad control over political and economic resources.
Functional
The ability of a system or subsystem to achieve its goals
Fusion
Bowen:
The blurring of intellectual and emotional features or boundaries b/w family members. The opposite of differentiation, it results in a lack of a separate self and high levels of reactivity among family members.
Gender and Violence Project
Ackerman Institute, started in mid-80's. Goal was to describe the relationship b/w gender and violence using both the feminist and systemic perspectives. Important question considered was whether family therapy could be successful in cases of DV
Gender-Sensitive Family Therapy
Position that can be applied to any model of family therapy in which the hterapist examines the ompact of gender roles on family members in order to help clients make choices that are not limited by internalized gender biases or external pressure based on gender.
Gestalt Family Therapy
Model that focuses on the anxiety inherent in the contact b/w people and which uses techniques to heighten self-awareness and personal choice.
Global Assessment of Relational Functioning (GARF)
Assessment tool used to rate family functioning along a continuum in 3 areas: problem solving, organization, and emotional climate. Designed by Lyman Wynne
Grief
Range of emotions following a loss, which are poart of the process of integrating the loss
Human Immuno-Suppresant Virus (HIV)
Virus that causes AIDS.
Homophobia
Irrational dislike, disregard, or fear of homosexual people
Humanistic
Therapeutic stance that emphasizes the uniqueness of individuals and promotes their potential for growth
Hypothesis
A proposed causal explanation that can be tested and supported or disproved
Identified Patient (IP)
The family member who manifests the symptoms
Individuation
The selecting and accentuating fo certain experiences and aspects of the self in the process of becoming a unique human being, includes separating from the larger group or system
Initial Interview
Therapy format associated with Haley in which the therapist conducts structured interview consisting of 4 stages: social, problem, interactional, and goal setting
Interface
Points at which the boundary from one system or subsystem meets the boundaries of other subsystems or the environment
Intergenerational Loyalties
Contextual: Nagy:
Set of emotional obligations to one's family of origin as well as to one's spouse and children.
Intervention
A maneuver on the part of the therapist to test a hypothesis and promote change.
The Intervention
Therapeutic process used to confront a substance abuser's denial of his abuse. Friends and family members organize a conronation meeting, led by the therapist, in which they each proclaim their committment to, and concern for, the alcoholic. Goals are to have abuser feel supported, ackowledge the problems, and enter program
Introjection
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
Invisible Loyalties
Contextual: Nagy: Unconscious obligations that children take on in order to help their families, sacrificing their own interests and well being in the process
Levels of Intervention
Targeting interventions at a specific family subsystem, such as the children or parents
Linear Causality
An assumption of cuase and effect in which one event is thought to cause the next.
Longitudinal Studies
A research design in which subjects are foloowed across time, which often allows for greater certainty in causal inference
MANOVA - Multiple Analysis of Variance
Method of statistical analysis used by researchers for determining which independent variables have a causal relationship with the dependent variable
Mapping the Relative Influence
Narrative Therapy:
Therapeutic technique of asking about the effect of the problem on relationships and the effect o the relationships on the problem. As members id their influence on the problem a second, alternative description of the problem is generated. This alternative in turn is a source for new responses.
Medical Family Therapy
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
Mimesis
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
Narrative Solutions Approach
Integrated approach of Eron and Lund in which the therapists use MRI reframing techniques, narrative therapy thechniques, and elements of solution-focused therapy. Therapist believes that people have a preference for how they would like to view themselves and others, whic they call the preferred view. Ask mystery questions such as "how did a person who is so hard-working wind up feeling listless and depressed?
Nonsummativity
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
Nuclear Family
Parents and their children living together as a unit.
Paradigm
An example, model, or concept that contains an interrelated set of assumptions.
Parentified child
Structural: Minuchin
Role set of behaviors, and placement in a family sequence which stems from the functional removal of a child rom the sibling subsystem. Has parental responsibilities that are poorly defined and therefore, unlimited and are beyond the child's developmental capabilities
Pattern
A sequence that repeats over time
Personal Map
Conception of interpersonal reality that a person uses to make sense of the world
Perturbation
Intervention which introduces a small change or ripple w/out altering the system's basic organization in an attempt to magnify the change later.
Probing
Structural:
Therapist asks questions and/or makes provocative comments designed to evoke responses which help to obtain information about how the family opeates. Even failure to obtain the amily's cooperation provies information about their boundaries
Pseudomutuality
Wynne
Collusive family maneuver for the purpose of maintaining homeostsis, in which family members present a falsely harmonious picture, masking dysfunction
Pseudohostility
Wynne:
Term to describe the use of chronic conflict to create a somewhat superficial alientation of family members, therby masking an individual member's need for intimacy and affection
Punctuation
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 patter in which each participant believes that what he says or does is caused by the other.
Qualitative Analysis
Descriptie analysis o the elements of an interaction
Qualitative Research
Method that is exploratory, open-ended, and directed mroe at discovery than at evaluation or justifying a set of hypotheses. Its methods are intended to expand and enhace quantitative research techniques, and to provide a context for better understanding the meaning of the quantitative data.
Quantitative Analysi
Analysis of the numeric quantity of elements in an interaction
Quantitative Research
Method that emphasizes experimentation, large smaples, data collection, statistical analysis, objectivity, and verification. Typically used to test hypotheses (confirmatory research)
Behavioral redundancy
From cybernetics, rule-determined repetitive patterns of interaction
Revolving Slate of Injustice
Contextual: Nagy:
Generational perpetuation of destructive entitlement where one generation damages the next innocent generation. Process in reinforce by earned destructive entitlement and is the chief factor in family and marital dysfunction
Sacrifice Intervention
Milan systemic (early Milan):
Closing statement in a session that includes a statement of pardox. 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
Self of the Therapist
Self-knowledge regarding 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.
Semantics
study of the way language conveys meaning
Separation
1. Psychoanalytic: emotional transformation fo the parent permitting the child to form significant bonds iwth others

2. Systems Theory: reduction of enmeshment by the clarification fo diffuse boundaries

3. Married couple's decision to live their lives in a more separate, disengaged way which may or may not involve legal arrangements
Sexual Disorder
Disorders of sexual functioning caused by psychological factors such as anxiety, beliefs, or perceptions
Sexual Dysfunction
Impaired psysiological response preventing a person from full sexual funtioning.
Sexual Orientation
A description of the gender or genders of people to whom one is sexually attracted
SIDS - Sudden Infant Death Syndrome
Unexplained death of an apparently healthy infant. The actual cause of death may be unknow, but certain risk factors have been identified such as immature lungs, apnea, sleep arounsal problems
spectatoring
Disorder of sexual functioning caused by monitoring one's performance. Contributes to performance anxiety.
Stop-Start Technique (Squeeze Technique)
Developed by Semans for tx of premature ejaculation. Partner is asked ot stimulate penis until premonitory sensations of orgasm. Client then instructs partner to stop and the cycle is repeated. Method helps client concentrate on preorgasmic sensations rather than suppressing them.
Subjective Units of Discomfort (SUDS)
A scale used by behavioral therapists on which the client's rate their level of anxiety to a stimulus or situation
Substance Abuse
wide range of inappropriate and usually excessive ingestion of mind altering chemicals such as alcohol or drugs
Suprasystem
A higher-level system, such as a community, in whch other systems are components
symmetrical
MRI: Jackson:
Relationship in which there is a relatively equal distribution of control and power, often resulting in rapid escalation of conflict. Opposite of complementarity
Symptom Prescription
MRI Strategic:
Therapist asks family to continue to perofrm or even expand a symptom. Compliance based if therapist wants family to do as suggested or defiance based when he waants family to defy the directive.
Syntax
The form of a message
Temporal Sequencing
Chronological order in which family behaviors occur.
Termination
End of contractual relaitonhsip b/w therapis and client or family. May be formal and final or flexible. Sometimes initiated by therapist, in others follows family's lead.
Therapist Stance
therapist's position (engagement style) in relation to both the family system and therapist's theoretical foundation.
Third-Order Change
Gregory Bateson's term for a dramatic transformation in thinking
Tracking
Structural:
Engagement technique in which teh therapis participates in the existing family dynamic, while privately noting the dysfunctional or unbalanced processes being enacted. Therapist must assume the "'median" position - paying attention to himself while engaging with the family
Unconditional Posititve Regard
Originated by Carl Rogers, and used by therapist in emotionally focused couples therap in order to create a safe enviroment wher primary feelings can be revealed
Utopian Syndrom
From Watzlawick's book Change, the myth sometimes brought with chlients ot therapy that suggest that a single intervention might somehow solve all the client systmens problems, that notion that one can mishandle problems by embracing a single, all encompassing solution. This can lead to clients therapist or solution shopping to fulfill the fantasy
Vulnerability Stress Model (Deathesis Stress Model)
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.