Licensing Exam terms and some people to know

Who was Harriet Bartlett?

Help people identify and resolve or reduce problems arising out of disequilibrium between individuals, groups, and the environment; and to seek out and strengthen maximum potential of individuals.

Who is Eda Goldstein?

Help people find the means and opportunity by which they can work out, find alternatives for, and deal with internal, interpersonal, and environmental conditions.

Who is William E. Gordon?

Match coping capacities of the individual and qualities of the environment to enhance individual potential and relieve environmental problems

Who is Helen Perlman?

Help individuals effectively cope with social functioning problems

Who was Mary Woods and Florence Hollins?

Help people cope with intrapsychic, interpersonal, and environmental problems that cause personal suffering.

Who created psychoanalytic theory?

Sigmund Freud

Ego psychology

Psychoanalytic base, with specific focus on ego functions and adaptation; defense mechanisms (Anna Freud); adaptations to an avg “expected” environment (Hartmann); ego mastery and development through the life cycle (Erik Erickson); separation/individuation (Margaret Mahler).

Positive Reinforcement

A reward is offered for the desired behavior

Negative Reinforcement

The desired behavior is strengthened through the removal of an aversive or unpleasant stimulus

Family Systems Theory: Boundary

The means of organization by which the parts of a system can be differentiated from the environment In which the system exists.

Circular causality

Therapist helps the family understand patterns. Think of each behavior as both action and reaction.

Entropy

The randomness, disorder, or chaos, in a system. Causes to lose energy faster than it creates or imports it.

Double-bind

Two contradictory messages are communicated on two different levels of abstraction with an implicit injunction against commenting on the discrepancy. (Ex: Child mom said no to baseball due to taking care of little brother; Dad wants child to play baseball to be professional one day. Therefore; child receives mixed messages and feels they are backed into a corner).

Enactment

Family experiences their conflict in the present in therapy session rather than simply describing the problem.

Family subsystem

A subset of the family as a whole e.g. parents or children

Function of the symptom

How does the symptom serve to maintain the family’s homeostasis? (Homeostasis also doesn’t mean everything is going well).

Hierarchy

The order in which the system parts are arranged

Homeostasis

Family process of maintaining accustomed systemic balance *doesn’t mean happy and healthy

Identified patient

The family member who is identified by the family as needing treatment

Reframe

Therapist helps to relabel the meaning of a family or family member’s behavior to shift how other members respond to it

Triangulation

Two members of a family involve a third member as a means of coping with anxiety and defusing a dyadic conflict

Differentiation

Means a family member says “im apart of family but i am an individual, and have a life outside of my family”. As therapists we want this to occur within group settings. A goal is to have this + mutual aid to equal happy, healthy, and independent individuals within the group

Abreaction

Bringing to consciousness and expressing formerly “dammed-up” feeling. It is the release of repressed emotions

Catharsis

Expressing feelings that have been “dammed-up”, but not necessarily unconscious. It’s the release of suppressed emotions

Ego-dystonic

Feelings, thoughts or behaviors of their own about which the person is in conflict. Most common for personality disorders like OCD.

Ego-syntonic

Feelings, thoughts or behaviors of their own in which the person does not have inner conflict (giving people more insight and awareness)

Projection

A defense mechanism in which ones own unacceptable impulses are attributed to someone or something else

Reaction formation

A defense mechanism in which an unacceptable feeling is converted into it’s opposite

Repression

An unconscious process by which a person defends against conflictual material by putting it out of their consciousness.

Suppression

A conscious process by which a person defends against conflictual material by putting it out of consciousness

Sublimation

Displacing an instinctual aim in conformity with higher social values. Channeling the id’s repressed urges into socially acceptable substitute outlets.

Who created structural family therapy?

Sal Minuchin

What is structural family therapy?

Strengthening boundaries around the family subsystems when enmeshed or increasing flexibility when overly rigid. Stresses family should be hierarchical with parents at the apex of the hierarchy.

Milan School — systemic family therapy

Palazzoli creates this. Assumes that symptoms serve a function within dysfunctional families in which a family member is sacrificed to maintain the family structure.

Who created psychodynamic theory?

Nathan Ackerman, Don Jackson, Olga Silverstein

What is psychodynamic theory?

The importance of family, multi-generational history. Previous family relations determine current family patterns. If these were distorted in childhood, unrealistic patterns of behavior are produced that lead to miscommunication and behavioral problems.

What does psychopathology result from?

Interpersonal and intrapersonal conflict beneath apparent family unity

Hereditary and environment affect….

Social role and functioning

Bowen family systems theory

Role of thinking vs feeling (reactivity) in relationship systems. Role of emotional triangles; triangles being three person systems are seen was the smallest stable relationship system and are formed when a two-person system undergoes tension.

Who created narrative therapy?

Michael white, Dulwich Centre, Adelaide, Australia

What is narrative therapy?

Draws on a variety of individual and personality theoretical orientations as well as social psychological approaches. It focuses on the stories people tell about their lives, interpreted through their subjective personal filters,

What are assumptions about human behavior?

Behaviors derive from interpretations of experience. Actions are influenced by subjective meanings. The specifics of action are determined by meanings derived from interpretations of experience.