Created by catherine.boynto
over 9 years ago
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Question | Answer |
Accommodation | elements of a system automatically adjust to coordinate their functioning |
Attachment | The innate tendency to seek out closeness to caretakers in times of stress (Secure, Anxious, Avoidant) |
Aversive Control | Using punishment and criticism to eliminate undesirable responses (used in dysfunctional families) |
Behavior Exchange | A Behavioral Therapy technique where partners are asked to list three things they would like the other to do more often. While explicitly changing behaviors this way, they learn how to influence each other using positive reinforcement |
Behavior Exchange Theory | Explanation of behavior in relationships as maintained by a ratio of costs and benefits |
Boundaries | emotional and physical barriers that protect and enhance the integrity of individuals, subsystems, and families |
Boundary Making | negotiating the boundaries between members of a relationship and between the relationship and the outside world |
Circular Causality | the idea that actions are related through a series of recursive loops or repeating cycles |
Circular Questioning | a method of interviewing developed by the Milan group in which questions are asked to highlight differences among family members |
Coaching | The role of a therapist developed by Bowen, where one functions as a role model in their differentiation process and a facilitator in their family of origin exploration |
Coalition | an alliance between two persons or social units against a third |
Communications Theory | The study of relationships in terms of the exchange of verbal and nonverbal messages |
Complainants | De Shazer’s term for a relationship with a client who describes a complaint but is at present unwilling to work on solving it |
Complementary Relationships | Based on differences that fit together, where qualities of one make up for lacks in the other |
Compliments | used in Solution Focused Therapy to convey support and encouragement |
Constructivism | A relavistic ploy that emphasized the subjective construction of reality. Implies that what we see in families may be based on as much on our preconceptions as on what’s actually going on |
Contextual Therapy | Boszormenyi-Nagy’s model that includes relational ethics; The goal is to help families explore their legacies and determine how they can balance the ledge of obligation to the past, present, and future generations. Focuses on intergenerational loyalties, entitlements, and indebtedness |
Contingency Contracting | A behavior therapy technique whereby agreements are made between family members to exchange rewards for desired behavior |
Contingency Management | Shaping behavior by giving and taking away rewards |
Coping Questions | Used in Solution Focused Therapy to help clients realize that they have been managing difficult circumstances |
Countertransference | Emotional reactivity on the part of the therapist |
Customers | De Shazer’s term for a client who not only complains about a problem but is motivated to solve it |
Cybernetics | The science of feedback; how information, especially pos/neg feedback loops, can help self-regulate a system |
Deconstruction | A postmodern approach to exploring meaning by taking apart and examining taken-for-granted categories and assumptions, making possible newer and sounder constructions of meaning |
Detouring | When focus is diverted onto something or someone else to avoid conflict (scapegoating a child) |
Detriangulation | The process by which individuals remove themselves from the emotional field of two others |
Differentiation of Self | Bowen’s term for psychological separation of intellect and emotions and independence of self from others: opposite of fusion. The capacity to think and reflect, to not respond automatically to emotional pressures. It's the ability to be flexible, act wisely, even in the face of anxiety |
Diffuse Boundary | When boundaries between subsystems are extremely permeable resulting in dependency and high emotional reactivity among family members (enmeshment) |
Disengagement | A psychological isolation that results from overly rigid boundaries around individuals and subsystems |
Double-bind | A conflict created when a person receives contradictory messages on different levels of abstraction in an important relationship and cannot leave or comment |
Dyadic Model | Explanations based on the interactions between two persons or objects; Johnny shoplifts to get his mom’s attention |
Emotional Cutoff | Bowen’s term for flight from an unresolved emotional attachment. Describes how some people manage anxiety in relationships. The greater the fusion between parents and children, the greater the likelihood of a cutoff |
Emotional Reactivity | The tendency to respond in a knee-jerk emotional fashion, rather than calmly and objectively |
Empathy | Understanding someone else’s beliefs and feelings |
Enactments | An interaction simulated in Structural FT in order for the therapist to observe and then change transactions that make up family structure |
Enmeshed | Loss of autonomy due to blurring of psychological boundaries; high emotional reactivity between family members |
Entitlements | Bszormenyi-Nagy’s term for the amount of merit a person accrues for behaving in an ethical manner toward others |
Equifinality | The ability of complex systems to reach a given final goal in a variety of different ways |
Exceptions | De Shazer’s term for times when clients are temporarily free of their problems. Solution Focused Therapy focuses on exceptions to help clients build on successful problem-solving skills |
Extended Family | The network of kin relationships across several generations |
Externalization | Michael White’s technique of personifying problems as external to persons (Narrative) |
Family Drawing | an experiential therapy technique in which family members are asked to draw their ideas about how the family is organized |
Family Homeostasis | Tendency of families to resist change in order to maintain a steady state. |
Family Life Cycle | Stages of family life from separation from one’s parents to marriage, having children, growing older, retirement, and death |
Family Myths | A set of beliefs based on a distortion of historical reality and shared by all family members that help shape the rules governing family functioning |
Family of Origin | A person’s parents and siblings; usually refers to the original nuclear family of an adult |
Family Projection Process | In Bowenian theory, the mechanism by which parental conflicts are projected on the child or spouse |
Family Rules | Redundant behavioral patterns. Everyone follows the rules but nobody knows the rules. |
Family Sculpting | A nonverbal experiential technique in which family members position themselves in a tableau that reveals significant aspects of their perceptions and feelings |
Family Structure | The functional organization of families that determines how family members interact |
Feedback Loop | The return of a portion of the output of a system, especially when used to maintain the output within predetermined limits (neg feedback) or to signal the need to modify the system (pos feedback |
First Order Change | Temporary or superficial changes within a system that do not alter the basic organization of the system itself |
Fixation | Partial arrest of attachment or mode of behavior from an early stage of development |
Fusion | A blurring of psychological boundaries between self and others and a contamination of emotional and intellectual functioning. Opposite of differentiation. The excess of emotional reactivity in families. |
General Systems Theory | A biological model of living systems as whole entities that maintain themselves through continuous input and output from the environment; developed by Ludwig von Bertalanffy. |
Genogram | - A schematic diagram (used by Bowen) of the family system of at least 3 generations, using squares to represent males, circles to indicate females, horizontal lines for marriages, and vertical lines to indicate children. This provides the therapist with a structural map of the family that shows recurring patterns and critical events. |
Goal Setting | A main focus in Solution Focused Therapy where clients are encouraged to state clearly and concisely, a goal they would like to achieve by the end of therapy. Clients are instructed to choose attainable and concrete goals. |
Group Dynamics | Interactions among group members that emerge as a result of properties of the group rather than merely their individual personalities |
Hermeneutics | The art of analyzing literary texts or human experience, understood as fundamentally ambiguous, by interpreting levels of meaning |
Hierarchal Structure | family functioning based on clear generational boundaries, where the parents maintain control and authority |
Homeostasis | A balanced steady state of equilibrium |
I-Positions | A concept which refers to the ability of a family member to take a position based on their own thinking and self-identity and to maintain it in the face of emotional pressure |
Idealization | A tendency to exaggerate the virtues of someone, part of the normal developmental process in children’s relationships to their parents and in intimate partnerships |
Identification | From psychoanalytic theory, not merely imitation, but appropriation of traits of an admired other |
Identified Patients | The symptom-bearer or official patient as identified by the family |
Intensity | Minuchin’s term for changing maladaptive transactions by using strong affect, repeated intervention, or prolonged pressure |
Internal Objects | Mental images and fantasies of oneself and others, formed by early interactions with caregivers |
Invisible Loyalties | Boszormenyi-Nagy’s term for unconscious commitments that children take on to help their families |
Joining | A structural family therapy term for accepting and accommodating to families to win their confidence and circumvent resistance |
Linear Causality | The idea that one event is the cause and another is the effect; in behavior, the idea that one behaviors is a stimulus and the other is a response |
Managed Care | A system in which third-party companies manage insurance costs by regulating the terms of treatment. Managed care companies select providers, set fees, and control who receives treatment and how many sessions they are entitled to |
Marital Schism | Lidz's term for pathological marriage in which one spouse dominates the other |
Marital Skew | Lidz’s term for pathological overt marital conflict |
Metacommunication | Every message has two levels: report and command; metacommunication is the implied command or qualified message. Communicating about communicating |
Miracle Question | Asking clients to imagine how things would be if they woke up tomorrow and their problem was solved. Solution Focused therapists use the miracle question to help clients identify goals and potential solutions |
Mirroring | Expression of understanding and acceptance of another’s feelings |
Modeling | Observational Learning |
Monadic Model | Explanations based on properties of a single person or object; Johnny shoplifts because he is rebellious |
Morphogenesis | The process by which a system changes its structure to adapt to new contexts. Family systems change when necessary to adapt to new circumstances |
Multiple Group Therapy | Treatment of several families at once in a group therapy format; pioneered by Peter Laquer and Murray Bowen. |
Multiple Impact Theory | An intensive, crisis-oriented form of family therapy developed by Robert MacGregor in which family members are treated in various subgroups by a team of therapists |
Mystification | Laing's concept that many families distort their children's experience by denying or relabeling it |
Negative Feedback | Information that signals a system to correct a deviation and restore that status quo. Indicates that a system is straying off the mark and that corrections are needed to get it back on course. It signals the system to restore the status quo. Thus, negative feedback is not such a negative thing. Its error-correcting information gives order and self-control to automatic machines, to the body, to the brain, and to people in their daily lives |
Network Therapy | A treatment devised by Ross Speck in which a large number of family and friends are assembled to help resolve a patient's problems. |
Nuclear Family | Parents and their children |
Object Relations | Internalized images of self and others based on early parent-child interactions that determine a person's mode of relationship to other people. |
Operant Conditioning | A form of learning whereby a person or animals is rewarded for performing certain behaviors; the major approach in most forms of behavior therapy |
Ordeals | A type of paradoxical intervention in which the client is directed to do something that is more of a hardship than the symptom |
Paradoxes | A self-contradictory statement based on a valid deduction from acceptable premises |
Paradoxical Injunction | A technique used in strategic therapy whereby the therapist directs family members to continue their symptomatic behavior. If they conform, they admit control and expose secondary gain; if they rebel, they give up their symptoms |
Positive Connotation | Palazzoli’s technique of ascribing positive motives to family behavior in order to promote cohesion and avoid resistance |
Positive Feedback | Information that confirms and reinforces the direction a system is taking. |
Postmodernism | Contemporary antipositivism, viewing knowledge as relative and context-dependent, questions assumptions of objectivity that characterizes modern science. In FT, challenging the idea of scientific certainty and linked to the method of deconstruction. This theoretical movement takes aspects such as gender, ethnicity, and the impact of larger systems, such as economic or political forces and their effects on the family. The postmodern approach blends many different theories and ideas together. |
Premack Principles | Using high-probability behavior (preferred activities) to reinforce low probability behavior (nonpreferred activities) |
Pretend Techniques | Madanes’ playful paradoxical technique in which family members are asked to pretend to engage in symptomatic behavior. The paradox is if they are pretending to have a symptom, it cannot be real |
Problem Saturated Stories | The usual pessimistic and blaming accounts that clients bring to therapy, which are seen as helping keep them stuck. |
Process Questions | Bowen: Questions designed to explore what's going on inside people and between them: "When your boyfriend neglects you, how do you react?" "When your daughter goes on dates, what do you worry about? Each family member is asked a series of questions aimed at toning down emotion and fostering objective reflection. These questions are also used to help neutralize triangles, including potential triangles. PQ are aimed at calming anxiety and gaining access to information on how the family perceives the problem and how the mechanisms driving the problem operate. |
Process/Content | How members of a family or group relate vs. what families talk about |
Projective Identification | A defense mechanism that operates unconsciously, whereby unwanted aspects of the self are attributed to another person and that person is induced to behave in accordance with these projected attitudes and feelings |
Pseudohostility | Wynne's term for superficial bickering that masks pathological alignments in schizophrenic families |
Pseudomutuality | Wynne's term for the facade of family harmony that characterizes many schizophrenic families. |
Quid Pro Quo | Literally “something for something.” An equal exchange or substitution |
Reconstruction | Reweaving narrative accounts into more palatable and coherent histories |
Reflecting Team | Tom Anderson’s technique of having the observing team share their reactions with the family following a session |
Reframing | Relabeling a family’s description of behavior to make it more amenable to therapeutic change; for example, describing someone as “lazy” rather than “depressed” |
Regression | Return to a less-mature level of functioning in the face of stress |
Reinforcement | An event, behavior, or object that increase the rate of a particular response. A positive reinforce is an event whose contingent presentation increase the rate of responding; a negative reinforcer is an event whose contingent withdrawal increase the rate of responding |
Reinforcement Reciprocity | Exchanging rewarding behaviors between family members |
Relative Influence Questions | Questions designed to explore the extent to which the problem has dominated the client vs. how much he or she has been able to control it |
Report & Command | - Every message has stated content, but in addition, the message carried how it is to be understood. |
Rigid Boundary | a term or description of a boundary established within the structural family therapy framework, this type of boundary is restrictive and permits little contact with outside subsystems, which over time results in disengagement. This boundary usually has little exchange between members |
Rituals | strategic therapy concept, rituals are a set of prescribed actions that are designed to help change a family system’s rules |
Role rehearsal | role-playing desired ways or interactions of behavior, especially within couples therapy. Practicing desired methods of communication, interaction and behavior – a safe place or intervention used to teach alternative ways of effective interaction, the end goal is teaching these new methods to replace dysfunctional ones. |
Role-playing | this is a technique used in therapy that requires or asks the participants to act out the parts of important characters to dramatize the feelings experienced around the portrayed event/problem. This technique is used to provide a new way of relating, and can be modified to aid the family in altering behavioral patterns |
Rubber Fence | Wynne's term for the rigid boundary surrounding many schizophrenic families, which allows only minimal contact with the surrounding community. |
Scaling Questions | from the solution-focused framework, clients are asked to rate on a 10-point scale how much they want to resolve their problems, how bad the problem is currently and throughout the therapeutic process how better the issues are than the last time, and so forth. These questions are designed to help break change up into a smaller number of steps |
Scapegoat | A member of the family, usually the identified patient, who is the object of displaced conflict or criticism. |
Schemas | these are underlying core beliefs that individuals possess, create, and develop about the world and how it functions. These core beliefs shape the way we form relationships, they help influence our perceptions and expectations just about everything. |
Schizophrenic Mother | Phrase created by Frieda Fromm-Reichmann. Aggressive, domineering mothers thought to precipitate schizophrenia in their offspring |
Second Order Change | A change in the system itself |
Second Order Cybernetics | The idea that anyone attempting to observe and change a system is therefore part of that system |
Self Actualization | Carl Rogers: Each of us, according to Rogers, is born with an innate tendency toward self actualization. Left to our own devices, we tend to follow our own best interests. We have a craving for approval. |
Self Psychology | Heinz Kohut’s version of psychoanalysis that emphasizes the need for attachment and appreciation. Based on the belief that human beings want to be appreciated – if we receive this appreciation from our parents we then internalize that throughout development and internalize it in the form of self-confidence. |
Self Objects | Heinz Kohut’s term for a person related to not as a separate individual, but as an extension of the self rather than sex and aggression → in English it means that as children we see certain people (parents, grandparents, older siblings, etc.) as parts of ourselves – they are not considered separate individuals.. and they see them as a part of their individualness. Ex: a mother expresses and transmits her love through touch, affection and gentleness as if a reflection of the child’s feelings |
Shaping | part of the cognitive-behavioral framework, the process of reinforcing change in a series of small steps. |
Shaping Competence | a technique used within the Structural Family therapy framework. This is used to help modify interactions, the therapist uses intensity to block a stream of interactions, or altering the direction of the flow of interactions. The therapist helps reinforce positive interactions or behaviors within the family, they also help the family use/find functional alternatives that are already in use within their established dynamic → pointing out what they’re already doing right and encouraging them to do more of it! |
Sibling Position | a theoretical concept within the Bowen Family Therapy framework that argues that sibling birth order comes to shape the personality development of each child, as well as their role within the family context. The birth order then comes to influence the family dynamics and contexts that are not only shared but how they are actually perceived depending on this sibling position. |
Social Constructionism | like constructivism, challenges the notion of an objective basis for knowledge. The idea that our knowledge and meanings are shaped by culturally shared assumptions – therefore these shared assumptions then come to impact our schemas, behaviors, perceptions, expectations and beliefs about the world and how it functions and then its relation to our lives and that of our families. |
Splitting | a concept within the psychoanalytic family therapy model. Freud developed the concept of the ego. Developed by Fairbairn he goes on to describe splitting which was seen as a defense mechanism of the ego, when the ego splits he defined it as a lifelong coexistence of two contradictory positions that do not influence each other. |
Structural Map | an intervention and process utilized within structural family therapy, the mapping technique is used and started when assessing new families or couples. The therapist speaks with and works with the family to map out the structure within the family system – this part of the assessment takes into account both the presenting problem the family brings to therapy and the structural dynamics the family comes to display. It includes all the family members, and represents the boundaries within each other them. |
Subsystems | Smaller units in families, determined by generation, sex, or function |
Symbiosis | Emotional sensitivity between patients and their mothers (some looked at this as a mutation). |
Symmetrical Relationships | In relationships, equality or parallel form. More harmful than complimentary relationships |
Systematic Desensitization | a therapeutic process that deconditions anxiety through reciprocal inhibition by pairing responses incompatible with anxiety to previously anxiety-arousing stimuli. Example, a women who is afraid of spiders would be taught deep muscle relaxation, then imagine spiders on her hand while practicing the deep relaxation. Gradually the image would work up from one spider to several, then to her arm, maybe her face until the client would eventually work to a real spider in her hand. |
Systems Theory | a generic term for studying a group of related elements that interact as a whole entity; encompasses general systems theory and cybernetics |
Theory of Social Exchange | a therapeutic formulation in Cognitive-Behavioral therapy derived out of behaviorism, Thibaut and Kelley’s theory according to which people strive to maximize their rewards while minimizing costs within any relationship. |
Time Out | a punishment where children are made to sit in a corner or are sent to their rooms, this helps shape unwanted behaviors into desirable ones, this technique is a way of slowly enforcing and creating change, utilizing the punishment when the undesired behaviors are used purposefully or not, time-outs help diminish influence. |
Token Economies | a system of rewards using points, which can be accumulated and exchanged for reinforcing items or behaviors – a therapeutic technique within the cognitive-behavioral framework, an example would be utilizing this technique with children, rewarding them for desired behaviors and of course withholding a token when undesired behaviors prevail. |
Transference | distorted emotional reactions to present relationships based on unresolved, early family reactions – typically felt by a therapist within a therapy session when working with families or clients. |
Triadic Model | explanations based on the interactions among three people or objects, these types of models provide a more complete understanding of behavior within any one context or family. Ex: Johnny shoplifts because his father covertly encourages him to defy his mother |
Triangle | Three person system; according to Bowen, the smallest stable unit of human relations. What drives triangles is anxiety. |
Unbalancing | A technique in Structural Family Therapy where the therapist interferes with a dysfunctional interaction by adding more force or emphasis to a certain behavior or role. The goal is to interfere with equilibrium that maintains the problem. |
Undifferentiated Ego Mass | Bowen's early term for emotional "stuck-togetherness" or fusion in the family, especially prominent in schizophrenic families |
Unique Outcomes/Sparkling Events | Michael White’s term for times when clients acted free of their problems, even if they were unaware of doing so. Narrative therapists identify unique outcomes as a way to help their clients challenge negative views of themselves, helping those identifying ways in which they surpassed their negative behavior, or perceptions |
Visitor | a term within solution-focused therapy, De Shazer’s term for a client who does not wish to be part of therapy, does not have a complaint and does not wish to work on anything. These people are usually in therapy due to someone else’s insistence such as judges, parents, or other family members. |
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