Experiential Family Therapy History
- Emerged from humanistic-existentialist movement (1960's)
- Drew from Gestalt Therapy, Psychodrama, Enounter-Group movement
EFT Innovators
? Carl Whitaker (1912-1995) Among the first to do psychotherapy with families; Encouraged family members to be themselves; intuition
? Virginia Satir (1916-1988)
? Communication
? Individual self-expression
EFT Theoretical Formulations
? Root cause of family problems is emotional suppression.
? Parents regulate their children's actions by controlling their feelings; as a result, children learn to blunt their emotional experience to avoid criticism.
? From this perspective, attempts to b
Normal Family Development
? Experiential therapist share the humanistic faith in the natural wisdom of honest emotion.
? According to this point of view, if people are allowed to follow their own instincts they tend to flourish.
? Society enforces repression to tame people's insti
Development of Behavior Disorders
? Denial of impulses and suppression of feeling are the root of family problems.
? Dysfunctional families: fearful of conflict; cling to routines; lack of warmth; parents find children to be annoying/children don't respect themselves or parents
? 4 Dishon
Gestalt Family Therapy (Kempler) Experiential
- major treatment goal is for the client to achieve greater self-awareness in order to become more self-directed, more centered, more congruous.
- Represents an effort to blend principles & procedures of family and Gestalt therapies in order to help peopl
GFT therapist role
The Gestalt therapist facilitates self-exploration, risk taking, and spontaneity, it is essential that the therapist provide an unchecked and unequivocal model for self-disclosure.
Clients must stay with the experience as it's happening, until they recogn
Why is GFT forerunner of contemporary therapeutic direction?
1. encourages open and honest expression of all emotions
2. Emphasizes indiv growth & devpment of the Self w/in family systems
3. Rests heavily on therapist modeling of desired behavior, on being a genuine person, on utilizing the therapist's personality
Human Validation Model (Satir) Experiential
- the therapist and family join forces to stimulate an inherent health-promoting process in the family.
- Open communication and emotional experiencing were the mechanisms that helped achieve that end, as family members, following the therapist's lead, le
3 factors that influence human development
1. Unchangeable genetic endowment, determining our physical, emotional, and temperamental potential;
2. Longitudinal influences, the result of learning acquired in the process of growth
child's experiences of the primary survival triad (father, mother, ch
congruence
between words and feelings - what you say must be congruent w/your attitude, looks, way of touching (being genuine, expressing self genuinely)
Satir's Styles of communication
1. The Placater
2. The Blamer
3. The Super reasonable
4. The Irrelevant
5. The Congruent communicator
The Placater
acts weak, tentative, self-effacing; and always agrees, apologizes, and tries to please.
The Blamer
dominates, invariably finds fault with others, and self-righteously accuses.
The Super-reasonable
adopts a rigid stance, remains detached, robot-like, calm, cool, maintaining intellectual control while making certain not to become emotionally involved.
The Irrelevant
distracts others and seems unable to relate to anything going on, afraid to offend or hurt others by taking a position on an issue.
The Congruent communicator
seems real, genuinely expressive, responsible for sending straight (not double-binding or otherwise confusing) messages in their appropriate context.
Satir's Family Reconstruction
- attempts to guide cts to unlock dysfunctional patterns stemming from their families of origin
- blends Gestalt therapy, guided fantasy, hypnosis, psychodrama, role playing, and family sculpting
- idea is to shed outgrown family rules and misconceptions
Satir's Family Reconstruction 3 goals
1. reveal to family members source of old learning
2. enable them to develop more realistic picture of personhood of their parents
3. pave way for members to find their own personhood
Goals of Therapy Experiential
Therapist believe that the way to emotional health is to uncover deeper levels of experiencing. Satir (1972) puts it this way: Through Experiential Therapy, Therapist attempt to make three changes within the family system 1. First, each member of the fami
Conditions for Behavior Change
? Breakthroughs occur: o more separate o divergent o angrier o closer/intimate ? Therapist must be genuine (provocative and warmly supportive/give and receive criticism) ? Clients come in wanting to change but thinking they can't ? Satir believed: Caring
Therapy
? Experiential therapists believe that there are no real techniques, only people. ? Evocative Techniques -Family sculpting -Family Puppet Interview -Animal Attribution -Family Art Therapy -Conjoint Family Drawings -Play Therapy -Role Playing -Gestalt Tech
Family Sculpting Technique
An activity in which family members place themselves in postures symbolic of the family dynamics. - Each person - the mother, father and each child - sculpted how they see the family at that moment. - They followed by showing how they wanted it to be. - T
Family puppet interviews
- Ask a family member to make up a story using puppets. It is useful in determining conflicts and alliances.
Animal Attribution
A story-telling technique that requires family members to attribute an animal counterpart to each member of the family and then tell a short story about the animal protagonists.
Family Art Therapy Technique
- The use of art and creativity may lead to greater self-knowledge. - Accessing creativity may be helpful in identifying emotional issues and can help in the healing process.
- Art therapy is a serious technique that uses the creative process to help impr
Conjoint Family Drawings Technique
Draw me a picture of your family, make sure everyone is in the picture, have everyone doing something." - Following this would be discussion by the family and the therapist of what was drawn and why, what these may show of how different family member's p
Play Therapy Technique
Generally for children (3-11), although adults can benefit also. Using puppets, playhouses, dolls, sandboxes, fingerpaints or other media to assist children in expressing their thoughts and emotions.
Role Playing
Technique Past events or hoped for or feared future developments can be made more immediate by role-playing them in the "now" of therapy.
Gestalt Technique
Use of techniques such as the "empty chair" to address emotional content surrounding those not present in the therapy.
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy
? Emotionally focused couples therapy works on two levels in succession:
A. Uncovering the hurt and longing beneath defensive expressions of anger and withdrawal.
B. Helping couples understand how those feelings are played out in their relationship.
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy leading figures
Susan Johnson and Les Greenberg
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy
- new efforts to integrate focus on Self with systems outlook so that it can be based in EBP, not just a theory
- focus on process b/w people, not what is inherent in each person, look at rigid patterns that block emotional engagement
Short term Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy
- short term (8-10 sessions)
- uses ct-directed procedures of Carl Rogers (creating safe therapeutic environment, use empathic understanding),
- uses Perls's Gestalt therapy (directing cts twds greater awareness by engaging resolution enhancing affective
Internal Family Systems Therapy (Schwartz, 1995,2001)
? In the Internal family systems model, conflicting inner voices are personified as subpersonalities or parts.
? Founded on the belief that underneath peoples' emotionally reactive parts lies a healthy core self.
The Process of Therapeutic Intervention (Johnson, Hunsley, Greenberg & Schindler, 1999)
1. Assessment- or creating an alliance and explicating the core issues in the couple's conflict using attachment theory.
2. Identifying the problematic interaction cycle that maintains attachment insecurity and relationship distress.
3. Uncovering the una
Attachment Theory and Adult Relatedness
- Attachment theory gives a basis for explaining how adult relationships become dysfunctional.
- Each of us needs the predictable emotional accessibility & responsiveness of significant others to achieve sense of personal security, to experience sense of
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy Treatment Manual (Johnson and Greenberg)
- Delineate conflict issues
- Identifying the negative interaction cycle
- Access the unacknowledged feelings underlying interactional positions
- Reframe the problem in terms of underlying feelings, attachment needs, and negative cycles
- Promote identif
EFCT Treatment Manual Pros
- data-based studies demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach in various clinical situations with at-risk populations (e.g., trauma victims, marital distress, various family mental health problems)
- Also shown to be effective with major depressive
EFT Pros
- Helps individual discover inner thoughts, feelings, and fears
- Committed to emotional well-being
- Discussing feelings can help family members get pass the defensiveness
- Help families re-connect and relate on a more genuine level
EFT Cons
- Limited appreciation for role of family structure
- Less concerned with problem solving
- May be more suited for encounter groups
co-therapy
The simultaneous involvement of two therapists, often for training purposes, in working with an individual, couple, or family.
emotionally focused couple therapy (EFCT)
An experiential approach, based on humanistic, systemic foundations and attachment theory, that attempts to change a couple's negative interactions while helping them to cement their emotional bond.
family life fact chronology
An experiential technique of Satir's in which clients retrace their family history, particularly the family's relationship patterns, to better understand current family functioning.
family reconstruction
An auxiliary therapeutic approach developed by Satir, whereby family members are guided back through stages of their lives in order to discover and unlock dysfunctional patterns from the past.
family sculpting
A physical arrangement of the members of a family in space, with the placement of each person determined by an individual family member acting as "director"; the resulting tableau represents that person's symbolic view of family relationships.
Gestalt Family Therapy
A form of experiential family therapy, loosely based on the principles of Gestalt psychology, that focuses on here-and-now experiences in an effort to heighten self-awareness and increase self-direction.
Human Validation Process Model
A model of family therapy that emphasizes the collaborative efforts of therapist and family members to achieve family "wellness" by releasing the potential viewed as inherent in every family.
humanistic
The life-affirming view that emphasizes each person's uniqueness and worth, as well as potential for continued personal growth and fulfillment.
phenomenological
The view that to fully understand the causes of another person's behavior requires an understanding not of the physical or objective reality of the person's world, but of how he or she subjectively experiences that world.