Chapter 11: Constructivist Theory And Therapy

Question 1

Constructive Theories and Therapies

Answer 1

Place a strong emphasis on helping clients reconstruct or restory their lives in more adaptive satisfying ways; requires that therapy interactions focus primarily on the present and future; Diving more deeply into the abyss of “as if” as introduced to philosphers; has its roots in traditional therapy

Question 2

Immanuel Kant

Answer 2

Reality is Unknowable

Question 3

Hans Vaihinger

Answer 3

Conception of many individual fictional realities both are at the root of contemporary constructive theory

Question 4

Constructivism

Answer 4

Holds that individuals perceive and construct reality based on their own experiences

Question 5

Objectivism

Answer 5

Holds that individuals know reality by passively receiving sensory information directly from the environment

Question 6

George Kelly

Answer 6

Developed first unarguably constructive approach to therapy; his preposterous interpretations which were deliberately offered worked very well in moving clients toward more positive future behavior and emotions

Question 7

Foundational Constructivist Psychological Concepts

Answer 7

Criteria for interpretative statements

1. integrate his clients’ current perspective
2. have ramifications for approaching the future in a different way

Question 8

Milton Erickson

Answer 8

considered the origin of solution-focused constructivist thinking; considered the innovative inspiration for the strategic therapy approach with individuals and families; made no effort to correct causative underlying maladjustments lurking in his clients’ unconscious, self, past, or environment; his focus was how to deconstruct and reconstruct the skills and strengths his clients brought with them to therapy

Question 9

Utilization

Answer 9

Both an intervention and a theoretic concept; crucial for clients to utilize whatever strengths they brought with them to therapy; these strengths included their humor, work experiences, language style, personal sources, and nonverbal behavior

Question 10

Characteristics of Erickson’s Personal Attributes that led to his Legacy

Answer 10

Optimistic (and confident)
Clever (and intelligent)
Indirect (and collaborative)

Question 11

Gregory Bateson

Answer 11

Began Double-Bind Communications Projects (DBCP); Project focused on communication patterns in schizophrenic families

Question 12

Positive Connotation

Answer 12

Negative symptoms or behaviors are recast in a positive light

Question 13

Mental Research Institute

Answer 13

Established by Donald Jackson, Virginia Satir, and Paul Watzlawick;

Question 14

Solution-Focused Brief Therapy

Answer 14

Brief Family Therapy Center;founded by Steve de Shazer & Insoo Kim Berg; emphasizes that clients don’t need to know anything about why or how their problem originated; focuses on helping clients geneate solutions

Question 15

Formula Tasks/Skeleton Keys

Answer 15

Standard Therapy Interventions

Question 16

Theoretical-Practical Precursors to Solution-Oriented Approach

Answer 16

Milton Erickson’s Work
Strategic Intervention and Problem-Solving Techniques developed at MRI
de Shazer and Berg’s solution-focused brief therapy

Question 17

Personal Narrative Metaphor

Answer 17

Story that defines and organizes each individual’s life and relationship with the world; gives our lives meaning and continuity; includes an organized plot, characters, points of tension and climax, and a beginning, middle, and end

Question 18

Michel Foucault

Answer 18

The application of his therapy process allows individuals who have opressed themselves through personal narratives to deconstruct and reconstruct their life stories into more complete, more adaptive, and personally meaningful storylines

Question 19

Narrative Therapy

Answer 19

As formulated by White and Epston also helps individuals break free from internalized social, cultural, and political oppression and rewrite their life stories from a perspective of personal freedom

Question 20

Postmodernism

Answer 20

Firmly believe in the fact that there is no thing as an objective fact; Position is illogical, subjective, nonlinear, and essentially unprovable, but from the postmodernist’s perspectives, such is the inherent nature of all things; derives from art and literature; originally referred to a movement or perspective that was in opposition to or in reaction against modern art or literature

Question 21

Steve de Shazer

Answer 21

Antirealist nature of client symptoms: There are no wet beds, no voices without people, no depressions. There is only talk about wet beds, talk about voices without people, and talk about depression

Question 22

Modernism

Answer 22

Associated with the scientific, objective, and deterministic paradigm of an external reality;

Question 23

Confusion Techniques

Answer 23

Speaking to clients in ways that were circular, nonlinear, and confusing

Question 24

Constructive Therapists

Answer 24

Focus on how language builds, maintains, and changes each individual’s worldview; language determines reality

Question 25

Adaptation

Answer 25

Requirement for change; humans assimilate and accommodate from their environment to learn what they need to know about surviving and thriving in the world

Question 26

Assimilation

Answer 26

Process of fitting reality and personal experience into one's current cognitive organization;

Question 27

Accommodation

Answer 27

Modification or adjustment of one's cognitive organization that comes as a result of the demands of reality and personal experience

Question 28

Narrative Therapists

Answer 28

Help clients focus on their lived experiences and integrate them into their personal narratives; similar to Piaget's accommodation; change is always happening, and small changes are all that is needed to begin a ripple effect toward larger changes

Question 29

Constructive Therapy using Narrative Therapy Format

Answer 29

Therapists helps clients cough up their old life stories and chew them a in a new and different way before trying to swallow and digest them again

Question 30

Constructivist Theoretica Positions

Answer 30

Egalitarian therapy relationships; therapists are considered accountable when clients resist therapy;

Question 31

Consulting Your Consultants

Answer 31

When people are established as consultants to themselves, to others, and to the therapist, they experience themselves as more of an authority on their own lives, their problems, and the solutions to these problems

Question 32

Constructive Therapists Direct Clients Toward

Answer 32

Solutions Exceptions to their problem-centered viewpoint Optimism and self-efficacy New versions of personal stories that promote greater psychological health

Question 33

Psychopathology of Constructive Theorists

Answer 33

Diagnosis of clients viewed as an unhelpful procedure; anxiety and depression are not really objective entities but part of an individual's personal emotional experience cast within an overall personal life narrative; meeting clients where they are, emphasizing unique strengths that each client brings to therapy;

Question 34

Determinants of Client Problems

Answer 34

The client has gotten stuck using ineffective solutions | The client believes in an unhealthy, pathology-based self-, couple, or family narrative

Question 35

Lived Experience

Answer 35

Personal repetitive tendencies

Question 36

Reasons for a lack of client preparation for constructive therapy

Answer 36

Constructive therapies are relatively new Historical roots characterized by indirectness Constructivist approaches emphasize meeting clients where they are Solution-based approaches capitalize on the fact that their strength-based, accepting, and respecting style is a pleasant but unexpected surprise for clients

Question 37

Application of Strategic-Constructive Techniques to Yourself

Answer 37

Observe your tendency to repeat reactions and attitudes that you've applied to problems in the past. Notice our redundant applications of habitual problem-solving strategiesl being aware of our usual attempted solutions Examine one of our problems and try to fiend at least five possible strategies for solving it, apart from the solution that spontaneously comes to mind When no further alternatives come to mind, how another person that we know might look at the situation and react to it Start applying the first one and observe its effects Spending a few days repeatedly asking what you can do to make a situation worse. If I really wanted to increase the problem, how could I acieve that? What should I think or not think in order to make things even worse?

Question 38

Collaboration Between Constructive Therapist and Client

Answer 38

Continuous process with clients to identify goals, strategies, and the overall therapy directions

Question 39

Primary Focus of Constructive Therapy

Answer 39

Either on identifying and implementing solutions or on deconstructing problem narratives and constructing more satisfying narratives Emphasizes that clients are the best expert on their own lives and should be treated as such

Question 40

Opening the section of Constructivist Therapy

Answer 40

What brings you here? Allows the clients to discuss their conceptualization of the problem and take the lead in the ensuing therapeutic conversation

Question 41

Scaling Questions

Answer 41

Ask clients to rate problems, progress, or vitually any therapy-related issue on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 as the lowest

Question 42

Purpose of Using Scaling Questions

Answer 42

To obtain an initial rating of the size of the client's problem from the client's perspective Monitor client's progress Identify intermediate therapy goals Make specific plans for improvement

Question 43

Percentage Questions

Answer 43

Give therapists a simple method for measuring exactly what change would like.

Question 44

Assessing Client Motivation

Answer 44

Therapy is just a matter of helping clients notice changes that are already happening; producing specific change and movement directly related to the client's stated problem is critical

Question 45

Clients' Roles

Answer 45

Customers for change Complainants Visitors to Treatment

Question 46

Customers for Change

Answer 46

Clients not equally interested in personal change

Question 47

Complainants

Answer 47

Clients who appear in therapy only because significant others have insisted on their participation

Question 48

Visitors to Treatment

Answer 48

Court mandated clients who are not interested in change

Question 49

Specific Constructivist Therapy Techniques

Answer 49

``` Pretreatment Change Question Unique Account and Redescription Questions Externalizing Conversations Relabeling Presuppositional Questions Formula Tasks Letter Writing Reflecting Teams or Therapeutic Breaks ```

Question 50

Pretreatment Change Question

Answer 50

What improvements in your situation have you noticed between the time when you called the clinic for your appointment and right now? How did you manage that?

Question 51

Unique Outcome/Sparkling Moment

Answer 51

What the clients construe as progress

Question 52

Externalizing Conversations

Answer 52

Designed to help clients, couples, and families stop blaming themselves and one other; helps clients dissociate from the problem, look at it from a greater distance, and develop strategies for eliminating it

Question 53

Relabeling/Reframing

Answer 53

Relabeling and reframing each of these aspects of therapy to make the process more user-friendly and egalitarian;

Question 54

Language

Answer 54

Used as a foundation for reframing or positive relabeling;

Question 55

Positive Incentives

Answer 55

Positive reinforcement approaches

Question 56

Presuppositional Questions

Answer 56

Used to cocreate therapeutic and life goals with clients; Questions presuppose that a positive change have already been made and ask for specific descriptions of these changes

Question 57

Formula Tasks

Answer 57

First Session: Designed to help clients shift from a focus on the past and negative expectations to a present-future focus and positive expectations Second Session: Clients return with two or three specific descriptions of positive interactions they would like to have continue

Question 58

Miracle Question

Answer 58

Suppose you were to go home tonight, and while you were asleep, a miracle happened and this problem was solved. How will you know the miracle happened? What will be different?

Question 59

Do Something Different Task

Answer 59

Direct but nonspecific intervention that is especially well suited to repeating, dissatisfying behavior sequences

Question 60

Summary Letter

Answer 60

Typically written from the therapist's perpective but highlight sparkling moments and use the client's words to produce a more strength- and hope-based storytime

Question 61

Letters of Invitation

Answer 61

Written to family members who are reluctant to attend therapy sessions; these letters generally highlight the individual's important status in the family, focusing on the positive reasons for attending a session, rather than on the negative consequences or implications associated with nonattendance

Question 62

Redundancy Letters

Answer 62

Articulate observations and client reports of overlapping or enmeshed family roles; outlines the client's impulse, using her own words, to move forward and establish a more unique identity of her own; often accompanied by a discharge letter

Question 63

Discharge Letter

Answer 63

One family member formally discharges another family member from performing a redundant duty;

Question 64

Letters of Prediction

Answer 64

Written to help clients continue strength-based storylines into the future; purpose is that these letters serve as a 6-month follow-up or review that is both interesting and potentially helpful; 2nd purpose the therapist suspects that the client will not wait six months to open the letter and that is serves as a possible positive prophesy

Question 65

Tom Andersen

Answer 65

Norwegian psychiatrist who had his own approach to family therapy; Integrated reflecting teams or therapeutic breaks into individual, couple, and family therapy

Question 66

Reflective Team

Answer 66

Feedback procedure that is different from the traditional one-way mirror in family therapy training;

Question 67

One-Way Mirror Paradigm

Answer 67

A supervisor and fellow students sit behind a one-way mirror and observe family therapy sessions

Question 68

Reflecting Procedure

Answer 68

During an impasse when the therapist is unsure how to proceed, or at a preplanned time, a reflective team meeting is intiated. The therapy session stops as the therapist and family turn to the mirror and the lights and sound system are reversed. The therapist and family watch and listen as the reflecting team spontaneously provide tentative hypotheses about the family's problem issues. During the relecting team meeting, care is taken to talk about the family in a respectful, nonpathologizing manner. When the reflecting team meeting ends, the lights and sound system are again reversed and family members and therapist have a conversation about the reflecting team conversation.

Question 69

Reflecting Teams

Answer 69

Seek to honor the family, while at the same time providing fresh new perspectives; Breaks down heirarchical boundaries of traditional one-way mirror supervision introducing a two-way mirror reflecting team

Question 70

Why Constructive Therapies are Multicultural

Answer 70

``` Respect for the individual Respect for personal language Languaging Narrative Respect for each individual's construction of reality ```

Question 71

Possibility Therapy (Previously Solution-Oriented Therapy)

Answer 71

Values and honors human diversity; | Approaches are more formulaic and could be practiced in ways reflecting a less-than-ideal multicultural orientation