: Review lecture material
Step 2: Complete Discussion Board thread – Motivation toward Helping Careers
Step 3: Respond to two classmates’ threads
PSY350 Careers in
Psychology
A Career in Counseling, Marriage and Family
Therapy, or Social Work
Master Level Clinicians
• Most Master Level (MS, MA, or MEd) will work in
one of three areas:
• Counseling
• Marriage and Family Therapy
• Clinical Social Work
Master Level Clinicians
• All three professions specialize in the use of
psychotherapy and/or counseling techniques to bring
about change in their clients.
• Their techniques and career pathways, however,
differ.
Marriage and Family Therapists
Marriage and Family Therapists (MFT’s) usually conceptualize families
and couples from a systems perspective:
A person is himself or herself in the context of relationships. The
usual focus on a person’s feelings, thoughts, and internal struggles
will not reveal the relationship forces that create distress or health
A relationship is governed by feedback, or circular causality, in
which each person continually responds to the other in predictable
ways that sustain patterns of interacting in the system.
Schools of Family Therapy
• Bowen
• studied schizophrenic families — mother child fusion
• three-generation model, genogram
• fusion and differentiation
• triangulation
School of Family Therapy, cont.
• Structural — Minuchin • boundaries
• hiercharchies
• enactments
• more collaborative than Strategic — teaching and coaching
• presenting problem may mask more important issues, esp. marital
School of Family Therapy, cont.
• Human Validation Process — Satir
• nurturing
• family sculpting, parts party, concrete symbols, touching
• focused on teaching direct communication
NOTE: These are just a sample of therapies. Most therapists ascribe
to one and conceptualize their cases through these models.
Families in Distress
All families face two types of stressors
Developmental stressors
Environmental stressors
Families in distress are not sick, but have been unable to adjust
to the stressors
Developmental Stressors
marriage
1st child
1st teenager
gender role changes
death of parent
children leave home
Environmental Stressors
fire
injury
war
new job or job loss
economic recession
storm losses
Why Families Enter
Therapy
• Stressors -arise in the normal course of a family’s life.
• The failure of its members to accommodate to stressors leads members to disengage from some members, and become enmeshed with others
A Distressed Family
Is often unwilling to take responsibility
Interprets problems from a linear causality perspective, rather
than a circular perspective.
Suffers a confusion of levels (children and parents)
Forms coalitions (a parent and a child against another parent)
Appoints children to quasi-adult roles (a child taking on the role
of one parent’s confidant)
A Step-by-Step Approach to Marriage &
Family Therapy — the Initial phase
• 1) Inviting entire family to session
• 2) Joining and building a collaborative relationship
• 3) Assessing problem from multiple perspectives
• 4) Assessing family rules, values, language patterns, and
goals (teleological lens)
• 5) Assessing cultural issues (multicultural lens), and family
of origin for patterns across the generations (developmental
lens) — genogram
A Step-by-Step Approach to Marriage &
Family Therapy –Interventions
• 6) Observing, or tracking interactional patterns — asking process
questions (Bowen)
• educates the family about circular causality
• I-position encourages taking responsibility and ending of blame
• 7) Observing and encouraging typical dynamics — enactments
(Minuchin). Therapist may use
• Reframing, “stroke and a kick”
• Assigning tasks
• boundary adjustments
• eliciting and supporting competencies
Classic Problems Example:
Infidelity
Can be due to lifelong suppression of one’s needs in the context of a
marital relationship
Usually occurs during major developmental or environmental stressors,
which disrupt communication and intimacy between spouses
Can be due to lack of intimacy due to family pressures
Interventions–Affairs
Establish that it takes two for an affair to happen.
Need to communicate unspoken needs
perhaps too much difference or “complementarity”
perhaps not enough “similarity,” and quality time
explore unexpressed dreams
Tools for All Seasons
Focus on process (how) rather than content (what)
Focus on interpersonal dynamics, rather than personal feelings and
thoughts
Focus on here and now, vs. there and then
Tools for All Seasons
Teach Circular Causality/Reciprocity
Ask “process questions” that encourage linking one’s own behavior to
the effects on others, example: “What effect does it have on her when
you withdraw and watch TV?” or “Have you tried to talk with him
about it rather than giving him the silent treatment?”
Encouraging I-position, not talking about others
Explore cross-generational patterns
Tools for All Seasons
De-triangulating
Getting people to talk directly without interruptions
Role playing direct communication
Having everyone present for meeting
Acknowledging competencies and putting them to work
Reframing — “Stroke and Kick” — Reframe and redirect
Genograms for cross-generational patterns
What is Social Work?
• “…the professional activity of helping individuals,
groups, families, organizations, and communities…”
• TO DO WHAT?
• Enhance or restore their quality of life
OK, but what do Social Workers
Actually do?
• Social Workers have many roles:
• Counselors
• Educators
• Mediators
• Administrators
• Advocates/ Political consultants
• Researchers
Other Related Mental Health Professions (and
Differences)
• Social Work
• Emphasis on social/community conditions
• Different settings than clinical psychologists (especially community agencies)
• Social conditions that facilitate optimal development
• Program planning and management
• Diversity of settings
• Many function as part of mental-health team
Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Social Work (cont-d)
• Case-workers and coordinators of services
• Help patients navigate in a maze of mental-health
services
• Need to have either a BSW or MSW and supervise
training progarm
Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Where Do Social Workers Work?
• There are many social work settings:
• Schools
• Hospitals
• Probation/Corrections Departments
• Mental Health Clinics
• Alcoholism/Drug Facilities
• Nursing Homes
• Group Homes
Example: Mental Health
Professional social workers are the nation’s largest
group of mental health services providers. There are
more clinically trained social workers than
psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychiatric nurses
combined. (NASW, 2005)
FOR MORE INFO…
National Association of Social Workers www.naswdc.org
Mental Health, Roles
• As a social worker, you might:
• Run a group (therapy, socialization, educational)
• Do individual counseling
• Work with families who struggle with various problems (domestic violence, child abuse)
• Counsel children or teens
• Help alcoholics or drug addicts to deal with their addictions
• Attend team meetings on treatment planning for patients in mental hospital settings
What Makes Social Work Unique?
Person-in-environment perspective.
Social workers see people as being connected to a larger
social world. This might include family, school community
or peer groups.
Strengths perspective.
Social workers assume that everyone has strengths, and that
there are strengths in the resources around us. They help
people to find and utilize these areas of strength.
