Basic family therapy skills, I: Conceptualization and initial findings (original) (raw)

Issues in Training Marriage and Family Therapists

1982

Within the past decade, the field of marriage and family therapy has mushroomed. As a new and emerging professional specialization, marriage and family therapy is subject to control struggles as well as the proliferati,3n of training modalities. This monograph, written for counselor education faculty, students, and family therapists, provides literature on select areas of marriage and family therapy (i.e., systems issues; training and supervision; and alternative family lifestyles) as they pertain to counselor education. The section on systems issues explores four aspects of program implementation: curricula and program development; accreditation requirements for the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) and the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT); integration of marriage and family therapy into counselor education; and gender issues of family systems therapists. The section on training and supervision focuses on clinical training in family psychology and supervision from four perspectives: collegial process; a review of current practice; supervisee's perspective on live supervision; and the reflections of a supervisor. The alternative family lifestyles section addresses the training of divorce counselors and single parent family counseling. A list of references follows each article.

Basic family therapy skills: III. Brief and strategic schools of family therapy

Journal of Family Psychology, 1990

This article continues the reports of an extensive study deriving the most important skills for beginning family therapists. A total of 688 family therapy supervisors had been asked in a previous phase of the project to nominate and rate generic and theory-specific beginning family therapy skills. A sample of 53 returned questionnaires related to brief family therapy, and 91 returned questionnaires related to strategic family therapy. Means and standard deviations from the Likert-type scale ratings are reported along with frequencies of choices from other categories. Items were rank ordered according to mean scores. The results are discussed in terms of their heuristic value in family therapy training.

The Development of Core Competencies for the Practice of Marriage and Family Therapy

Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 2007

In response to a series of national policy reports regarding what has been termed the ''quality chasm'' in health and mental health care in the United States, in January 2003, the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy convened a task force to develop core competencies (CC) for the practice of marriage and family therapy (MFT). The task force also was responding to a call for outcome-based education and for the need to answer questions about what marriage and family therapists do. Development of the CC moves the field of MFT into a leading-edge position in mental health. This article describes the development of the CC, outcomes of the development process for the competencies, and recommendations for their continued development and implementation. Over the last decade and a half, a number of national task forces have issued a series of critical reports, reform recommendations, and policy statements regarding what has been termed the ''quality chasm'' in health and mental health care in the United States (e.g., Commit

Family therapy training: Current issues, future trends

International Journal of Family Therapy, 1982

This article extends the previous literature review of the family therapy training and supervision field (Liddle & Halpin, 1978) by organizing and discussing some of the dimensions most relevant to family therapy teachers. The five domains of focus include: (1) Personnel: who should teach and be taught family therapy? (2) Content and skills: what should be taught? (3) Methodology: how should the content and skills be taught? (4) Context: how do the setting and the training enterprise influence each other? (5) Evaluation: how should training be assessed? Finally, the article brings into focus several key aspects of family therapy training likely to have relevance for current and future trainers. The family therapy field is enjoying its most rapid period of expansion. Training opportunities have increased dramatically over the past decade as the field has become an international phenomenon. The increase in European and other worldwide training sites has been surpassed only by the proliferation of independent family institutes in the United States (Framo, 1976). Universities have also become involved in the business of family Parts of this paper were presented at the Inaugural Meeting of the American Family Therapy Association, April 1979, Chicago, Illinois. The author wishes to acknowledge the helpful comments of George Saba, Doug Breunlin and Dick Schwartz on a previous draft of this paper.

Training for Family Therapy

Family Process, 1969

In our program of training in Family Therapy in the clinical psychiatric units affiliated with Albert Einstein College of Medicine, our trainees come from almost all professional groups connected with the Psychiatry Department of the Medical Schoolresidents, fellows, child psychiatry fellows, social workers, psychologists and nurses. Some are trainees, others have staff positions. Our program has evolved over the past seven years and currently we offer three levels of training: Level I teaches concepts of family process and basic skills of family interviewing; Level II trains people to practice family therapy; and Level III trains teachers and supervisors of family therapy, with optional research experience. The main body of this paper is a detailed description of our Level II program and an elaboration of the basic assumptions underlying all of our training programs.

The Heart of the Matter: A Proposal for Placing the Self of the Therapist at the Center of Family Therapy Research and Training

Family Process, 2006

As it faces the transition marked by the death or retirement of most of its first-generation founders, the field of family therapy finds itself still unable to answer the critical question of what it is that makes family therapy work. The two dominant approaches to answering this question, the common-factors perspective and the modelspecific factors perspective, remain divided at this juncture by a fundamental difference of emphasis between the two. This article proposes a way of integrating the two perspectives via the hypothesis that therapists achieve maximum effectiveness by committing themselves to a family therapy model of proven efficacy whose underlying worldview closely matches their own personal worldview. The implications of this hypothesis for the training of family therapists are examined.

Medical Family Therapy: Charting a Course in Competencies

Contemporary Family Therapy, 2012

The skills and training medical family therapists need to be effective in their work is an underdeveloped area in the literature. Training programs in Medical Family Therapy (MedFT) currently vary in duration, intensity, and focus of material and most of this is due to the minimal research done on what core competencies are needed. The results presented in this paper are the product of a larger modified Delphi (Dalkey in Studies in the quality of life, Lexington Books, Lexinton, MA, 1972) study designed to reach consensus regarding the current definition, scope, and practice of MedFT. Thirty-seven experts in MedFT participated in this two-phase investigation. What resulted and will be reported on in this article are the training requirements and recommended core competencies for the practice of MedFT. Participants indicated that 12 academic course content areas and 13 core competencies should be required of those seeking training in MedFT. Recommendations for MedFT core competencies at the master's, post master's, and doctoral levels, as well as advancements for future research, are described in detail.

Teaching Family Therapy: A Program Based on Training Objectives

Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 1981

This paperpresents a set of specik training objectives which constitute a base for a one-year clinical training program at the Institute for Juvenile Research in Chicago. The training objectives include three categories of skills: observational, conceptual, and therapeutic. The training objectives and the program in which they are implemented are described. As the field of family therapy has become more sophisticated, therapists and trainers have begun to articulate the skills underpinning effective family therapy. Cleghorn and Levin (1973), Allred and Kersey (19771, Garrigan and Bambrick (1977) and lbmm and Wright (1979) all presented detailed outlines of therapist skills as taught in their respective settings, but the implementation of these skills within the context of their settings is discussed only superficially. This paper presents a specific set of training objectives for family therapy and describes their implementation within the context of a clinical training program. First, the background and evolution of the program is given, followed by descriptions of the training objectives, and the program in which they are implemented. A perspective on the use of training objectives, stressing the advantages and limitations of behavioral objectives for basic training in family therapy, is discussed. Finally, some considerations of program outcome and evaluation are presented. Background of Program The Intensive Family Therapy Program (IF") is a one year, one day-a-week clinical training program. It is sponsored through the Family Systems Program (FSP), which is a training unit of the Institute for Juvenile Research, an agency of the Illinois Department of Mental Health. The IFTP was initiated by Irving Borstein, PhD, in 1974 in response to a growing number of professionals who sought training in family therapy because they had come to view it as their preferred orientation.'