I. Family Systems: Cybernetics, Negative and Positive Feedback Loops.

 Conceptualization—an assessment of current difficulties and the creation of a problem

list should occur during the first session
 Epistemology—refers to how one goes about gaining knowledge and drawing conclusion
about the world (rules used to make sense of the experience and descriptive language)
 General systems therapy predicts that all systems consist of interacting components, are
governed by the same general rules, and have homeostatic mechanisms that help them
a state of stability and equilibrium
 Cybernetics—concerned with the mechanisms that regulate a system’s functioning and
distinguishes between negative and positive feedback loops
o Cybernetics is the study of systems of all kinds (within, concept of feedback)
o Said feedback helps determine appropriate actions to take
o negative feedback loops resist change and help a system maintain status quo
o positive feedback loops amplify change and disrupt the status quo

II. Transgenerational Model. Bowen Theory (6 components)

 A.k.a. Extended family systems therapy
 Worked with children with schizophrenia and their families, which led to conclusion that
the transmission of certain emotional processes from one generation to the next is
responsible for the development of schizophrenia in a family member
 8 concepts shape family functioning
o Differentiation of self (person’s ability to distinguish between own feelings and
thoughts and be able to separate own emotional/intellectual functioning from the
functioning of others—low levels of differentiation becomes emotional fused with
other family members)
o Triangles (third person can unstress the situation between 2 people)
o Nuclear family emotional system (how family handles stress)
o Family projection process (parents’ projection of their emotional immaturity onto
their children, which causes the children to have lower levels of differentiation)
o Multigenerational transmission process (transmission of emotional immaturity
from one generation to the next)
o Emotional cutoff (stop talking and move away)
o Sibling position (different thoughts, expectations)
o Societal regression (what is happening around you that can affect)

III. Horizontal/Vertical Stressors: Life

Stages (Page 37)
 Life Stages
o Coupling and preparing for
parenthood (creating a
family, beginning a family)
o Arrival of children
o Coping with Adolescence
 o Leaving Home
o Reorganizing generational boundaries (especially when children live elsewhere)
o Retirement, Illness, Widowhood
 Horizontal Stressors—developmental life cycle transitions; unpredictable (such as
death, accident)
 Vertical Stressors—family patterns, myth, secrets, legacies

IV. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (Arron Beck)/Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy

 Stoic thought (influences CBT)
o Focus on what you can control and accept what you cannot (focus on your own
feelings)
o Practice self-awareness/recognize unhealthy habits and negative thought
patterns
o Empathy and understanding when healing with others
o Embrace adversity and setbacks pursue wisdom
 3 levels of thinking
o Negative automatic thoughts
 Situation specific
 Can be challenged
o Underlying assumptions
 Used to guide behavior, set standards and provide rules to follow
 E.g. If I impress others, then I should get ahead in life
o Core beliefs
 Schemas
 Thought patterns
 Cognitive Distortion
 Irrational Beliefs—eliminate irrational belief systems/acquire and internalize new belief
systems
 Balances thinking—evidence, third person point of view, worst-case, best-case

V. Psychodynamic: Object, Blowby, Transference and Countertransference

 Attachment Styles (Bowlby)—attachments are internalized
o Secure
 Reach out for support (trusting it will be given)
 Communicate self-revealingly
 Less likely to be verbally aggressive or to withdraw in therapy during
problem solving
o Anxious
 Watchful and hypervigilant
 Express jealousy, concerns about abandonment
 Acting coercively or threateningly
o Avoidant
  Act distantly
 Object Relations Theory—views infant’s experiences in relationship to the mother or PC
as main determinant of adult personality formation
o Infant’s need for attach to the mother is the foundation for the development of the
self (unique psychic organization that creates a person’s sense of identity)
 Object relations—believe we relate to people in the present partly based on expectations
formed by early relationship experiences
 Psychodynamic models emphasize insight, motivation, unconscious conflict, early infant-
CG attachments, unconscious intrapsychic object relations and actual relationships and
their impact on inner experience (importance of childhood stages)
 Transference—client projects feeling onto therapist
 Countertransference—therapist reacts to client’s feelings (e.g. therapist might feel
protective towards a client)

VI. Structural Family Therapy

 Focuses on individual’s relationship with family, community, systems (our experiences
also impact the people are us)
 Main concerns tackle family dysfunction, boundary permeability, alignments (overall
bonds within family), and power/coalition (bond against other members or systems)
 Symptoms are rooted in context of family traction patterns
 Changing family structure/organization is important for improvement
 Therapists must take on leadership role in changing the structure
 Stress is part of process of the family changing and adapting
 Model looks at:
o Wholeness of family system
o Influence on hierarchical organization
o Interdependent functioning of subsystems
 Leading figure: Salvador Minuchin
 Monitoring family dysfunctional sets
o Family mapping—assessment technique used by structural family therapists to
graphically describe a family’s overall organizational structure and determine
which subsystem is involved in dysfunctional transactions
o Unbalancing/tracking/enactments
 look at enmeshment—boundaries between members are blurred and there’s
overconcerned/overinvolved in each other’s lives
o also looks at disengagement—family with rigid boundaries and members are
unconnected, function separately and autonomously without much involvement
within the family
 Restructuring transactional patterns
o Reframing—relabeling behavior by putting it in a more positive light, which
increases family stress
 Psychosomatic family—hypothesized that ED started in a dysfunctional family, rigid,
overinvolved, and conflict avoidance
 o Anorexia—increased fear of being fat
o Binge-eating disorder—large amount of food in limited time frame
o Bulimia nervosa—recurrent inappropriate compensatory behaviors
o Traits AN and BN
 Perfectionism
 Obsessive compulsive symptoms
 Client Centered Psychology (Carl Rogers)
o Empathy
o Positive regard (inherent worth)
o Relationship building skills (such as non-verbal and verbal attentiveness,
paraphrases, etc.)
o Self-disclosure (without oversharing as therapist)
o Immediacy (sharing thoughts or feelings as they occur— address as it happens
and avoid countertransference)

VII. Narrative Therapy

 Our knowledge of reality is organized and maintained through stories we tell about
ourselves and the world around us
 The problem is the problem, the client is NOT the problem (externalizing problem)
 Thin and thick descriptions—thickening refers to enriching a story line
o E.g. of thin—labeling person as lazy
o E.g. of thick—that person is tired of working all day and wants to rest
 Deconstructions the situations—replacing old with new multistoried possibilities (also
applies with institutionalized cultural narratives)
 Leading figures: Michael White
 Looks like externalizing the problem, employing therapeutic questions, looking for unique
outcomes, alternative stories
 Psychoeducation is important for this
 Therapy would have an agenda and reviewing previous goals and setting up new ones