Family Therapy Chapter Summary

Week-3
Chapter 7, this chapter of the book is design to teach the reader about the experimental concepts in family therapy. These techniques were design to strength the families in their emotional stage. However, this concept stop being used and now part of the techniques is resurfacing when working with couples (Nichols, 2017).
Chapter-8, talks about psychodynamics and how it relates to psychoanalytic theory when working with family, these concepts are known to provide the families with the best theories techniques on family growth and trouble formation. Concurring with the psychoanalytic theory tells us that behavioral symptoms are the mechanism to cope with unconscious issues. On this chapter Nichols (2017) defined “projective identification as the process whereby a subject perceives an object as if

it contained unwelcome elements of the subject’s personality and evokes responses from the object that conform to those perception” (p.156).

Chapter 9, this chapter tells the reader about cognitive behavioral in family therapy where thoughts, feelings, and actions are picture as utilizing their mutual influences with each other (Nichols, 2017). During family therapy session with therapist that use CBT teach parent to use positive reinforcement versus trying to control their children. The theory of CBT can offer extensive techniques to work with family members and can be mixed with others theories as the counselors can adjust their treatment according to the family’s needs (Nichols 2017).
Pathfinder Hugging
This chapter of the book explain healthy parenting methods to strength the child self-esteem and independence. The methods used in the chapter are divided by stage of the human life span, which made it interested to read and easy to captivated the reader. I have to admitted that as

a mother of four adult children I had the opportunity to apply some of the techniques explained in this book. Reading this chapter opened my eyes to see things that if I would know this back them I would it apply. The following chapter Formulating: gave the parents important tools to practice behavioral consequences of their actions in a healthy manner and logical perspective. Furthermore, there are divided in rules of what not to do and gave the parents positive tools of what to do to apply the healthy consequences and so forth. The subsequent chapter Intervening provided an extended information and techniques that could help children and parent during the intensive process of changes in their life cause by traumatic unforeseen events (e.g., sexual abuse, divorce, etc.). this session it is imperative to facilitate parents’ proper methods to use while handling these difficult events. The next chapter Negotiating Messina 2015 stated “Pathfinders negotiate and advocate to address all aspects of the needs of their children. They advocate for the survival, security, relationship, and self-esteem needs of their children.” This chapter is detailing steps to guide parents’ proper ways to agree or compromise with their children. The case that Dr. Messina mention with IEPs’ is something common in most schools where teachers sometimes are not willing to follow completely the Individualize Educational Plan where is provided to a child after being evaluate and the needs of the child has been identifying (Messina, J.J. 2015).
The information that is was important for me is the use of dynamics theory with couples and the CBT for families. The information that I most retain in this case is all of them, because be able to identify and recognize the theoretical techniques can help the counselors to utilize the correct method with the family. However, as beginners’ counselors the lack of the ability to remember the application of the theories and the lack of the experience can be challenging as the counselors learn to apply them the good thing is that counselors can learn as they acquire their experience and they are supervising by experienced counselors.