MOVIE QUESTIONS ANALYSIS
Postmodern Approaches
Chapter 13 Spring 2021 Professor Petrie
Copyright © 2021 Cengage
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Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy - Chapter 13
Terminology Chapter 13
Alternative story: The story that develops in counseling in contradiction to the dominant story that is embedded in a client’s problem.
Coauthoring: The process by which both therapist and client share responsibility for the development of alternative stories.
Deconstruction: The exploration of meaning by taking apart, or unpacking, the taken-for-granted categories and assumptions underlying social practices that pose as truth.
Dominant story: A way of understanding a situation that has been so widely accepted within a culture that it appears to represent “reality.” Growing out of conversations in a social and cultural context, dominant stories shape reality in that they construct and constitute what people see, feel, and do.
Exception questions: Solution-focused therapists inquire about those times in clients’ lives when the problems they identify have not been problematic. Exploring these exceptions reminds clients that problems are not all-powerful and have not existed forever.
Exceptions: Past experiences in a client’s life when it would be reasonable to have expected the problem to occur, but somehow it did not.
Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy - Chapter 13
Terminology Page 2
Externalizing conversation: A way of speaking in which the problem may be spoken of as if it is a distinct entity that is separate from the person.
Formula first session task: A form of homework a therapist might give clients to complete between their first and second therapy sessions. Clients are asked to simply observe what is happening in their lives that they want to continue happening.
Mapping-the-influence questions: A series of questions asked about a problem that a client has internalized as a means of understanding the relationship between the person and the problem.
Miracle question: A solution-focused technique that asks clients to imagine how their life would be different if they woke up tomorrow and they no longer had their problem.
Narrative: A social constructionist conceptualization of how people create “storied” meaning in their lives.
Narrative therapy: A postmodern approach to therapy that is based on the therapist’s personal characteristics that allow for creating a climate that encourages clients to see their stories from different perspectives. Grounded in a philosophical framework, narrative practices assist clients in finding new meanings and new possibilities in their lives
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Not-knowing position: A therapist’s stance that invites clients to become the experts who are informing the therapist about the significant narratives of their lives.
Positive psychology: An approach that concentrates on what is right and what is working for people rather than dwelling on deficits, weaknesses, and problems.
Postmodernism: A philosophical movement across a variety of disciples that has aimed at critically examining many of the assumptions that are part of the established truths of society. The postmodern worldview acknowledges the complexity, relativity, and intersubjectivity of all human experience.
Postmodernist: A believer in subjective realities that cannot exist independently of the observational processes used. Problems exist when people agree that there is a problem that needs to be addressed.
Pretherapy change: At the first therapy session, solution-focused therapists often inquire about presession improvements, or anything clients have done since scheduling the appointment that has made a difference in their problems.
Problem-saturated story: People often come to therapy feeling overwhelmed by their problems to which they are fused. Narrative therapists assist clients in understanding that they do not have to be reduced by these totalizing descriptions of their identity.
Reauthoring: A process in narrative therapy in which client and therapist jointly create an alternative life story
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Terminology Page 4
Scaling questions: A solution-focused technique that asks clients to observe changes in feelings, moods, thoughts, and behaviors. On a scale of zero to 10, clients are asked to rate some change in their experiences.
Social constructionism: A therapeutic perspective within a postmodern worldview that stresses the client’s reality without disputing the accuracy or validity of this reality. Social constructionism emphasizes the ways in which people make meaning in social relationships.
Solution-focused brief therapy: A postmodern approach to therapy that provides a context whereby individuals focus on recovering and creating solutions rather than talking about their problems. SFBT is an optimistic, antideterministic, future-oriented approach based on the assumption that clients have the ability to change quickly and can create a problem-free language as they strive for a new reality.
Totalizing descriptions: A categorical description of people that constricts them to a single dimension that purports to capture their identity.
Unique outcome: Aspects of lived experience that lie outside the realm of dominant stories or in contradiction to the problem-saturated story.
Introduction to Social Constructionism
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Clients are viewed as experts about their own lives.
Modernists believe reality exists independent of any attempt to observe it.
Values the client’s reality without disputing whether it is accurate or rational.
Historical Glimpse of Social Constructionism
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Postmodernist thought influencing the development of many psychotherapy theories and contemporary psychotherapeutic practice.
Diversity, multiple frameworks, and integration are all part of new social movement.
The two most significant approaches: solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) and narrative therapy.
The Collaborative Language Systems Approach
Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy - Chapter 13
People stuck in dialogic system that has a unique language, meaning, and process.
Clients become the experts who are informing and sharing with the therapist the significant narratives of their lives.
Therapist–client conversation evolves into a dialogue of new meaning, constructing new narrative possibilities.
Social Constructionism Therapy Goals
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Generate new meaning in the lives of clients.
Co-develop, with clients, solutions that are unique to the situation.
Enhance awareness of the impact of various aspects of the dominant culture on the individual.
Help people develop alternative ways of being, acting, knowing, and living.
Unique Focus of SFBT
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Behavior change is viewed as the most effective approach to assisting people in enhancing their lives.
Past is downplayed, while present and future are highlighted.
Clients choose the goals they wish to accomplish; little attention is given to diagnosis, history taking, or exploring the emergence of the problem.
Positive Orientation
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Therapy grounded on a positive orientation—people are healthy and competent.
SFBT has parallels with positive psychology.
Concentrates on what is right and what is working rather than dwelling on deficits, weaknesses, and problems.
Looking for What is Working
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Therapists concerned on what is working.
Assist clients in paying attention to the exceptions to their problem patterns, or their instances of success.
Assist clients discover exceptions, or times when the problem is less intrusive in their life.
Basic Assumptions Guiding Practice (1 of 2)
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Clients do have the capability of behaving effectively.
Advantages to a positive focus on solutions and on the future.
Exceptions to every problem.
Clients often present only one side of themselves.
Basic Assumptions Guiding Practice
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No problem is constant, and change is inevitable.
Clients are doing their best to make change happen.
Clients can be trusted in their intention to solve their problems.
Characteristic of Brief Therapy
Rapid working alliance between therapist and client
Clear specification of achievable treatment goals
Clear division of responsibilities between client and therapist
Emphasis on client’s strengths, competencies, and adaptive capacities
Expectation that change is possible and realistic and that improvement can occur in the immediate future
Time-sensitive
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The Therapeutic Process
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Clients are given an opportunity to describe their problems.
The therapist works with clients in developing well-formed goals.
Clients are assisted in exploring the exceptions.
The Therapeutic Process
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The therapist offers clients summary feedback and provides encouragement and suggestions.
The therapist and clients evaluate the progress being made in reaching satisfactory solutions.
The Therapeutic Relationship
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Customer-type relationship: Client and therapist jointly identify a problem and a solution to work toward.
Complainant relationship: A client describes a problem but is not able or willing to take an active role in constructing a solution.
Visitors: Clients come to therapy, because someone else thinks they have a problem.
Application: Therapeutic Techniques and Procedures
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Pre-therapy change: Therapists ask, “What have you done since you made the appointment that has made a difference in your problem?”
Exception questions: Therapists direct clients to times in their lives when the problem did not exist.
Application: Therapeutic Techniques and Procedures
The Miracle question: Therapists ask, “If a miracle happened and the problem you have was solved, how would you know it was solved, while you were asleep, what would be different in your life?”
Scaling questions: Therapists ask, “On a scale of zero to 10, how would you rate your anxiety now?”
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Application: Therapeutic Techniques and Procedures
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Formula first session task: Homework a therapist gives clients between their first and second sessions that offers hope that change is inevitable.
Therapist feedback to clients: Therapists take a short break during each session to write a summary for clients.
Terminating: Termination begins at the first session.
Application to Group Counseling
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Practitioner believes that people are competent and able to solve their own problems.
Facilitator focus on solutions where group members can give an opportunity to describe their problems briefly.
Goals for therapy are small, realistic, and achievable.
Application to Group Counseling
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Group leaders use questions that change and remain goal-directed and future-oriented.
Group context helps the members learn about their personal abilities to resolve their own concerns.
Shifts the focus from what’s wrong in lives to what’s working for them.
Narrative Therapy
Therapists
listen to clients with an open mind.
encourage clients to share their stories.
listen to a problem-saturated story of a client without getting stuck.
demonstrate respectful curiosity and persistence.
believe the person is not the problem, but the problem is the problem.
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The Therapeutic Process in Narrative Therapy
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Collaborate
Collaborate with the client in identifying (naming) the problem.
Personify
Personify the problem and attribute oppressive intentions.
Investigate
Investigate how the problem has been disrupting or dominating the person.
The Therapeutic Process in Narrative Therapy
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Search
Search for evidence of the problem.
Ask
Ask clients to speculate about what kind of future they could expect from the competent person that is emerging.
Create
Create an audience for perceiving and supporting the new story.
Function and Role of the Narrative Therapist
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To become active facilitators
To demonstrate care, interest, respectful curiosity, openness, empathy, contact, and fascination
To believe in the client’s abilities, talents, and positive intentions
Function and Role of the Narrative Therapist
To adopt a not-knowing position that allows being guided by the client’s story
To help clients construct a preferred story line
To create a collaborative relationship—with the client being the senior partner
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Application: Therapeutic Techniques and Procedures
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Used to generate experience rather than to gather information
Always asked from a position of respect, curiosity, and openness, and from a not-knowing stance
Are used to assist clients in exploring dimensions of their life situations
Can lead to taking apart problem-saturated stories
Externalization
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Externalization is a process of separating the person from identifying with the problem.
Externalizing conversations help people
to map the influence of the problem in the person’s life.
to map the influence of the person’s life back on the problem.
Deconstruction and Creating Alternative Stories
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Problem-saturated stories are deconstructed before new stories are co-created.
The assumption is that people can continually and actively re-author their lives.
Unique possibility questions enable clients to focus on their future.
An appreciative audience helps new stories to take root.
Application to Group Counseling
Narrative therapy has been used for group work in school settings.
Emphasis on creating an appreciative audience for new developments in his or her life.
New identities can be rehearsed and tried out into a wider world.
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Application to Group Counseling
Wide range of uses for group-based narrative therapy in schools including
getting back on track in schoolwork.
anger management.
grief counseling.
an adventure-based program.
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Strengths from a Diversity Perspective
Social constructionism is congruent with the philosophy of multiculturalism.
Clients are encouraged to explore how their realities are being constructed out of cultural discourse and the consequences that follow from such constructions.
Narrative therapy is grounded in a sociocultural context.
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Shortcomings From a Diversity Perspective
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Adopting a “not knowing” stance may lead clients from some cultures to lose confidence in the therapist.
Postmodern-oriented therapists must convey to clients that they have expertise in the process of therapy, but clients are the experts in knowing what they want in life.
Contributions of Postmodern Approaches
Due to the optimistic orientation of these approaches, clients can make significant progress in building more satisfying lives in a short time.
The postmodern approaches remind us that people cannot be reduced to a specific problem.
Practitioners adopt a nonpathologizing stance.
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Contributions of Postmodern Approaches
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A major strength of SFBT and narrative therapy is the use of questioning, the centerpiece of both approaches.
Brief therapy has been shown to be effective for a wide range of clinical problems.
Limitations and Criticisms of the Postmodern Approaches
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Therapists must be skilled in implementing brief interventions.
Therapists may employ techniques in a mechanistic fashion.
Reliance on techniques may detract from building a therapeutic relationship.
Limitations and Criticisms of the Postmodern Approaches
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Narrative therapists must be careful to approach client’s stories without imposing a preconceived notion of the client’s experiences.
For some clients, the therapist’s “not-knowing stance” may compromise their confidence in the therapist as an expert.
Emphasis on creating context for providing culturally responsive services.
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