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Post a total of 2 substantive responses to other students. Respond to the following in a minimum of 175 words: 

Mark Smith

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Experimental therapy has its roots within the humanistic paradigm that was created by hierarchy of needs by Abraham Maslow, Fritz Perls Gestalt Therapy, and client-centered therapy by Carl Rogers. The therapy approaches practiced by Carl Rogers and Fritz Perls is still regard as highly experimental in nature. Experimental therapy is intended to engage the individual in real experiences that allow for attitudes, sensations, beliefs, and feelings that are subconscious and help combine them into the individual’s awareness. Some of the illustrations of experimental therapy is psychodrama, recreational therapy, play therapy, music therapy, adventure therapy, animal-assisted therapy, and wilderness therapy. The power of the experience is what is the most important concept and by changing the construct based on that experience will allow for family members and individuals to change.

When reading about the different experimental therapies, I find myself more drawn towards role-playing therapy. The notion of helping a client through their mental health issues by gradually exposing them to a situation through the role-playing and slow changing that experience into something positive to help reduce their anxiety very engaging. I have had some practice with this process when helping an individual over come his fears of needles by working with him one on one for a couple of hours every Saturday for four months. In the end, I was able to have some lab work done on the individual and his anxiety about the procedure was greatly reduced. 

Tuttle, L. C. (1998). Experiential Family Therapy: An Innovative Approach to the Resolution of Family Conflict in Genetic Counseling. Journal of Genetic Counseling, 7(2), 167-186.

Steve Chigas

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experiential therapy is interesting to me the main belief of this approach is that "People are naturally resourceful and if left to think about things on their own they can be loving, creative and productive." (Nichols & Davis, 2017). So if you could imagine a family of three people a husband, wife, and their son, they have recently started to come to therapy because the parents are concerned about their son and his most recent choice to experiment with drugs and alcohol at a party, they are concerned this will be a consistent thing even though their son says that it was a one-time thing and he didn't like how it made him feel, so he will not be trying it again. The intervention technique I would use for this situation is roleplaying, I would have the father and the mother think back to when they were their son's age and tell me what they would do at that same age if they were in the same situation, I would also emphasize that they need to look at this from their perspective at the age of 16. I think that this intervention technique is a great approach to helping this family particularly the parents to see things from their sons perspective based on what they would have honestly done if they were in the same situation, I might even have their son look at this situation from his parents perspective so that he could see where his parents are coming from as well because being able to see a perspective from both sides is something people very rarely do on their own.

Reference:

Nichols, M. P. & Davis, S. D. (2017). Family therapy: Concepts and methods (11th ed.). Pearson Education, Inc

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Edited by Steve Chigas on Sep 30, 2021, 1:50:30 PM

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