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What is the center piece of strategic therapy?
positive feedback loops
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What are the axioms/truths of human communication?
- People are always communicating
- All messages have a report and a command function
- Whether a difficulty becomes a problem depends on how the family members respond to it
- A problem is not a problem if the client is not expressing discontent with it (neutrality)
- A symptom is a metaphor for underlying problem
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What is the MRI approach to problem solving?
- identify the positive feedback loop that maintains the problem
- determine the rules that support those interactions
- find a way to change to rules to interrupt the problem-maintaining behavior
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What did Haley believe was crucial and inadequate, and the root of most problems?
rules around the hierarchical structure
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What are the three ways in which problems develop in strategic models?
- Cybernetic – misguided solutions to difficulties that are maintained through feedback loops
- Structural – problematic family hierarchies
- Functional – family members use symptoms to try to control or protect each other
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how are family rules communicated and enforced?
through command messages
- Function to preserve homeostasis (negative feedback), maintenance of the problem
- Can be deduced from interactional patterns
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according to general systems theory, what are the two vital processes that normal families depend on?
- maintain integrity in the face of environmental challenges through negative feedback loops
- amplify innovations to accommodate to changing circumstances through positive feedback loops
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according to communications theory, what is the essential function of symptoms?
to maintain the homeostatic equilibrium of family systems
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How might an MRI therapist attempt to address the issue of a defiant child?
- Focus on the parent's attempted solution
- the assumption that this attempt likely to maintain the child's defiance
- the parent's explanation, or frame, for the child's behavior, believe this might be driving their false solution
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How might a Haley style therapist attempt to address the issue of a defiant child?
- interested in the parent's attempted solution
- the parent's marriage
- the ways in which the child was involved in the struggles between the parents and/or family members
- the possible protective nature of the child's problem
- the child's problem might be a part of a dysfunctional triangle with the parents
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How might a Milan systemic therapist attempt to address the issue of a defiant child?
- not worry so much about attempted solutions
- ask about past and present relationships with the family, trying to uncover the network of power alliances
- symptoms might be a way of protecting the family members
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MRI goals of therapy
- define clear and reachable goals so everyone knows when treatment has been successful
- setting concrete goals
- let go of utopian aspirations
- change the behavioral responses to problems
- interpret vicious feedback loops
- reframing
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Goals of therapy for Haley's approach
- downplay the importance of insight
- structural reorganization of the family as they relate to the presenting problem
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What are the goals for assessment?
- Define a specific, behavioral problem
- Identify failed attempts at solutions that actually maintain the problem
- Understand clients’ language for relating to the problem -- Important to offering effective reframes
- Identify dysfunctional structural arrangement -- Triangles, cross-generational coalitions, etc.
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what are the four stages of Haley's initial interview and who did it involve?
- the whole family
- Social stage -- helping his clients feel comfortable
- Problem stage -- asking each person for their perspective
- Interaction stage -- encouraging family members to discuss their points of view among themselves
- Goal-setting stage -- helping families find new ways to solve their problems
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interventions:Circular questioning
shift client’s causal attribution from linear (individual) to circular (systemic)
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interventions: Highlighting
pointing out problematic interactions, their impacts
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interventions: blocking
interrupting harmful interactions
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interventions: restraining
encouraging clients to approach change slowly
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interventions: Reframe/positive connotation
change the clients’ interpretation of a problem behavior so they can orient to it differently
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interventions: Directives/rituals
engage in a different interaction
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interventions: ordeals
prescribe a price for maintaining a symptom so the cost of maintaining outweighs the effort to change it
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interventions: Paradoxical interventions
do something counterintuitive to interrupt problem
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Define Paradoxical Interventions and their possible effects
Prescribing an activity that is counter to common sense -- E.g. “prescribing the symptom”
Possible effects:
- Family could comply, reverse previous attempts at solutions
- Family could rebel, reducing symptoms
- Could expose network of relationships that maintain the issue
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What is the most distinctive innovation to emerge from the Milan model?
Positive connotation: a technique of ascribing positive motives to family behavior in order to promote family cohesion and avoid resistance to therapy
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Define rituals in the Milan Model
used to engage families in a series of actions that ran counter to or exaggerated rigid family rules or myths
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What is the purpose of circular questioning?
designed to shift clients from thinking about individuals and linear causality and towards reciprocity and interdependence
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What is the definitive technique used by Haley and Madanes approach?
directives: thoughtful suggestions targeted to the specific requirements of each case
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