Instruction
The final project for this course is the creation of a therapy plan. Students will select a case study and design a therapy plan using one of the theoretical orientations covered in the course. The final product represents an authentic demonstration of competency counseling knowledge in a real-world manner.
Main Elements
For this assignment, you will choose one of the following theoretical orientations as well as corresponding concepts to treat the case study:
- Psychoanalytic Therapy using concepts such as structure of personality, the unconscious, role of anxiety and ego-defense mechanisms, and stage of development. Include the role of transference and countertransference in the therapy process. Some techniques that can be included are free association, interpretation, dream analysis, and analysis and interpretation of resistance and transference.
- Adlerian Therapy using concepts such as social interest, birth order, subjective view of reality, unity of personality. Include the lifestyle assessment as well as the role of the family constellation and early recollections in a lifestyle assessment. Also, include the four phases of the therapeutic process.
- Existential Therapy using concepts such as self-awareness, freedom and responsibility, intimacy and isolation, meaning in life, death anxiety, and authenticity.
- Person-Centered Therapy using concepts such as acceptance, self-actualization, openness to experience, clarification, self-trust, reflection, internal locus of evaluation, congruence, growth-promoting climate, incongruence, actualizing tendency, genuineness, unconditional positive regard, and here-and now experiences.
- Gestalt Therapy using concepts such as here-and-now, awareness, dealing with unfinished business, contact and resistance to contact, body language, and the role of experiments in therapy the dialogue experiment, playing the projection, “why” questions, reversal technique, the rehearsal experiment, staying with the feeling, empty chair technique, introjection, integration of polarities, projection, blocks to energy, catastrophic expectations, impasse or “stuck point,” here-and-now experiencing, projection screen, figure-formation process, boundary disturbance, and language that denies power.
- Behavior Therapy using concepts such as systematic desensitization, behavior modification, biofeedback, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, cognitive trend/processes, target behaviors, self-management, reinforcement techniques, self-directed behavior, homework, observational learning, behavioral diary, imitation, self-contracting, goal setting, contingency contracting, relaxation training, social reinforcement, social learning, behavior rehearsal, exposure therapy, modeling, assertion training, feedback, in vivo desensitization, flooding, eye movement desensitization and stress inoculation reprocessing (EMDR), extinction, functional assessment, positive punishment, and negative punishment.
- Cognitive Behavior Therapy using concepts such as internal dialogue, irrational beliefs, coping-skills program, cognitions, stress inoculation, unconditional “shoulds,” absolutistic “musts,” self-observation, faulty assumptions, automatic thinking, self-evaluating, self-sustaining, simple preferences, schema restructuring, emotional disturbance, cognitive distortions/errors, autosuggestion, schema, self-repetition, “family schemata,” blame, arbitrary inferences, anxiety, A-B-C theory, cognitive triad, Socratic questioning, full acceptance or tolerance, cognitive homework, therapeutic collaboration, disputing irrational beliefs, overgeneralization, changing one’s language, magnification and minimization, rational-emotive imagery, personalization, role playing, labeling and mislabeling, shame-attacking exercises, polarized thinking, alternative interpretations, and self-instructional therapy.
