Do we really understand? An experientail exercise for training family therapists

The students also quickly figured out that with a couple they could use more active, nonverbal interventions. By asking the couple to move around, do a sculpture, or interact with each other, they obtained far more information to work with than if they tried to have a conversation with them. For instance, one beginning therapist asked the couple to act out the problem they were having, first with the wife and husband playing themselves, and next having each play the other. Another therapist instructed the couple to talk to each other, rather than to him, and was able to give them feedback on some patterns he observed.

One beginning therapist who participated in the class exercise acknowledged to the class that prior to this experience, he had felt intimidated about the idea of working with couples and had planned on working primarily with individuals once he graduated. Although he had read about doing couples therapy, he did not understand the additional information that was available to him when working with couples as compared to individuals, but this exercise convinced him that it would be essential to bring family members into therapy.

CONCLUSION

Experiential exercises supplement the learning that occurs through reading and discussing theory and technique, by offering an alternative way of understanding family therapy constructs such as "coconstruction of meaning." Therapists-in-training stand to benefit in a variety of ways from this particular training exercise. Beginning therapists can have a tendency to focus on the narrative content of therapeutic interactions, and by taking away the ability to focus on the words themselves, therapists are encouraged to be less certain in their assumptions of shared meaning and to search for other cues for meaning. Unlearning certainty, especially the assumption that we can easily understand someone else's words or experiences, can be difficult, but we think it is fundamental. So much of connecting to another human being is about understanding and caring about each other. By decreasing their reliance on verbal language, therapists-intraining are provided an opportunity to discover that they have far more tools than they realized to be able to connect with other human beings.

While this exercise increases the confidence of therapists in their ability to interact with people different from themselves, conversely, it also helps beginning therapists to recognize the necessity of approaching others in a spirit of humility, curiosity, and empathy. We offer this exercise, then, in the hope that it will encourage beginning therapists to become more confident, cautious, and curious about whether they "really" understand their clients.

REFERENCES

American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. (1998). AAMFT code of ethics. Washington, DC: Author.

Anderson, H., & Goolishian, H. (1988). Human systems as linguistic systems: Preliminary and evolving ideas about the implications for clinical theory. Family Process, 27, 371-393.