Postmodern Approaches questions n answers rated A+ 2023/2024

Postmodern ApproachesIdentify how the postmodern approaches differ from the modernist approaches. - correct answer Modernists believe in the ability to describe objective reality accurately and assume that it can be observed and systematically known through the scientific method. They further believe reality exists independent of any attempt to observe it. Modernists believe people seek therapy for a problem when they have deviated too far from some objective norm. For example, clients may think they are abnormally depressed when they experience sadness for longer than they think is normal. They might then seek help to return to "normal" behavior. Postmodernists, in contrast, do not believe realities exist independent of obser- vational processes and of the language systems within which they are described. social constructionism is a psychological expression of this postmodern world- view; it values the client's reality without disputing whether it is accurate or rational (Gergen, 1991, 1999; Weishaar, 1993). To social constructionists, any understanding of reality is based on the use of language and is largely a function of the situations in which people live. In postmodern thinking, forms of language and the use of language in stories create meaning. There may be as many meanings as there are people to tell the sto- ries, and each of these stories expresses a truth for the person telling it. Even science is not free from the influence of such processes of social construction. Every person involved in a situation has a perspective on the "reality" of that situation, but the range of truths is limited due to the effects of specific historical events and the lan- guage uses that dominate particular social contexts. In practice, therefore, the range of possible meanings is not infinite. In social constructionism the therapist disavows the role of expert, preferring a more collaborative or consultative stance. Clients are viewed as Describe the historical roots of social constructionism. - correct answer In the 21st century, postmodern constructions of alternative knowl- edge sources seem to be one of the paradigm shifts most likely to affect the field of psychotherapy. Postmodernist thought is influencing the development of many psychotherapy theories and contemporary psychotherapeutic practice. The creation of the self, which so dominated the modernist search for human essence and truth, is being replaced with the concept of socially storied lives. Diversity, multiple frame- works, and integration—collaboration of the knower with the known—are all part of this new social movement, which provides a wider range of perspectives in counsel- ing practice. For some social constructionists, the process of "knowing" includes a distrust of the dominant cultural positions that permeate families and society today (White & Epston, 1990), particularly when the dominant culture exerts a destructive impact on the lives of those who live beyond the margins of what is generally consid- ered normal. Change begins by deconstructing the power of cultural narratives and then proceeds to the co-construction of a new life of meaning. Understand the collaborative language systems approach. - correct answer It is therapists' willingness to enter the therapeutic conversation from a "not-knowing" position that facilitates this caring relationship with the client. In the not-knowing position, therapists still retain all of the knowledge and personal, experiential capacities they have gained over years of living, but they allow themselves to enter the conversation with curiosity and with an intense interest in discovery. The aim here is to enter a client's world as fully as possible. Clients become the experts who are informing and sharing with the therapist the significant narratives of their lives. The not-knowing position is empathic and is most often characterized by questions that "come from an honest, continuous therapeutic posture of not understanding too quickly" Based on the referral or intake process, the therapist enters the session with some sense of what the client may wish to address. The questions the therapist asks are informed by the answers the client-expert has provided. The client's answers provide information that stimulates the interest of the therapist, still in a posture of inquiry, and another question proceeds from each answer given. The process is similar to the Socratic method without any preconceived idea about how or in which direction the development of the stories should go. The intent of the conversation is not to con- front or challenge the narrative of the client but to facilitate the telling and retelling of the story until opportunities for new meaning and new stories develop: "Telling one's story is a representation of experience; it is constructing history in the present" (Anderson & Goolishian, 1992, p. 37). By staying with the story, the therapist-client conversation evolves into a dialogue of new meaning, constructing new narrative possibilities. This not-knowing position of the Examine the distinguishing features and key concepts of solution-focused brief therapy. - correct answer solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) is a future-focused, goal-oriented thera- peutic approach to brief therapy developed initially by Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg at the Brief Family Therapy Center in Milwaukee in the early 1980s. SFBT emphasizes strengths and resiliencies of people by focusing on exceptions to their problems and their conceptualized solutions. SFBT is an optimistic, antidetermin- istic, future-oriented approach based