NBCC Counseling Theories & Helping Relationships 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: In Adlerian therapy, the concept of 'gemeinschaftsgefühl' refers to which core human motivation?
- Social interest and belonging to the community (Correct answer)
- Individual achievement and personal mastery
- Biological drive satisfaction and homeostasis
- Unconscious striving for superiority over others
Correct answer: Social interest and belonging to the community
Alfred Adler used gemeinschaftsgefühl (social interest) to describe humans' innate desire to belong to and contribute to the community as a measure of psychological health.
Question 2: A counselor using Gestalt therapy asks a client to speak directly to an empty chair as if their estranged father were sitting in it. This technique is called:
- Free association
- The empty chair technique (Correct answer)
- Role reversal
- Systematic desensitization
Correct answer: The empty chair technique
The empty chair technique in Gestalt therapy allows clients to externalize and dialogue with significant others or unresolved feelings to promote awareness and integration.
Question 3: Which theoretical assumption best describes the existential counseling stance toward human anxiety?
- Anxiety is a symptom of repressed unconscious conflicts
- Anxiety is neurotic and should be eliminated through conditioning
- Normal anxiety is an inevitable part of confronting life's ultimate concerns (Correct answer)
- Anxiety reflects irrational beliefs that must be disputed
Correct answer: Normal anxiety is an inevitable part of confronting life's ultimate concerns
Existential counselors distinguish between normal (existential) anxiety—arising from confronting death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness—and neurotic anxiety, viewing the former as inherent to human existence.
Question 4: In Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), the 'B' in the ABC model stands for:
- Behavior that follows an activating event
- Beliefs the client holds about the activating event (Correct answer)
- Biological predispositions influencing cognition
- Baseline functioning before therapy begins
Correct answer: Beliefs the client holds about the activating event
Ellis's ABC model identifies A (Activating event), B (Beliefs—rational or irrational), and C (Consequences), arguing that beliefs, not events, cause emotional disturbance.
Question 5: A client in person-centered therapy makes significant progress only when the counselor demonstrates unconditional positive regard. This means the counselor:
- Agrees with and validates all of the client's decisions
- Accepts the client fully without imposing conditions of worth (Correct answer)
- Avoids confronting the client on any topic
- Mirrors the client's emotional state at all times
Correct answer: Accepts the client fully without imposing conditions of worth
Unconditional positive regard means the counselor accepts and prizes the client as a person regardless of behavior, without placing conditions on that acceptance.
Question 6: Structural family therapy, associated with Salvador Minuchin, primarily focuses on:
- Rewriting the family's narrative through storytelling
- Modifying dysfunctional patterns of family organization and boundaries (Correct answer)
- Uncovering multigenerational transmission of emotional cutoffs
- Teaching communication skills through behavioral rehearsal
Correct answer: Modifying dysfunctional patterns of family organization and boundaries
Minuchin's structural family therapy examines and reshapes the family's organizational structure, including subsystems and boundaries, to improve functioning.
Question 7: Which of the following best describes the 'miracle question' technique used in Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT)?
- The client is asked to identify the root cause of their problem through guided imagery
- The client imagines their life after the problem has been solved to identify goals (Correct answer)
- The therapist offers a paradoxical prescription to disrupt problem patterns
- The client rates their problem on a scale to track incremental change
Correct answer: The client imagines their life after the problem has been solved to identify goals
The miracle question ('Suppose a miracle happened overnight and your problem was solved—what would be different?') helps clients envision preferred futures and identify concrete goals.
NBCC Counseling Theories & Helping Relationships 2
In Adlerian therapy, the concept of 'gemeinschaftsgefühl' refers to which core human motivation?