Core Counseling Theories Flashcards
7 cards from real CPCE practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Core Counseling Theories flashcards as text
Structural family therapy, associated with Salvador Minuchin, primarily addresses:
Answer: Family organization, boundaries, and hierarchical structures
Minuchin's structural approach maps and restructures the family's organizational patterns — subsystems, boundaries, and hierarchies — to reduce symptoms.
In acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), 'psychological flexibility' involves:
Answer: Contacting the present moment fully while changing or persisting in behavior guided by values
ACT defines psychological flexibility as the capacity to be in full contact with the present moment and, based on what the situation affords, to change or persist in behavior in the service of chosen values.
The 'ABC model' in CBT refers to:
Answer: Activating event, Belief, and emotional/behavioral Consequence
Ellis's ABC model holds that it is not the Activating event (A) but the Belief (B) about that event that determines the emotional and behavioral Consequence (C).
Which theorist is credited with developing the concept of 'unconditional positive regard' as a therapeutic condition?
Answer: Carl Rogers
Carl Rogers identified unconditional positive regard — accepting the client without judgment or conditions — as one of the three necessary and sufficient conditions for therapeutic change.
In strategic family therapy, the technique of 'prescribing the symptom' (paradoxical intervention) works by:
Answer: Directing the client to intentionally perform the symptom, disrupting its involuntary quality
When a therapist prescribes the symptom, the client must choose to perform it deliberately, which often undermines the symptom's automatic, involuntary nature.
The psychoanalytic concept of 'resistance' in counseling is BEST understood as:
Answer: Any client behavior that impedes awareness of unconscious material
In psychoanalytic theory, resistance refers to unconscious forces (not necessarily conscious refusal) that oppose the emergence of repressed material into awareness.
A counselor using EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) relies on which core theoretical premise?
Answer: Bilateral stimulation facilitates the adaptive processing of disturbing memories
Shapiro's Adaptive Information Processing model proposes that bilateral stimulation (eye movements, taps, tones) facilitates the brain's natural memory processing system to adaptively integrate traumatic memories.