This paper addresses whether theoretical skills, meaning skills in evaluating and improving existing theories and in creating new theories, should be taught in psychology programs. Three questions are posed: (1) Should theoretical skills be taught at all?; (2) How are theoretical skills best taught?; and (3) Which theoretical skills should be…

An advanced graduate level course in family therapy, "Theories and Methods of Marriage and Family Therapy" is described in this document. It is intended to provide an overview of various perspectives, theories, and methods used in marriage and family counseling. Particular emphasis is given the delineation of the distinctions between and among not…

Holland's (1973) theory served as a basis for designing a 15-hour career development seminar for 24 undergraduate students. A Solomon four-group design (Campbell and Stanley, 1963) was employed to evaluate the effectiveness of the seminar, with the Career Maturity Inventory (Crites, 1973) serving as the dependent measure. Seminar participants…

When training counseling students it is increasingly important to acquaint them with the clinical research literature exploring the efficacy of a particular treatment. In order to facilitate this educational process, some reviews of empirically supported treatments (ESTs) concerning marital problems are provided here. ESTs, also called…

Used a 3 x 3 mixed factorial design to study relation between a person's dominant way of knowing (rationalism, metaphorism, empiricism) and the preference for three counseling approaches (rationalist, constructivist, behavioral) with college students (N=92). Found participants significantly preferred counseling approach hypothesized to represent…

Argues that much psychotherapy literature and practice overvalues ways of knowing associated with science alone. The difficulty of establishing causal claims in psychotherapy points to unresolved difficulties in acquiring scientific knowledge. Additionally, the moral constitution of much psychotherapeutic focus questions the appropriateness of…

A shared perspective on the extant and ideal organizing principles for an institution's advising system is important to the overall effectiveness of advising. In this essay, I develop a vision of advising as educating, and from that vision, derive some higher order principles for an institutional advising system that will accommodate the wide…

Although written to accompany a particular textbook, this student workbook may be used in conjunction with a number of different introductory texts and courses that orient beginners to the profession of counseling. It is intended to supplement class material. Because counselor training involves more than mastering a set of skills, a collection of…

This book was written to serve as a basic text in courses that overview the use of counseling services and to serve as a useful reference for counseling practitioners. It is designed to stress counseling services in different settings (social agencies, mental health centers, schools, business/industry, correctional institutions, and private…

Virtually all counseling theories have viewed counselor empathic ability as an important condition for counseling, while the concept of countertransference, any therapist feelings or attitudes toward the client, has had a much shakier history. A two-part counseling analogue was designed to examine the relationship of male counselor trainees'…

This Digest states that the integration of research into counseling through an evidence-based approach actually brings the best elements of practice, clinical experience, and reliable treatment protocols together to serve the task of helping clients with the complex problems they bring to counseling. It gives several broad implications for the…

Details the structure and content of an introductory family therapy course offered in an academic department. The parallel processes between teaching and therapy are used as a metaphor for the presentation of the course. Joining, restructuring, and consolidation are defined as the three stages of the course. (Author)

The Delphi technique of refining group opinion was used to develop a graduate-level marriage and family therapy curriculum. Questionnaires were employed and 101 content areas met the criteria for inclusion into the final curriculum. Discussed are the similarities and differences of this curriculum and the current "model" AAMFT…

Examines research training in counselor education and applies a general research training model to group work. Focuses on challenges in graduate level counseling research training, applying counseling research training to group work, and applications of group counseling research methods. Provides examples of group research training in classroom…

Hypothesis-formation skills were assessed for 40 graduate counseling students randomly assigned to training in either a divergent or convergent hypothesis-formation strategy. Findings suggest that trainees using a divergent strategy were able to formulate more comprehensive and multidimensional clinical hypotheses. Implications for training and…