Using Relational-Cultural Theory to Conceptualize Couple Interventions in the Treatment of Sex Addiction

ABSTRACT

Sex addictions have become an increasing concern since the growth of the sex industry, sex in advertising, and the ease of Internet access to sex. This article uses the foundational principles of Relational-Cultural Theory (RCT) to conceptualize sexual addiction and its relational impact. Particular attention is paid to the principles of connection, mutuality, authenticity, power, and culture. In closing, the author offers some creative interventions for relational transformation for affected couples in order to move from a state of disconnection towards mutuality, growth, and connection.     

Sandtray Therapy: A Familial Approach to Healing Through Imagination

The application of creative techniques in counseling is often tailored to a unique problem, and limited by individual characteristics of the client. One intervention, sandtray therapy, a derivative of play therapy, has gained strong momentum as a creative technique. With greater flexibility for treating a much larger population, sandtray therapy is more applicable for families than other creative approaches. The purpose of the current article is to give an overview of sand tray therapy, as well as provide information regarding its use for working with families. Specifically, the authors discuss exactly how counselors can successfully incorporate sandtray therapy in the familial population setting, and describe its application through case study.     

Utilizing Creative Expressive Techniques and Group Counseling to Improve Adolescents of Divorce Social-Relational Capabilities

Adolescents of divorce present challenges for mental health counselors unfamiliar with issues this population encounters. Problems such as negative societal perceptions and low behavioral self-efficacy can combine, causing long-lasting problems. Specifically, adolescents of divorce appear to be at risk for developing inadequate social/relational capabilities. To improve adolescents’ relational and social competencies, the authors advocate for a creative combination of expressive techniques and group counseling. This brief, six-week intervention may be a viable, creative tool for counselors working with this distinct client population.     

Evaluating the Effects of Creative Journal Arts Therapy for Survivors of Domestic Violence

The authors implemented a small series (N = 3) single-case research design to assess the effectiveness of a 9-session creative arts therapy treatment program for adult survivors of domestic violence. Analysis of participants’ scores on the Outcome Questionnaire (OQ-45.2) and Brief Resilience Scale using the percentage of nonoverlapping data procedure yielded treatment effects indicating that a creative arts therapy treatment program may be effective for reducing mental health symptoms and improving resiliency. It is recommended that this body of research continue for other educational, work, and health settings.     

Chaos,creativity, and counseling: Aspects of a Transtheoretical model of the counseling process

Counselors ask their clients to become creative in their personal lives and within their counseling process. The process of counseling is a creative process. Growth is necessary for effective improvement in the counseling process. This paper will examine creativity from the point of view of the affective experience of the creator, and the relationship of this experience to the client in counseling.

The position here is that the process of counseling is both a creative process and one that involves tensions and turbulence. Based on a model of nonlinear dynamics, and ideas about the creative process, this study draws a dynamical fractal movie of the counseling process in which the counselor serves as an attractor for the construction of opposites in the client behavior that allow for growth and the construction of a new state of psychosocial events.     

Using Art-Based Strategies in Group-Based Counselor Supervision

In addition to course work and experiential learning experiences, a vital aspect to counselor training is clinical supervision. Supervision acts as a mediator bridging the gap between theory and practice. Using creative interventions has been increasing in clinical work and may be beneficial to be used more in training counseling students. One way to incorporate creative and expressive techniques into a counseling program is to use art-based strategies in clinical group supervision. Research and clinical experiences are discussed.     

Making Meaning Using Creativity and Spirituality

Abstract

This article describes two creative techniques utilized when working with clients. With the increased attention on issues of spirituality, multiculturalism, and creativity, the “Give Away Ceremony” and “Spiritual Symbolism” is demonstrated via a case study approach. Additionally, a brief history of the immersion of spirituality in the counseling profession is addressed.     

Mistakes as Pathways Towards Creativity in Counseling: A Case Example

ABSTRACT

The relationship between mistakes, improvisation, and counseling process is explored through the use of a case example involving a failed clinical intervention. Exploration of mistakes offers an opportunity to examine multiple elements of counseling while highlighting the creative nature of the counseling process. Counselor educators are encouraged to incorporate discussions of mistakes and creative development into training.     

Psychosocial Genetic Counseling in the Post-Nondirective Era: A Point of View

For three decades nondirectiveness has served as the central ethos for genetic counseling. It has evolved from narrow definitions defining what should not be done to broad definitions that promote active counseling skills in support of client autonomy and informed decision making. As broad definitions have been formulated, the term nondirective has become largely irrelevant to their content; it persists primarily as a historic relic. It has thus become an impediment to creative theory and clinical practice. I propose that nondirectiveness be replaced as the central ethos, while relevant components (providing balanced information, not imposing the counselor's values) are retained as elements of practice and ethics. This raises the question of what principle(s) should be adopted as a new guiding ethos. To promote a discussion of that issue I propose that the central ethos of genetic counseling should be to bring the psychosocial component into every aspect of the work.     

Teaching Helping Skills Courses: Creative Activities to Reduce Anxiety

Helping skills courses play a vital role in counseling curriculum, but also tend to bring excessive anxiety for students, to the point of impeding their ability to successfully implement skills. This article describes specific creative and experiential activities, aimed at reducing anxiety in a helping skills course for counselors-in-training.     

Creative Interventions for Teaching Empathy in the Counseling Classroom

Empathy is a foundational, necessary component of successful counseling. Relaying an understanding of empathy, including the components and science behind the phenomenon, is critical to the development of counselors-in-training. In addition, creative practice is a pillar of professional counseling, and is linked to experiential learning and meaningful integration of new knowledge in counselor education. The purpose of this article is to provide a review of the definitions of empathy, provide current literature on the science of empathy, and discuss specific creative interventions to use within counseling courses to increase empathic knowledge and skills.     

The Confluence of Technology and Narrative Approaches in Group Work

Abstract

This article illustrates procedures for using e-journals as a creative and adjunctive approach in group work. Incorporating e-mail based journaling as an ancillary form of group interaction allows members to communicate via written channels, and creates new ways for clients to relate in the group. This article outlines how leaders can use narrative theory to construct e-mail based writing exercises in group settings. Borrowing from established narrative techniques, specific interventions are provided for using interactive e-mails in each group stage. Finally, detailed instructions for establishing encrypted and confidential e-mail communications are provided, and implications and limitations for establishing e-mail based communication systems are overviewed.     

Seeing is Remembering

Abstract

Working with children and adolescents in any therapeutic setting can be a challenge. Counselors who take on the task of working with this population must have a multitude of skills and tools at their disposal. This article outlines the importance of making counseling experiential for young clients by discussing several creative counseling interventions. This article focuses on the use of props with children and adolescents. Sample dialogue is offered to demonstrate creative interventions that enhance counseling with children and make the work memorable.     

Using Expressive Arts in Online Education to Identify Feelings

The authors of this article present two creative teaching activities to illustrate how online counselor education can use expressive arts to promote awareness of how one feels. Included is a discussion of this awareness of feelings, the downside of expressing feelings, creative arts in counselor education, and how counselor education can promote feeling experiences. Two examples of expressive arts are offered with a brief discussion.     

A Creative Model: The Three-Selves

This article presents a Three-Selves Model illuminating ways the self can be expressed: closed, absorbent, and flexible. This model integrates three counseling approaches which are described, and a creative poster is offered to illustrate the model. Then, the model is applied to a hypothetical case to reveal how the model can promote awareness, congruence, and choice.     

Using a Creative Intervention to Increase Self-Disclosure Among Mandated Juveniles with Co-Occurring Disorders

Abstract

Counselors providing treatment within the juvenile justice system encounter numerous challenges that are inherent in working with this population. One of the challenges includes providing treatment to adolescents who are entering the juvenile justice system with co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders. Given the challenges, creative interventions that enhance client motivation and the therapeutic relationship are especially needed. The purpose of this article is to propose a creative intervention that may enhance the therapeutic relationship, increase client investment in treatment, and facilitate client self-disclosure. A case illustration will be used to illustrate the intervention.     

COLLABORATING WITH THE UNCONSCIOUS OTHER

The analysand's capacity for making use of psychoanalytic treatment has been a subject of importance since the beginning of psychoanalysis. The author addresses an aspect of the difficulty encountered by analysands in achieving a psychic state that allows the creative use of free association, dreams, parapraxes and other spontaneous phenomena occurring during the course of treatment. He suggests that a very specific state of mind is essential to both the psychoanalytic process and the creative process. Using theoretical concepts derived from Freud, Klein and Bion, he develops the idea of an internal object relationship, 'the collaboration with the unconscious other', which forms the basis for both creative thinking and the psychoanalytic function of the personality. Creative thinking is distinguished from artistic endeavour and discussed as a universal potential, on which growth in psychoanalysis depends. The term 'unconscious other' is meant to signify the subjective experience of a foreign presence within oneself from which both spontaneous creative inspiration and involuntary psychic phenomena are felt to emanate. The author presents clinical material to suggest that paranoid-schizoid and depressive anxieties form obstacles to collaborating with the unconscious other, and must be worked through in order to achieve an analytic process.