MFT Exam - Symbolic Experiential
The therapist openly shares their genuine emotional reactions with the family to deepen engagement and challenge rigid dynamics. This honesty models emotional expression and invites authenticity.
Symbolic Experiential:
Main Ideas:
Audio File 16
Symbolic Experiential Therapy, developed by Carl Whitaker (with contributors like August Napier and David Keith), is part of the Classical Schools of Family Therapy. Whitaker emphasized that anxiety is healthy and can be used constructively to promote growth. He believed that individual health fosters family health, and emotional suppression leads to dysfunction. The therapist’s authenticity and personality are central—therapy becomes a creative, spontaneous process rather than a structured technique. Whitaker viewed the therapist as a healer, artist, and catalyst, often taking a “grandparent role” with children to nurture and guide. The family, not the therapist, holds responsibility for change, and all members—even across generations—are encouraged to participate. Core interventions include the battle for structure and initiative, affective confrontation, and activating constructive anxiety, all aiming to deepen emotional experience, promote individuation, and strengthen family connections through genuine, existential encounters.
Key Terms
Symbolic Experiential:
Main Ideas:
Audio File 16
Symbolic Experiential Therapy, developed by Carl Whitaker (with contributors like August Napier and David Keith), is par...
Affective Confrontation:
Symbolic Experiential:
The therapist’s intentional confrontation with the family where he or she will directly and openly share his or her su...
Activating Constructive Anxiety:
Symbolic Experiential:
A Symbolic-Experiential Therapist’s effort to reframe symptoms as efforts toward building competence by focusing on th...
Battle for Initiative:
Symbolic Experiential:
After the therapist wins the battle for structure, the family must win the battle for initiative—that is, realize and ...
Battle for Structure:
Symbolic Experiential:
Whitaker stated that the therapist must first win the battle for structure if therapy is to be effective—this entails ...
Bilateral Pseudo-Therapy:
Symbolic Experiential:
Occurs when family members attempt to play therapist to one another—this is avoided.
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| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
Symbolic Experiential: Main Ideas: Audio File 16 | Symbolic Experiential Therapy, developed by Carl Whitaker (with contributors like August Napier and David Keith), is part of the Classical Schools of Family Therapy. Whitaker emphasized that anxiety is healthy and can be used constructively to promote growth. He believed that individual health fosters family health, and emotional suppression leads to dysfunction. The therapist’s authenticity and personality are central—therapy becomes a creative, spontaneous process rather than a structured technique. Whitaker viewed the therapist as a healer, artist, and catalyst, often taking a “grandparent role” with children to nurture and guide. The family, not the therapist, holds responsibility for change, and all members—even across generations—are encouraged to participate. Core interventions include the battle for structure and initiative, affective confrontation, and activating constructive anxiety, all aiming to deepen emotional experience, promote individuation, and strengthen family connections through genuine, existential encounters. |
Affective Confrontation: | Symbolic Experiential: The therapist’s intentional confrontation with the family where he or she will directly and openly share his or her subjective emotional experience of working with the family. |
Activating Constructive Anxiety: | Symbolic Experiential: A Symbolic-Experiential Therapist’s effort to reframe symptoms as efforts toward building competence by focusing on the positive attributes of anxiety as a means toward self-growth. |
Battle for Initiative: | Symbolic Experiential: After the therapist wins the battle for structure, the family must win the battle for initiative—that is, realize and demonstrate that they are responsible for change, not the therapist. |
Battle for Structure: | Symbolic Experiential: Whitaker stated that the therapist must first win the battle for structure if therapy is to be effective—this entails determining who attends the session, what time sessions are, how frequently sessions occur, and for how long. If the family is not willing to meet these expectations set by the therapist, then they are not prepared to invest in the growth-process and change would be unlikely. |
Bilateral Pseudo-Therapy: | Symbolic Experiential: Occurs when family members attempt to play therapist to one another—this is avoided. |
Fantasy Alternative: | Symbolic Experiential: Discussing problematic or stressful situations in fantasy based, “what if” terms or deemphasizing stressful situations by suggesting absurd fantasy alternatives (e.g. maybe if you medicated your husband, he wouldn’t be so emotional). |
Person of the Therapist: | Symbolic-Experiential Therapy attributes the psychological health and authenticity of the therapist as a person being a primary factor in effective therapeutic outcomes. The therapist is encouraged to be authentic and real with his or her clients, relying on the spontaneity of their emotional responses as they remain present with the family. |
Individuation: | Symbolic Experiential: A primary goal in growth-oriented therapies, encouraging each individual family member in becoming more and more of who they are. ~ not differentiation as in MRI but individuality and authenticity |
Flight Toward Health: | Symbolic Experiential: When a family would abruptly stop showing up for treatment, Whitaker would take this as a positive sign that the family experience profound growth and no longer requires therapeutic support. Whitaker would always be supportive of a family’s request to terminate therapy regardless of the phase of treatment. |
Redefining Symptoms: | Symbolic-Experiential Therapists will often redefine symptoms from pathological to efforts toward growth. |
Expanding Distress: | Symbolic Experiential: This is a process of expanding the symptom to the system, that is, expanding the distress to include each member, shifting the nature of anxiety within the family and reducing blame and scapegoating. |
Family Interaction: | Symbolic Experiential: Healthy family interaction in Experiential Therapy is traditionally characterized through flexibility and openness to life experiences. |
Existential Encounter: | Symbolic Experiential: The therapist’s willingness to both receive the family’s reactions to him as well as disclose his or her own reactions toward the family. |
Craziness: | Symbolic Experiential: Falls into 3 categories of being driven crazy, going crazy, or acting crazy. Different orientations of craziness as exhibited in dysfunctional families. |
Therapy of the Absurd: | Symbolic Experiential: Symbolic-Experiential Therapy may be referred to as absurd given its unrecognizable structure, spontaneous process, and therapist transparency. |
Therapeutic Double Bind: | Symbolic Experiential: When asked about a possible diagnosis, Whitaker would initiate a therapeutic double bind—that is, a relational diagnosis that is unlikely to ever change |
Teaming Roles: | Symbolic Experiential: Healthy members of a family may be intentionally paired into teaming roles by the therapist to encourage further healthy behavior by other family members. |
Co-Therapist: | Symbolic Experiential: Whitaker would always work with a co-therapist, as he believed this allowed him to be more crazy in session as he could rely on his co-therapist to ground him. In Symbolic-Experiential Therapy, the co-therapy team was used as a therapeutic tool. |
Bilateral Transference: | Symbolic Experiential: A therapist’s intentional maneuver to adapt to the language, accent, rhythm, or posture of the family. |