DVD Transcipt
The following pages include verbatim transcripts of twelve role-plays that demonstrate the twelve theories in sections I, II, III, and IV of the book. Each transcript is preceded by a short description of the theory. These descriptions, the role-plays, as well as a discussion that follows each role play (not included here) can be found on the accompanying DVD that your instructor may show in class. As you read these transcripts, reflect back on the chapter with which it is associated and consider if the manner in which the therapist worked was the way you had imagined it to be after having read the chapter.
Section I: Psychodynamic Approaches Page
Freudian Psychoanalysis
Jung’s Analytical Psychology
Individual Psychology (Adlerian Therapy)
Section II: Existential-Humanistic Approaches
Existential Therapy
Gestalt Therapy
Person-Centered Counseling
Section III: Cognitive-Behavioral Approaches
Behavior Therapy
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
Cognitive Therapy
Reality Therapy
Section IV: Post-modern Approaches
Narrative Therapy
Solution-Focused Behavior Therapy
Freudian Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis proposes that our personality develops through a complex interaction between the expression of our instincts and our early childhood environment where the child encounters and internalizes shame and guilt. It is an in-depth therapy that assumes much of our behavior is unconsciously driven and that there is value in bringing unconscious motivations to awareness.
In this approach, the therapist is experienced as a parent figure, and therapy ideally evolves as a more positive parenting process. This process occurs over a long period of time as the client builds what is called a “transference” relationship with the analyst. This transference relationships mimics early family relationships and offers rich material for the client to examine. The transference relationship allows the client to acknowledge forbidden and repressed thoughts and feelings in a safe environment and to integrate these into conscious awareness. The alternative is that the latent unconscious content remains destructive to the client’s sense of well-being and personal relationships, manifesting in such symptoms as anxiety, depression, conflicts, or addictions. The interpretation of dreams and free association became two of Freud’s primary therapeutic techniques for accessing repressed material from the past.
Let’s take a look at how Dr. Paula Justice uses dream analysis in her work with Jeannie, as she examines some repressed feelings regarding the death of her father.
Dr. Justice: Hi. Good to see you again. Last session I know you said you had a significant dream that we didn’t have time to really process. I was wondering if you’d like to start with that today.
Jeannie: I really would because it still is with me, and it feels like a really big dream. It starts off in a sense of…I’ve been invited to this wedding, and I’m aware that I’m talking to…I think it’s the grandfather. And, well when I say grandfather he’s my age, so it’s not white beard or…and I’m aware that…there’s such a masculine feeling talking to him. I’m aware that his son is also present, and the grandson. The wedding’s about the daughter. But I’m looking at him – I mean, talking with the grandfather, and…there are just…all three men, but the grandfather he’s so masculine. I’m aware that he’s handsome, that he – that all of the men in the family are, that there’s a sense of strength, you know? I’m just very attracted to the whole family in this way.
Dr. Justice: So there’s these three generations of sort of strong, masculine, handsome men.
Jeannie: Yes.
Dr. Justice: And this is the wedding of the daughter.
Jeannie: Right. Right. And what seems to be so special about this is that the daughter gets to have the wedding exactly the way she wants to. And in fact it’s almost as if she’s…and I don’t want to say spoiled because I don’t think that she’s spoiled, but she has all this incredible attention by all the men in the family. And she is told that she can have it exactly the way she wants. And it’s an extraordinary request that she’s asked for.
Dr. Justice: Hmm. Now, these three men; do they remind you of anyone?
Jeannie: Hmm. Now that you’re saying that I, I know that when I see them in my mind’s eye they remind me somewhat of my brothers – my brothers are very handsome.
Dr. Justice: Mhmm.
Jeannie: And the…so there’s this sense of the father, the grandfather…I’m aware, I mean, he looks kind of like my brothers as well. So, there’s that sense of the handsome, strong male.
Dr. Justice: So you’re the…sister, in a way, to these handsome men.
Jeannie: Yes. Yes.
Dr. Justice: And in the dream the sister is marrying. And you said she has a very special request – what was that request?
Jeannie: She wants to jump from an airplane, on a stallion, into the ocean, in her wedding dress.
Dr. Justice: Whew. And what kind of airplane is this?
Jeannie: Well, it’s kind of like a cargo, I guess you would call it, a cargo plane, because the back end opens up and it’s like there’s a ramp. I see her, in my mind’s eye again, I can see her in her wedding dress on this beautiful stallion. The ramp goes down, and she leaps into the ocean, and the horse’s hoof catches on the ramp.
Dr. Justice: Hmm. So there’s sort of a stumble as she come out of the…
Dr. Justice and Jeannie Together: Out of the plane.
Dr. Justice: Ok. And this leaping out of a plane over water – does this remind you of anything?
Jeannie: Well, the part that really grabs me the most was, one: that she gets to ‘have it her way’ so to speak…the ocean, well I’ve loved the water. That the father has allowed her to do this, has given her this as a gift so she can have this wedding…
Dr. Justice: And what about your own father?
Jeannie: You know, just when I was…Yeah. How strange, you know? I just remembered that my father, who…again, I’m going back and forth in my head about several different things as a daughter. And he was a pilot.
Dr. Justice: Hmm. I remember you saying he died when you were very young.
Jeannie: I was wondering if you had remembered that I had told you that. I was four, and he was flying in the Air Force, and he was lost, actually, over the Gulf of Mexico. His ejection seat went off, and…
Dr. Justice: So he sort of jumped out of a plane.
Jeannie: What you’re making me think about is the connection with this good-looking grandfather too, and the whole masculine piece of it that I feel like I missed in my life. And as you know, my husband…had a terrible accident recently. And I’m aware that I didn’t have my father to walk me down the aisle. I’m aware that I have always wanted to be a Daughter. I’m aware that I love the sense of my husband, who was for the first time in my life, I think, a very strong masculine force. And I have felt protected by him. And now he’s wounded.
Dr. Justice: Mhmm.
Jeannie: And you know, that idea of that horse stumbling…the ramp reminds me of how my husband is now paralyzed. And he has to…the only way he can get around is with a van that has a ramp on it. And so he’s now broken, or wounded.
Dr. Justice: So the dream really brings up that longing for the strong masculine, for the father that you lost so early in life, the masculine strength that you had in your husband but, in a way that’s been a little lost with his disability, his accident.
Jeannie: You know, and that’s why I think the dream impacted me so much, because of that sense of longing, and sorrow that comes up, wells up in me. And I hadn’t made that connection with my loss of my dad. And you know, it’s so funny even to say the word ‘dad.’ I speak of him as a father because I didn’t call him ‘dad.’ I don’t remember that, or ‘daddy.’ So when I think of a strong masculine, and I had it for a while: the courage. He was a jet pilot, and here’s my husband a motorcyclist, a spelunker – all the loves of the physical. And that’s, I think, what I do connect with the masculine: being strong, and adventurous, and courageous.
Dr. Justice: And in the dream, you sort of leap, as the daughter figure, you leap – she leaps – from the plane into the water, which is where your father was lost, in reality. Over the water. So you’re almost, it’s almost a wish to join him.
Jeannie: You know, there is… I think, part of that longing, now that you bring that up, it’s probably what I would call…I feel like sort of a questioning of being here, when I’ve suffered so much loss, to join him is what you’re saying? There’s probably some kind of longing for me to join with him? Wow. Ok, that makes sense.
Dr. Justice: And that would be sort of magic, to be able to join with that strong masculine: have your father back, have your husband whole again.
Jeannie: If only. If only.
Dr. Justice: And that wish, of course, doesn’t mean that you’re spoiled.
Jeannie: Well thank you for that one. You know I think that there is a piece of it, if I could have it my way, if I could have the masculine protect me, to give me, to support me, you know, if I had a father…what would that have been like for me?
Dr. Justice: And knowing that, knowing that you have those feelings that this dream has surfaced for you, how does that sort of inform your waking life today?
Jeannie: You know, in telling you, and you asking me some of these questions, I’m really aware of a sense of – I’ve started breathing better…I think it brings some sort of comfort knowing that there’s a connection this way, you know, that I can make that connection, that I know that I long for that. So thank you.
Dr. Justice: Well thank you for sharing that.
Jeannie: I feel much better. Thank you.
Dr. Justice: Good.
Jung’s Analytical Psychology
In Jungian analysis there is an assumption that the individual achieves well-being through the exploration of what Carl Jung called the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious contains repressed material from childhood and is symbolized by Jung’s archetype of the Shadow self, which represents all parts of the psyche unacceptable to self and others. Jung believed that the most important task of early adulthood is to bring the contents of the Shadow self to awareness and integrate it into the conscious personality. The Shadow manifests as the opposite of Jung’s concept of the Persona, or our public mask.
In contrast, the collective unconscious is a universal and transpersonal component of the psyche that contains all human experience and potential. Once the Shadow has been embraced, the client can continue in the process of what Jung called Individuation, a gradual incorporation of universal archetypal patterns into everyday experience. These archetypes provide blueprints for creative development and manifest in our dreams, art, religious symbols, and myths. Two of the most significant archetypes are the anima, which represents the feminine within all males, and the animus, which represents the masculine within all females.
Jung believed that the unconscious could be accessed through the imagination as manifested in dreams, free association, images and symbols, as well as what Jung called Active Imagination. Exploring these symbols and images are a means of understanding the past, relieving psychological symptoms, and finding guidance in creating a full and more meaningful life.
In this role-play, watch how Dr. Paula Justice works with Carin as they explore dream images to help the client acknowledge and embrace her Shadow self and how it might be integrated into her public self in waking life.
Dr. Justice: Well welcome back, it’s good to see you.
Carin: Good to see you too.
Dr. Justice: And the last time we were together, you said you had an interesting dream that you thought was important to what we were talking about. Can you sort of describe that at this point?
Carin: Yes. Well, I was in a shower room, and I remember being surrounded by extremely obsese women—like 3 or 4 or 500 pounds. And I remember walking though it, and we all were naked, we had no clothes on, but I remember being so proud that I was the only thin one there. But all these women…I just was disgusted by them. I couldn’t believe that they were in this shower room with me.
Dr. Justice: And so how did you feel when you woke up from this dream?
Carin: Well I did feel pretty disgusted at how someone could let themselves get like that. I just am turned off by it, that lack of self-control. I felt proud also, in my dream, because I was so different from the rest of them and I had a certain amount of self-control and I was doing good. So proud and disgusted.
Dr. Justice: Ok. And do you have any sense of…we had talked about day’s residue, how this might relate to your waking life.
Carin: Yes. Well, I’m doing these pageants: I’m doing Miss Virginia Beach and Miss Portsmouth Seawall. And especially for Miss Portsmouth Seawall right now I’m really dieting. And I’ve lost about five pounds in the past two weeks, and that’s a lot for me; I don’t usually fluctuate like that.
Dr. Justice: Mhmm.
Carin: And so I’m not allowing myself to eat everything I would like to, so I think that that is definitely being perceived in my dream as my daily residue, is people that can eat. And I almost like them, but I’m still proud of myself, so it’s that tearing emotionally.
Dr. Justice: Ok. So being very conscious about your own eating and your own weight because of the pageants may have prompted this dream.
Carin: Oh yes. Because we have to be in a swimsuit in front of everyone.