Theoretical Approaches

Cognitive Group Psychotherapy:

Anger Management - great for domestic violence
Chemical Dependency and Alcohol Abuse through Rational Recovery
Phobias
Anorexia
Bulimia
Depression
Acculturation

Morris Psicologia provides psychological services for individuals, families, couples, and groups.

Below is a list of the various interventions we use.  This list is not exhaustive as we view each client as an individual and requiring individual psychological interventions that match their personality and desires.  Sometimes, a technique that is successful with one person will have less success with another.  It is up to the client and therapist to discover which approach best fits the client's needs.  All of these terms are described in the paragraphs below.

For the Individual:
Cognitive Psychology
Behavioral Therapy - great with children
Erikson's Theory of Personality - great for parents
Gestalt Therapy
Analytical Psychology
Solution Focused Brief Therapy
Individual Psychology
Developmental Psychology
Humanistic Psychology
Critical Theory
Psychoanalytic Theory:
a.  Psychoanalysis
     Object Relations Theory
b.  Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
Attachment Theory

For the Family:
 
Solution Focused Brief Family Therapy (SFBFT,) often referred to as simply 'solution focused therapy' or 'brief therapy', is a type of talking therapy that is based upon social constructionist philosophy. It focuses on what families want to achieve through therapy rather than on the problem(s) that made them to seek help. The approach does not focus on the past, but instead, focuses on the present and future. The therapist/counselor uses respectful curiosity to invite the family to envision their preferred future and then therapist and family start attending to any moves towards it whether these are small increments or large changes. To support this, questions are asked about the family’s story, strengths and resources, and about exceptions to the problem.  Solution focused therapists believe that change is constant. By helping people identify the things that they wish to have changed in their life and also to attend to those things that are currently happening that they wish to continue to have happen, SFBT therapists help families to construct a concrete vision of a preferred future for themselves. The SFBT therapist then helps the family to identify times in their current life that are closer to this future, and examines what is different on these occasions. By bringing these small successes to their awareness, and helping them to repeat these successful things they do when the problem is not there or less severe, the therapists helps the family move towards the preferred future they have identified.  Solution focused work can be seen as a way of working that focuses exclusively or predominantly at two things. 1) Supporting people to explore their preferred futures. 2) Exploring when, where, with whom and how pieces of that preferred future are already happening. While this is often done using a social constructionist perspective the approach is practical and can be achieved with no specific theoretical framework beyond the intention to keep as close as possible to these two things.
 
Narrative Therapy is a form of psychotherapy using narrative.  Briefly, narrative approaches hold that identity is chiefly shaped by narratives or stories, whether uniquely personal or culturally general. Identity conclusions and performances that are problematic for individuals or groups signify the dominance of a problem-saturated story.  Problem-saturated stories gain their dominance at the expense of preferred, alternative stories that often are located in marginalized discourses. These marginalized knowledges and identity performances are disqualified or invisibilized by discourses that have gained hegemonic prominence through their acceptance as guiding cultural narratives. Examples of these subjugating narratives include capitalism; psychiatry/psychology; patriarchy; heterosexism; Eurocentricity.  Furthermore, binaries such as healthy/unhealthy; normal/abnormal; and functional/dysfunctional ignore both the complexities of peoples’ lived experiences as well as the personal and cultural meanings that may be ascribed to their experiences in context.
 
Systemic Therapy is a school of psychology which seeks to address people not on individual level, as had been the focus of earlier forms of therapy, but as people in relationship, dealing with the interactions of groups and their interactional patterns and dynamics.  This has a direct impact on the praxis of systemic therapy which approaches problems practically rather than analytically, i.e. it does not attempt to determine past causes as does the psychoanalytic approach, nor does it assign diagnosis (who is sick, who is a victim), rather systemic therapy seeks instead to identify stagnant patterns of behavior in groups of people such as a family, and address those patterns directly, irrespective of analysis of cause. A key point here of this postmodern perspective then is not a denial of absolutes, but far more a humility and recognition on the part of the therapist that they do not hold the power to change people or systems, rather the systemic therapist's role is to help systems to change themselves by introducing creative “nudges," "Systemic therapy neither attempts a 'treatment of causes' nor of symptoms, rather it gives living systems nudges that help them to develop new patterns together, taking on a new organizational structure that allows growth.”  Thus systemic therapy differs from analytic forms of therapy, including psychoanalytic or psychodynamic forms of family therapy in systemic therapy's focus on practically addressing current relationship patterns rather than analyzing causes such as subconscious impulses or childhood truama.  Systemic therapy also differs from family systems therapy in that it addresses other living systems (i.e. groups of people) in addition to the family, for example businesses. In addition to families and business, the systemic approach is increasingly being implemented in the fields of education, politics, psychiatry, social work, and family medicine.
 
Family Therapy, also referred to as couple and family therapy and family systems therapy, is a branch of psychotherapy that works with families and couples in intimate relationships to nurture change and development. It tends to view change in terms of the systems of interaction between family members. It emphasizes family relationships as an important factor in psychological health.  What the different schools of family therapy have in common is a belief that, regardless of the origin of the problem, and regardless of whether the clients consider it an "individual" or "family" issue, involving families in solutions is often beneficial. This involvement of families is commonly accomplished by their direct participation in the therapy session. The skills of the family therapist thus include the ability to influence conversations in a way that catalyzes the strengths, wisdom, and support of the wider system.  In the field's early years, many clinicians defined the family in a narrow, traditional manner usually including parents and children. As the field has evolved, the concept of the family is more commonly defined in terms of strongly supportive, long-term roles and relationships between people who may or may not be related by blood.  Family therapy has been used effectively in the full range of human dilemmas; there is no category of relationship or psychological problem that has not been addressed with this approach.
 
Strategic Family Therapy is one of the major models of both family and brief psychotherapy.  Strategic family therapy seeks to address specific problems that can be addressed in a shorter time frame than other therapy modalities. The therapist seeks to identify the symptoms within the family that are the cause of the family’s current problems, and fix these problems. In strategic family therapy the problems of the clients stem not from their family’s behaviors toward the client, but instead it is the symptoms of the family that need to be corrected. In strategic terms a symptom is the repetitive sequence that keeps the process going. The symptomatic person simply denies any intent to control by claiming the symptom is involuntary.  Since strategic family therapy seeks to change family dynamics on multiple levels that may contradict one another, understanding how to achieve first-order change and second-order change are key for strategic family therapy's success. First-order change, are those symptoms that are superficial and obvious to correct. For example pointing out body language within the family. Second-order change would be the more difficult to achieve changes within the very basic construct of a family structure, to bring about positive changes.  Strategic family therapy differs from many other models of therapy in that the therapist takes a more hands on approach to fixing the family’s problems, and attempts to insert themselves into the problem as part of the solution to the family’s problems. Most other models of therapy stay away from a format like this.  Strategic family therapy appears to be a therapy that can be used to address long standing family issues in a new and imaginative manner.
 
Structural Family Therapy (SFT) is a method of psychotherapy developed by Salvador Minuchin which addresses problems in functioning within a family. Structural Family Therapists strive to enter, or "join", the family system in therapy in order to understand the invisible rules which govern its functioning, map the relationships between family members or between subsets of the family, and ultimately disrupt dysfunctional relationships within the family, causing it to stabilize into healthier patterns.  Minuchin contends that pathology rests not in the individual, but within the family system.  SFT utilizes, not only a unique systems terminology, but also a means of depicting key family parameters diagrammatically. Its focus is on the structure of the family, including its various substructures. In this regard, Minuchin is a follower of systems and communication theory, since his structures are defined by transactions among interrelated systems within the family. He subscribes to the systems notions of wholeness and equifinality, both of which are critical to his notion of change.  An essential trait of SFT is that the therapist actually enters, or "joins", with the family system as a catalyst for positive change.
 
Cognitive Family Psychology is a subdiscipline of psychology exploring internal mental processes. It is the study of how people perceive, remember, think, speak, and solve problems.  Cognitive family psychology is radically different from previous psychological approaches in two key ways:  1.  It accepts the use of the scientific method, and generally rejects introspection as a valid method of investigation, unlike symbol-driven approaches such as Freudian psychology.  2.  It explicitly acknowledges the existence of internal mental states (such as belief, desire and motivation.)  In its early years, critics held that the empiricism of cognitive psychology combined with its acceptance of internal mental states was contradictory. However, the sibling field of cognitive nuroscience had provided evidence of physiological brain states which directly correlate with mental states. In that sense, cognitive neuroscience has vindicated the central assumption of cognitive family psychology.
 
Behavior Family Therapy (behavior modification) is an approach to psychotherapy based on learning theory which aims to treat spycholpathology through techniques designed to reinforce desired and eliminate undesired behaviors.  This is an excellent intervention with children.  Behaviour family therapy is based upon the principles of classical conditioning and operant conditioning. Contingency management programs are a direct product of research from operant conditioning. These programs have been highly successful.  Systematic desensitization and exposure and response prevention both evolved from respondent conditioning and have also received considerable research.  Social skills training teaches families skills to access reinforcers and lessen life punishment.  Operant conditioning procedures in meta-analysis had the largest effect size for training social skills, followed by modeling, coaching, and social cognitive techniques in that order.
 
Attachment Theory describes the dynamics of long-term relationships between humans especially as in families and life-long friends. Its most important tenet is that an infant needs to develop a relationship with at least one primary caregiver for social and emotional development to occur normally, and that further relationships build on the patterns developed in the first relationships. Attachment theory is an interdisciplinary study encompassing the fields of psychological, evolutionary and ethological theory. Infants become attached to adults who are sensitive and responsive in social interactions with them, and who remain as consistent caregivers for some months during the period from about six months to two years of age. When an infant begins to crawl and walk they begin to use attachment figures (familiar people) as a secure base to explore from and return to. Parental responses lead to the development of patterns of attachment; these, in turn, lead to internal working models which will guide the individual's perceptions, emotions, thoughts and expectations in later relationships. Separation anxiety or grief following the loss of an attachment figure is considered to be a normal and adaptive response for an attached infant. These behaviours may have evolved because they increase the probability of survival of the child.  There are four attachment patterns in infants: secure attachment, avoidant attachment, anxious attachment, and disorganized attachment.  In the 1980s, the theory was extended to attachement in adults.  Other interactions may be construed as including components of attachment behaviour; these include peer relationships at all ages, romantic and sexual attraction and responses to the care needs of infants or the sick and elderly.  Attachment theory has since become "the dominant approach to understanding early social development, and has given rise to a great surge of empirical research into the formation of children's close relationships" and the concepts have become generally accepted.  Attachment theory has formed the basis of new therapies and informed existing ones, and its concepts have been used in the formulation of social and childcare policies to support the early attachment relationships of children.
 
For Couples:
 
Gottman Relationship Counseling - In a 1998 study, Dr. John Gottman developed a model to predict which newlywed couples will remain married and which will divorce four to six years later. He claims that his model has 90% accuracy. He also claims 81% percent accuracy for another model about which marriages survived after seven to nine years.  His prediction method, which relies on Paul Ekman's method of analyzing human emotion and microexpressions.  In his book, The Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work, Gottman discusses behaviors that he has observed in marriages that are successful and those that are detrimental to marriage based on his research conducted at his lab in Seattle, Washington. He has outlined seven principles that will reinforce the positive aspects of a relationship and help marriages endure during the rough moments.

1. Enhance Your Love Maps. Gottman defines a love map as the place in your brain where you store information pertaining to your partner. This is crucial in really knowing your partner, their dreams, hopes, interests, and maintaining their interest throughout the relationship.
2. Nurture Your Fondness and Admiration. This means laying down a positive view about your spouse, respecting and appreciating their differences.
3. Turn Toward Each Other Instead of Away. Acknowledging your partner's small moments in life and orienting yourself towards them will maintain that necessary connection that is vital for the relationship.
4. Let Your Partner Influence You. It is important to maintain your own identity in a relationship, but it is equally important to yield to your partner and give in. If both partners allow one another this influence, then they will learn to respect one another on a deeper level.
5. Solve Your Solvable Problems. It is important to compromise on issues that can be resolved, which Gottman believes can be accomplished by these five steps: soften your startup, learn to make and receive repair attempts, soothe yourself and each other, compromise, and be tolerant of each other’s faults.
6. Overcome Gridlock. Major issues that cannot be resolved because both partners’ views are so fundamentally different involves understanding of the other person and deep communication. The goal is to at least get to a position that allows the other person to empathize with the partner's view, even if a compromise cannot be reached.
7. Create Shared Meaning. Create a shared value system that continually connects the partners through rituals/traditions, shared roles and symbols.