CPCE Core Counseling Theories 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Structural family therapy, associated with Salvador Minuchin, primarily addresses:
- Multigenerational transmission of dysfunctional patterns
- Family organization, boundaries, and hierarchical structures (Correct answer)
- Narrative stories that maintain symptomatic behavior
- Behavioral reinforcement patterns within the family
Correct answer: Family organization, boundaries, and hierarchical structures
Minuchin's structural approach maps and restructures the family's organizational patterns — subsystems, boundaries, and hierarchies — to reduce symptoms.
Question 2: In acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), 'psychological flexibility' involves:
- The ability to suppress unwanted thoughts before they cause distress
- Contacting the present moment fully while changing or persisting in behavior guided by values (Correct answer)
- Challenging and replacing cognitive distortions with more realistic thoughts
- Reducing symptom frequency through incremental exposure hierarchies
Correct answer: Contacting the present moment fully while changing or persisting in behavior guided by values
ACT defines psychological flexibility as the capacity to be in full contact with the present moment and, based on what the situation affords, to change or persist in behavior in the service of chosen values.
Question 3: The 'ABC model' in CBT refers to:
- Attachment, Behavior, and Cognition as three interconnected systems
- Antecedent, Behavior, and Consequence in operant conditioning analysis
- Activating event, Belief, and emotional/behavioral Consequence (Correct answer)
- Awareness, Boundary contact, and Closure in Gestalt therapy
Correct answer: Activating event, Belief, and emotional/behavioral Consequence
Ellis's ABC model holds that it is not the Activating event (A) but the Belief (B) about that event that determines the emotional and behavioral Consequence (C).
Question 4: Which theorist is credited with developing the concept of 'unconditional positive regard' as a therapeutic condition?
- Abraham Maslow
- Carl Rogers (Correct answer)
- Fritz Perls
- Viktor Frankl
Correct answer: Carl Rogers
Carl Rogers identified unconditional positive regard — accepting the client without judgment or conditions — as one of the three necessary and sufficient conditions for therapeutic change.
Question 5: In strategic family therapy, the technique of 'prescribing the symptom' (paradoxical intervention) works by:
- Reinforcing symptomatic behavior until the client voluntarily stops it
- Directing the client to intentionally perform the symptom, disrupting its involuntary quality (Correct answer)
- Labeling the symptom as positive to reframe its meaning within the family
- Prescribing medication alongside behavioral interventions for faster symptom relief
Correct answer: Directing the client to intentionally perform the symptom, disrupting its involuntary quality
When a therapist prescribes the symptom, the client must choose to perform it deliberately, which often undermines the symptom's automatic, involuntary nature.
Question 6: The psychoanalytic concept of 'resistance' in counseling is BEST understood as:
- The client's conscious refusal to follow the therapist's recommendations
- Any client behavior that impedes awareness of unconscious material (Correct answer)
- A sign that the therapeutic alliance has broken down irreparably
- The client's realistic appraisal that change is not possible
Correct answer: Any client behavior that impedes awareness of unconscious material
In psychoanalytic theory, resistance refers to unconscious forces (not necessarily conscious refusal) that oppose the emergence of repressed material into awareness.
Question 7: A counselor using EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) relies on which core theoretical premise?
- Traumatic memories are stored as narrative texts that must be reauthored
- Bilateral stimulation facilitates the adaptive processing of disturbing memories (Correct answer)
- Exposure to feared stimuli in imagination reduces conditioned anxiety responses
- Cognitive restructuring must precede any emotional processing of trauma
Correct answer: Bilateral stimulation facilitates the adaptive processing of disturbing memories
Shapiro's Adaptive Information Processing model proposes that bilateral stimulation (eye movements, taps, tones) facilitates the brain's natural memory processing system to adaptively integrate traumatic memories.
CPCE Core Counseling Theories 5
Structural family therapy, associated with Salvador Minuchin, primarily addresses: