MC Master of Counseling: Family and Couples Counseling 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A counselor working with a divorcing couple with children is MOST aligned with best practice when they:
- Advocate strongly for one parent's custody position to protect the children
- Maintain focus on the co-parenting relationship rather than the marital grievances (Correct answer)
- Refer the couple immediately to litigation support
- Avoid discussing children's needs to keep the couple focused on their relationship
Correct answer: Maintain focus on the co-parenting relationship rather than the marital grievances
In divorce counseling, the counselor's focus should shift to the co-parenting alliance and the children's well-being rather than relitigating marital grievances.
Question 2: The 'Milan Systemic' approach to family therapy is known for using:
- Paradoxical injunctions and long intersession intervals with a reflecting team (Correct answer)
- Enactment and boundary-setting interventions in-session
- Scaling questions and exception finding
- Genograms and differentiation coaching
Correct answer: Paradoxical injunctions and long intersession intervals with a reflecting team
The Milan model uses paradoxical interventions, long gaps between sessions (often a month), positive connotation, and a reflecting team to observe and comment on family patterns from a systemic perspective.
Question 3: A couple in therapy begins fighting intensely during a session. The therapist intervenes by having each partner slow down and describe what they are feeling physically. This technique is MOST consistent with:
- Strategic family therapy's use of directives
- Gottman's Physiological Self-Soothing and emotion regulation techniques (Correct answer)
- Structural therapy's enactment technique
- EFT's accessing and reprocessing of emotions
Correct answer: Gottman's Physiological Self-Soothing and emotion regulation techniques
Gottman's approach emphasizes physiological self-soothing to reduce flooding (physiological arousal), as productive conversation is impossible when partners are in fight-or-flight mode.
Question 4: In contextual family therapy (Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy), the concept of 'relational ethics' centers on:
- Legal and professional ethics governing the therapeutic relationship
- The balance of fairness, trustworthiness, and loyalty obligations between family members across generations (Correct answer)
- The ethical duty to report child abuse within family systems
- Cultural norms that define appropriate family roles and boundaries
Correct answer: The balance of fairness, trustworthiness, and loyalty obligations between family members across generations
Nagy's relational ethics focuses on the ledger of give-and-take, fairness, loyalty, and entitlement that underlies family relationships and is passed across generations.
Question 5: A couple reports sexual dissatisfaction as their primary concern. According to Masters and Johnson's sex therapy model, the FIRST intervention is typically:
- Prescribing sensate focus exercises to reduce performance anxiety (Correct answer)
- Administering psychoeducation about sexual dysfunctions and their causes
- Conducting individual assessments for psychiatric comorbidities
- Teaching cognitive restructuring to address sexual schemas
Correct answer: Prescribing sensate focus exercises to reduce performance anxiety
Sensate focus, developed by Masters and Johnson, is typically the foundational intervention in sex therapy, removing performance pressure by shifting attention from goal-oriented sex to sensory awareness.
Question 6: When a family counselor suspects child abuse based on information shared in a family session, they are legally obligated to:
- Consult with a supervisor before making any report to avoid false accusations
- Report the suspicion to child protective services regardless of family objections or therapeutic impact (Correct answer)
- Inform the family of the suspicion and give them opportunity to self-report first
- Document the suspicion in clinical notes and revisit the issue in the next session
Correct answer: Report the suspicion to child protective services regardless of family objections or therapeutic impact
Mandated reporter laws require counselors to report reasonable suspicion of child abuse immediately to child protective services; this obligation supersedes confidentiality and cannot be delegated to the family.
Question 7: A couple from a collectivist cultural background presents with the wife's parents living in the home and frequently interfering in marital decisions. Before intervening, a culturally sensitive counselor should FIRST:
- Psychoeducate the couple about healthy boundaries and enmeshment
- Explore the couple's own values around family involvement and assess what they experience as problematic (Correct answer)
- Recommend the in-laws move out to reduce conflict
- Refer the couple to a therapist with the same cultural background
Correct answer: Explore the couple's own values around family involvement and assess what they experience as problematic
Cultural humility requires the counselor to first explore the couple's own perceptions and values before imposing Western-centric frameworks about appropriate family involvement or boundaries.
MC Master of Counseling: Family and Couples Counseling 5
A counselor working with a divorcing couple with children is MOST aligned with best practice when they: