MFT National Exam Questions With
Verified Answers
Detriangulation - answerBowen: The process by which an individual removes self from
emotional field of two others
Formulation - answerA therapeutic hypothesis about what is responsible for creating and
maintaining a client's presenting problem
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Detriangulation - answer✔Bowen: The process by which an individual removes self from
emotional field of two others
Formulation - answer✔A therapeutic hypothesis about what is responsible for creating and
maintaining a client's presenting problem
Process - answer✔How members of a family or group relate; in contrast to content, which is
what they talk about
Treatment contract - answer✔An explicit agreement between the client and therapist that
specifies the terms of therapy, including things such as frequency and length of sessions, who is
to attend, and fees
Differentiation of self - answer✔Bowen: Psychological seperation of intellect and emotions and
independence of self from others; opposite of fusion; major goal of therapy
Emotional cutoff - answer✔Bowen: term for flight from an unresolved emotional attachment
Family life cycle - answer✔Systems theory and Bowen: stages of fam life from separation from
parents to marriage, children, growing older, retirement, to death
Family of origin - answer✔Bowen: a person's parents and siblings: usually refers to the original
nuclear family of an adult
Fusion - answer✔Bowen: Blurring of psychological boundaries between self and others and a
contamination of emotional and intellectual functioning; oppositive of differentiation
Genogram - answer✔Bowen: Schematic diagram of family system; major technique
I-position - answer✔Bowen: Statement acknowleding one's personal opinions rather than
blaming others or moralizing; both clients and therapist can use
Multigenerational transmission process - answer✔Bowen: projection of varying degrees of
immaturity to different children in the same family; the child who is most involved in the family
emotional process emerges with the lowest level of differentiation and passes problems on to
succeeding generations
Process questions - answer✔Bowen: Designed to help family members think about their own
reactions to what others are doing; major therapy technique
Relationships experiments - answer✔Bowen: Suggestions for trying new ways of responding to
family stresses, designed more to help family members understand how emotional processes
work than to solve problems; major therapy technique
Triangle - answer✔Bowen: a 3 person system; the smallest stable unit of human relations;
technique of therapy is to neutralize this
Triangulation - answer✔Bowen: Detouring conflict between two people by involving a third
person, stabilzing the relationship between the original pair, but freezes conflict in place
Undifferentiated family ego mass - answer✔Bowen: early term for emotional "stuck-
togetherness" or fusion in the family, especially prominent in schizophrenic families
Emotional fusion - answer✔Bowen: often the major problem in families; grows out of an
instinctual need for others but is an unhealthy distortion of the need, based on anxious
attachment
Coaching - answer✔Bowen: therapist hopes to avoid taking over for clients or becoming
embroiled in family triangles; asking questions designed to help people figure out family
emotional processes and their role in them
Murray Bowen - answer✔Bowen Family Systems Therapy
Philip Guerin - answer✔Student of Murray Bowen
Circular causality - answer✔Systems theory and Strategic: idea that events are related through a
series of interacting loops or repeating cycles
Circular questioning - answer✔Systems theory and Strategic: method of interviewing developed
by the Milan Associates in which questions are asked that highlight differences among family
members
Communications theory - answer✔Systems theory and Strategic: study of relationships in terms
of the exchange of verbal and nonverbal messages
Cybernetics - answer✔Systems theory and Strategic: study of control processes in systems,
especially analysis of the flow of information in closed systems
Directives - answer✔Strategic: homework assignments designed to help families interrupt
homeostatic patterns of problem-maintaining behavior
Double bind - answer✔Strategic: a conflict created when a person receives contradictory
messages on different levels of abstraction in an important relationship and cannot leave or
comment; Milton Erickson's technique of prescribing resistance
Family homeostasis - answer✔Strategic: tendency of families to resist change to maintain a
steady state
Family ritual - answer✔Strategic: technique used by Milan Associates that prescribes a set of
actions designed to change a family system's rules
Family rules - answer✔Strategic: Descriptive term for redundant behavioral patterns
Feedback loops - answer✔Systems theory and Strategic: return of a portion of the output of a
system, especially when used to maintain the output within predetermined limits (negative
feedback) or to signal a need to modify the system (positive feedback)
First order change - answer✔Systems theory and Strategic: superficial change in a system that
stays invariant; mild adjustments in systems but system basically stays the same
Function of symptoms - answer✔Systems theory and Strategic: Idea that symptoms are often
ways to distract or protect family members from threatening conflicts
General systems theory - answer✔Strategic: biological model of living systems a whole entities
that maintain themselves through continuous input and output from the environment; developed
by Ludwig von Bertalanffy
Hierarchical structure - answer✔Strategic and Structural: Family functioning based on clear
generational boundaries, whereby the parents maintain control and authority
Identified patient - answer✔Systems theory and Strategic: the symptom bearer or official patient
Invariant prescription - answer✔Strategic: technique developed by Mara Selvini Palazzoli in
which parents are directed to mysteriously sneak away together
Meta communication - answer✔Strategic: every message has two levels, report and command;
the implied command or qualifying message
Neutrality - answer✔Strategic: Selvini Palazzoli's term for balanced acceptance of family
members
Ordeal - answer✔Strategic: paradoxical intervention in which the client is directed to do
something that is more of a hardship than the symptom
Paradoxical intervention - answer✔Strategic: technique used whereby the therapist directs family
members to continue their symptomatic behavior; if they conform, they admit control and expose
secondary gain; if they rebel, they give up their symptoms
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