IMPORTANT NOTICE:
SECURE TEST BANK
Mastering Competencies in Family Therapy
Chapter 10: Collaborative and Narrative Therapies
1. Much like solution-based therapists, postmodern therapists optimistically focus on which
of the following?
a. Problem solving
b. Facilitating hope
c. Family relationships
d. Client strengths and abilities
2. Which of the following statements most accurately fits for collaborative therapy?
a. It is based on Foucault’s philosophical writings.
b. The therapist facilitates a dialogical process.
c. The interventions used are very structured.
d. Social justice issues are regularly included in therapy conversations.
3. What is meant by collaborative therapy as a two-way dialogical process?
a. The therapist and client co-explore and co-create new understanding related to the
problem.
b. Therapists use scripted techniques to facilitate change.
c. Therapists interpret what the client is saying and reflect the interpretations back to
the client.
d. The therapist directs the meaning-making process in therapy.
4. In collaborative therapy, therapists take a not knowing stance. What does this mean?
a. The therapist does not prepare for the session prior to meeting the client.
b. The therapist does not assume they understand the client’s experience before the
client tells them about it.
c. The therapist does not know how to make a diagnosis.
d. The therapist does not know what the outcome of therapy will be.
5. Which of the following would NOT be considered collaborative in collaborative therapy?
a. A monologue
b. Using pejorative descriptions of clients
c. Offering opinions
d. All of the above
6. When a collaborative therapist asks the client questions to better understand the client’s
perspective, or inquires whether the client believes the therapist is understanding what the
client is saying, what type of stance is the therapist taking?
a. An impasse stance
b. A directive stance
c. A curious stance
d. A guiding stance
7. Which of the following statements would best describe the therapeutic relationship in
collaborative therapy?
a. A conversational partnership
b. A directive relationship
c. An empathic relationship
d. A loving partnership
8. When Andserson and Goolishian radically proposed the client as the expert, what did
they mean?
a. The therapist has no opinion of the client.
b. The therapist does not have a role in the therapeutic process.
c. The client’s thoughts, ideas, and opinions are valued.
d. The client knows in which direction therapy should move and dictates when.
9. When thinking of the client as expert in collaborative therapy, it may be helpful to think
of the client as holding more expertise in the area of __________and the therapist as
holding more expertise in the area of __________.
a. process; content
b. content; process
c. stories; interventions
d. interventions; stories
10. Collaborative therapists invite clients to provide feedback about the therapeutic process.
Which of the following does process NOT refer to?
a. Who is in the therapy session
b. The pacing of therapy
c. The types of questions asked
d. What needs to be talked about
11. In collaborative therapy, outer talk refers to which of the following?
a. Negative self talk
b. Positive self talk
c. The verbally spoken conversation between the participants in therapy
d. The verbal sharing of conversations in therapy with people outside of therapy
12. In collaborative therapy, inner talk refers to which of the following?
a. The thoughts a client is afraid to share with the therapist
b. Talk among members of the inner circle of the family
c. The internal conversation each individual is having during a conversation
d. Recurring self talk
13. In collaborative therapy, it is said that problems dissolve. What does this mean?
a. Participants in therapy find traditional solutions to their problems or issues during
the course of therapy
b. Participants’ understandings of their problems or issues evolve through the
dialogue of therapy.
c. Participants no longer have problems or issues to discuss in therapy.
d. Participants do not hold on tightly to their problems or issues.
14. Collaborative therapists work from a social constructionist, postmodern perspective,
which maintains that our realities are constructed in __________ and through
relationships.
a. language
b. congruence
c. dreams
d. collaboration
15. The overall goal of collaborative therapy is to increase the clients’ sense of __________
in their lives: the sense that they are competent and able to take meaningful action.
a. strength
b. agency
c. power
d. self-esteem
16. The process of transformation through dialogue is inherently and inescapably
__________. This means that the therapist risks being changed themselves in the context
of therapy with the client.
a. positive
b. collaborative
c. satisfying
d. mutual
17. Which of the following best describes appropriately unusual comments?
a. They disorient the person’s traditional form of thought.
b. They clearly fit within the client’s worldview while offering a new perspective.
c. They point out the obvious.
d. They passively disrupt a person’s worldview.
18. Which of the following types of questions, used in collaborative therapy, come naturally
from the dialogue of therapy rather than from professional theory?
a. Conversational questions
b. Unusual questions
c. Contagious questions
d. Conditional questions
19. A client lives in daily fear of having another psychotic episode after not having one for
over 10 years. She says that it is her illness that keeps her from moving forward in life.
The therapist says, “That’s interesting. You say you haven’t had an episode in 10 years,
so hallucinations don’t seem to be plaguing you these days. It sounds like the worry about
hallucinations is the problem at this point. Do you think of this as part of the original
problem, or is it a new problem that only developed after the first was resolved?” What is
the therapist doing with the client?
a. Mutual puzzling
b. Sharing inner dialogue
c. Making an appropriately unusual comment
d. Being public
20. Collaborative therapists handle professional matters — such as consulting with a
psychiatrist, speaking with a social worker, or filing papers with the court — by
discussing it first with the client. What is another way a collaborative therapist might say
this?
a. Being open
b. Being public
c. Being supportive
d. Being professional
21. In the process of collaborative reflecting teams, the goal is to develop diverse strands of
conversations so the client can choose those that resonate and those that do not. This is
achieved by having the reflecting team do which of the following?
a. The team observes the client behind a one-way mirror and consults only with the
therapist.
b. The team discusses the client while offering multiple perspectives as the client
listens.
c. The team sits in the therapy room with the therapist and client throughout the
session.
d. The team offers their evaluation and diagnosis of the client while the client is
listening.
22. Anderson offered several guidelines for the use of reflecting teams with clients. Which of
the following is NOT one of these guidelines?
a. Only use with the client’s permission.
b. Give the client permission to listen or not to listen.
c. Comment on what is seen or heard, not what is observed.
d. Talk from an expert perspective.
23. Because collaborative therapy is more a way of talking and being in the world, the
collaborative conversational process has been applied to numerous other contexts. Which
of the following is NOT one of these contexts?
a. In prison settings
b. In educational settings
c. In therapeutic research
d. In business consultations
24. Narrative therapy is based on what premise?
a. We live in our dreams as if they are reality.
b. We get “stuck” in the past.
c. We project our past onto our future.
d. We “story” and create meaning of life events.
25. Philosopher Michel Foucault described a central concept for narrative therapy: culturally-
generated stories about how life should go that are used to coordinate social behavior,
such as how married people should act, what happiness looks like, and how to be
successful. What did Foucault call these stories?
a. Dominant discourses
b. Local discourses
c. Oppressive discourses
d. Supportive discourses
26. From the narrative perspective, which of the following is TRUE about the view of
problems?
a. Problems are integrated into the person.
b. Problems are separate from the person.
c. Problems require reframing of their context.
d. Problems allow the person to fully experience personal awareness.
27. Instead of replacing the problem story with a problem-free story, narrative therapists help
their clients do which of the following?
a. Redefine the client’s problems as opportunities
b. Help the client realize how others have “wronged” them
c. Find new ways to view, interact with, and respond to problems in their lives by
redefining the role of problems
d. Speak their beliefs about the problem out loud, therefore realizing how absurd
they are
28. Which of the following does NOT allow the therapists to meet the problem, keeping the
problem separate from the person?
a. “When did the problem first enter your life?”
b. “Tell me about your impressions of your problem.”
c. “How has your relationship with the problem evolved over time?”
d. “Who else has been affected by the problem?”
29. The role of the therapist in narrative therapy is often described as which of the following?
a. Director
b. Coach
c. Guide
d. Co-author
30. A narrative therapist is working with a client. If the problem-saturated story does not play
out in its typical way, it is noted by the therapist as which of the following?
a. Unique outcomes
b. Sparkling events
c. Both A and B
d. Neither A nor B
31. A group of teenagers creates a subculture with different beauty standards, sexual norms,
vocabulary and friendship rules than are found in the adult culture. This would be known
as what type of discourse?
a. Dominant discourse
b. Local discourse
c. Oppressive discourse
d. Supportive discourse
32. Because narrative therapy is a post modern approach, it does not include a set of
predefined goals that can be used with all clients. It could be said, however, that the
broad goal of narrative therapy is which of the following?
a. To help clients enact their preferred realities and identities
b. To help clients reduce the symptoms of their presenting problem
c. To help clients find ways to communicate congruently
d. To help clients increase their sense of agency in their lives
33. A narrative therapist is working with a 17-year-old client, Alexa, and her mother
regarding Alexa’s struggles with an eating disorder. As therapy has progressed, and the
therapist has worked with Alexa to separate her from her problem, the therapist might
phrase a middle-phase goal in therapy in which of the following ways?
a. Increase instances of defiance in response to anorexia’s directions to not eat.
b. Increase food intake from less than one time daily to three times daily in six
weeks.
c. Reduce the rigid patterns that fuel the anorexic behavior.
d. Reduce the negative contact between Alexa and the anorexia.
34. In narrative therapy, the process or intervention of separating the person from the
problem is known as which of the following?
a. Deconstruction
b. Mapping
c. Externalization
d. Scaffolding
35. Externalization can have which of the following beneficial effects?
a. It increases unproductive conflict and blame between family members.
b. It highlights the times problems have had influence over the clients or family.
c. It invites people to unite in a struggle against the problem to reduce its negative
influence.
d. It encourages constant, unhelpful interaction with the problem.
36. In narrative therapy, letters are used for each of the following purposes EXCEPT?
a. To solidify preferred narratives
b. To scrutinize the problem story
c. To emphasize client agency
d. To consolidate gains in therapy
37. When working with perpetrators of domestic violence, Jenkins uses a nine step model
that requires the client do which of the following?
a. Take full responsibility for the violence and for ending it.
b. Externalize the violence and attack it.
c. Identify powerlessness against violence and succumb to it.
d. Identify the cause of the violence and reduce it.
38. Which of the following statements is TRUE about postmodern therapies?
a. Postmodern therapies integrate consideration of cultural issues at the most
fundamental level of their method.
b. They are often considered the quintessential approach for diverse populations.
c. Postmodern therapies are particularly suitable for clients from marginalized
groups.
d. All of the above.