About Daniel J. Wiener // History of RfG // About Dramatic Enactment // Teaching Philosophy // FAQ
Statement of Teaching Philosophy
Daniel J. Wiener, Ph.D.
Summary
Approach
to MFT Training
Approach
to Classroom Teaching of MFT
Distinctive
Educational Practices
Approach
to Clinical Supervision
Contributions
of RfG to MFT Training
I teach both classroom and supervisory graduate courses in the Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT) program of the Department of Health and Human Service Professions at Central Connecticut State University. I have been teaching at the undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate levels throughout my professional career of 31 years. Since 1981 I have been providing MFT training and supervision to clinicians who had already obtained their terminal degrees in one of the mental health professions.
My Approach to MFT Training
I define my primary educational duty as stimulating and involving students
in learning both the substance of MFT and developing themselves as effective
healing and change agents for both their clients and themselves. The competent
practice of MFT requires a synthesis of knowledge, judgment, and presence
which cannot be imparted by conceptual learning alone. In my approach
to MFT education and training I therefore emphasize "use-of-self"
(also termed "person-of-therapist"). According to Laura Roberto,
"Use of self" means becoming aware of one's own embeddedness
of "self-in-family-system", and using this contextual awareness
as a filter in the evaluation of clinical families and systemic hypothesizing
that is necessary to family treatment." I have been using experiential
techniques (particularly action methods involving physical movement and
dramatic enactment) in both education and psychotherapy for over 20 years
(I first co-presented on action-oriented therapy at a professional conference
in 1978). I have found that including experiential learning promotes growth
in use-of-self far more effectively than does the exclusive use of didactic
verbal-conceptual methods.
Since 1985, I have pioneered the adaptation of improvisational theater
activities in both the practice and teaching of MFT, which I have named
Rehearsals for Growth (RfG). I have published a professional book, Rehearsals
for Growth (Wiener, 1994), another edited book, Beyond Talk Therapy (Wiener,
1999), 11 issues of a newsletter (200k), and a number of book chapters
and articles on this subject and have presented on RfG at numerous professional
conferences.
RfG developed as a result of my observations that good interpersonal relationship
functioning and competent stage-improvising by dyads or teams shared a
number of characteristics: attentiveness to others' words and actions,
flexibility in both initiating and accepting others' directions and suggestions,
and "making others right" (supporting others in "looking
good"). This correspondence led first to applying RfG techniques
to clinical assessment and as therapeutic interventions to teach interpersonal
skills and alter dysfunctional relationship patterns. Later, I began using
RfG to teach MFT concepts and hone students' clinical skills. The work
I have accomplished in developing RfG to date has led me to begin research
on its clinical effectiveness and has led to my developing novel ways
of training therapists. In a later section I elaborate on the specific
contributions of RfG to MFT clinical training.
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My Approach to Classroom Teaching of MFT
MFT is a mental health discipline, distinctive in that its praxis is
built upon Systems theory. While everyone has firsthand knowledge of family
process, learning in MFT is uniquely challenging for two major reasons.
First, learning to "think systems" requires a loosening, if
not the breaking of the dominant cognitive set of seeking individually-focused
explanations for human experience. Second, applying systems thinking to
families evokes subjective experience and meanings that are of an intensely
emotional character. This intensity is further heightened by the resonance
of family dynamics observed in others to one's own family patterns and
issues, particularly those which remain problematic and unresolved. The
distortions and biases resulting from such resonance may lead the student
to adopt either an over-distanced stance, in which family process in self
as well as others is objectified and stripped of feeling, or an under-distanced
stance, in which the student becomes emotionally reactive to, and part
of, the family emotional process.
In promoting a use-of-self perspective to the study of family systems
thinking and clinical practice I attempt to establish and maintain a safe,
supportive classroom atmosphere that encourages inquiry and self-expression.
I am continually monitoring the learning context to maintain a balance
between the over-distanced and under-distanced stances noted above. It
is important that students be engaged in looking at their perceptions
and beliefs in comparison with my own and those of their classmates. It
is equally important that they attempt to apply the concepts acquired
through reading and lectures to observations of self and others. I utilize
a mix of brief lectures, Socratic questions, and numerous experiential
exercises in order to make each class meeting count.
While I recognize that, even in graduate school, many students are oriented
toward meeting externally-imposed requirements and making effort only
in order to get good grades, I do not see my primary purpose in assigning
work and awarding grades to function as a guardian of academic standards.
Rather, I regard students as fundamentally motivated by their interest
in growing and learning and let them know that I am more concerned with
their getting intrinsic value from the course than having them "prove
themselves" according to my criteria. I assign work and give exams
as learning experiences that permit them to test their own mastery of
the material, although I do have standards in mind that I deem appropriate;
indeed, I get feedback that some students regard me as setting too rigorous
standards. Should they be dissatisfied with their results, I offer students
the opportunity to remediate their shortcomings by redoing assignments
or by additional work. In my experience, few students who persist in going
through our program lack sufficient academic aptitude to do the work I
require.
On the other hand, I make it abundantly clear that I am a guardian of
quality regarding students' clinical competence and ethical alignment.
I strongly believe that counseling and clinical programs do the helping
professions and the public a disservice by graduating students who are
psychologically unfit, behave unethically, or lack adequate clinical skills.
I chair a standing departmental subcommittee on Screening and Evaluation
to overhaul and strengthen procedures that identify, offer remediation
to, and screen out any such students from our Department's four counseling
specialization programs.
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Distinctive Educational Practices
As noted above, experiential learning promotes growth in use-of-self
and in developing clinical proficiency far more effectively than does
the exclusive use of didactic verbal-conceptual methods. I employ a number
of experiential exercises which I have either created or adapted from
other sources. I also believe that students get considerable value from
preparing, delivering, and critiquing one another's peer learning experiences
and have included student class presentations in the design of content/theory
courses. Despite their clinical inexperience, I have students practice
occasionally the peer-supervisory role in skills-training courses, both
to heighten involvement with their classmates' presentations and to stretch
them to prepare for the consultant/expert role.
One important (and unusual) element in my preparation for teaching is
my deliberate cultivation of an "under-prepared" mindset. This
means leaving sufficient openness of class structure to taking direction
from both my observation of the class climate and from my own spontaneous
impulses. The result is that I am more alert, "on the edge,"
and receptive to the position of "not knowing." From experience
I have learned to resist the impulse to "play it safe" by relying
on a thoroughly preplanned class. Naturally, I have some structure, handouts,
and ideas of how this particular class articulates with the overall course
and program, but I am not committed to a closed, controlled presentation.
In an important way, this stance is similar to conducting therapy, which
is largely an improvisational art. Further, it models the role of ‘committed
enquirer’ for my students.
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My Approach to Clinical Supervision
The way many clinical programs socialize therapists in their training
results in a professional stance that shapes and limits what the therapist
presents, whether the limitation is in self-disclosure, emotional range
and intensity, or status (power) position. An emphasis on diagnosing psychopathology
encourages a tendency to view difference as wrongness, regardless of whether
the viewer perceives the source of such difference in an appropriate context
(e.g., cultural differences). An overemphasis on mastering theoretical
knowledge and technique sets up the trainee to assume an "expert"
stance which both increases social distance between therapist and client
and subtly discourages the use of spontaneity and imagination by either
one. Assumption of the professional role all too often focuses attention
away from the trainee's own unique personal abilities and encourages the
creation and maintenance of a facade (the professional mask), further
hampering the fully effective use of self. Lastly, much conventional training
embodies a positive value placed on the attainment of skills as rapidly
and painlessly as possible; the result, rather than the process of becoming,
counts.
By contrast, I hold that therapists take a more effective healing stance
when they put aside their tendency to objectify their clients in terms
of abstract hypothesizing and diagnostic descriptions. Student therapists,
understandably, are prone to use their newfound knowledge to support their
fledgling professional image. Often, trainees and beginning therapists
cling to an over-distanced stance in order to keep from feeling overwhelmed
and to conceal their nervousness at their felt incompetence.
Flexibility is a virtue in MFT; an effective therapist is one who can
switch stances easily in order to maximize clinical effectiveness. In
my own use-of-self way of training therapists, I put considerable emphasis
on the assumption of risk (which is mainly, though not exclusively, a
willingness to experience emotional discomfort) as a necessary component
of psychological growth. In the same way that good psychotherapy stretches
clients, good supervision in training empowers therapists to experience
risks personally, which leads to their empowering clients to take risks.
While therapists need not experience precisely what they are asking a
client to undergo, if they have not had some personal experience of risk-taking,
their attempts to induce change by encouraging client risk-taking will
lack authenticity and effectiveness.
It is not my intention to treat every limitation that surfaces in a student
as an obstacle to be surmounted; as with therapy itself, I support people
to work only on those changes they themselves elect. It is very important,
both for ethical and practical reasons, to keep in mind that supervision
is not therapy; while I may encourage supervisees to seek therapy to deal
with personal issues that surface in the course of our work together,
I am careful to draw the boundary between supervision and therapy clearly
and openly in situations where confusion or blurring might arise. It should
also be added that the isomorphism of empowering risk-taking extends to
the teacher's/supervisor's effectiveness as well. In other words, I strive
to practice risk-taking myself (being willing to fail in front of supervisees
and being honest in self disclosure).
In order to develop the supervisee's use-of-self, I strive to create a
safe and supportive training context within which trainees can risk making
mistakes. It would not be ethical to encourage risk-taking and experimentation
that results in mistakes with actual clinical cases; hence the need for
role-play and enactments that permit the experience. Along with other
simulations, RfG techniques are ideally suited for this task. When mistakes
and failures are thus allowed in the learning context, trainees and clients
learn to forgive themselves, empowering themselves to take more chances
and broaden their repertoires. We are all taught to fear, hide, and avoid
mistakes. Yet, viewed differently, mistakes are inevitable in the sincere
attempt to learn and improve.
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Contributions of RfG TO MFT Training
RfG enactments are useful in clinical supervision and training because
they create highly impactful learning experiences that anchor imagery
kinesthetically, by doing rather than talking-about. Since coming to CCSU
I have adapted or devised a number of RfG exercises to be used in supervision
to accelerate students' thinking and intervening systemically in the following
ways: 1. experiencing firsthand the social construction of "character"
and "reality"; 2. acquiring narrative skills which prepare them
to formulate systemic hypotheses; 3. experiencing the "pull"
of the family system; 4. learning the importance of changing context;
5. sharpening their observational skills, particularly regarding nonverbal
cues; 6. trusting imagination, taking risks, and allowing spontaneity
in sessions; 7. comparing assessment data derived from verbal responses
with data from enacted performances; 8. discovering the power of the therapist-as-listener
to validate /invalidate client narratives; 9. trying out feared or forbidden
responses as a way of helping the student detoxify those limiting, painful,
or taboo reactions that arise in all therapists.
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