Master of Science in Family Therapy
Plan of Study
The program operates on a cohort model whereby all participants complete the same program of study over a three-year period. The clinical courses are residency based. Students must attend a two week session in the second summer, generally mid July, to take two clinical courses. The sessions are held at UMass Dartmouth and housing is available at a reasonable rate. (Housing information will be provided by the program upon request).
Summer - Year One
- COUNSL 621 Introduction to Family Therapy
Credits: 3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits
Course Description: This introductory course investigates the concepts of family therapy and systems theory. Besides attending a potentially different client population, family therapy contributes a variety of new lenses with which to approach human problems. The course introduces the paradigmatic shift that has developed from communicational, systemic, and cybernetic theories. The course distinguishes similarities and differences between family therapy ideas and other counseling paradigms; and addresses the challenges family therapists face in the changing delivery of human services care systems. Students use family systems ideas to analyze and develop innovative approaches in their work with individuals, families, and communities.
Fall - Year One
- COUNSL 601 Research & Evaluation in Psychology
Credits: 3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits
Course Description: This course examines several research models and strategies with respect to their various rationales and methodologies. Relevant statistical topics are introduced conceptually, especially as they are applied in research about specific academic settings.
- COUNSL 622 Family Therapy Theories
Credits: 3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits
Course Description: This course is focused on general concepts of systems theory and on theoretical frameworks that inform family therapy. Family therapy theories and interventions and the feasibility of family therapy will be discussed within a historical context. Students will be given the opportunity to integrate family therapy theories with their experiences and perceptions of their families-of-origin. The influence of culture, race, social class, and gender on families and family therapy theories will be highlighted. Experiential exercises and videotapes of therapy sessions will be used to demonstrate the impact of family therapy theories on client-family interactions and family therapy sessions.
Prerequisite: COUNSL 614 or 621.
Spring - Year One
- COUNSL 620 Clinical Applications of Human Development
Credits: 3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits
Course Description: This course provides students with a comprehensive view of life span development from childhood through adulthood from several perspectives:
- the interaction of age with such factors as gender, cultural background, disabilities, and other significant issues which may be encountered at particular stages of life;
- how individuals at specific stages of cognitive development process information and experience;
- a structural approach to ego development; and
- a psychoanalytic concept of self psychology.
- COUNSL 653 Perspectives in Cross-Cultural Counseling
Credits: 3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits
Course Description: This course addresses the role of culture in counseling and psychology by looking both at history and at current issues. Discussions use an interdisciplinary framework to approach the question of counseling in a multicultural society. The course seeks to contribute to both the personal and the professional development of its participants.
Prerequisites: COUNSL 614 and 615 or 617.
- COUNSL 672 Substance Abuse and The Family
Credits: 3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits
Course Description: This course focuses on families with members who are substance abusers, and the ways in which these families function. The course explores the methods and resources available for helping such families.
Prerequisites: COUNSL 614.
Summer - Year Two
- COUNSL 614 Counseling Theory & Practice I (on campus)
Credits: 3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits
Course Description: The purpose of this course is to provide grounding in the commonalities of counseling techniques and practice in the use of various techniques. The course covers the essentials of interviewing, note taking, and report writing, and the role of diagnosis. Tapes and role playing are required.
- COUNSL 625 Family Therapy Assessment and Intervention (on campus)
Credits: 3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits
Course Description: This course focuses on the practice of systemic and ecosystemic family therapy techniques. Major family therapy models will provide the frameworks for assessment and ethical intervention procedures. Their effectiveness will be critiqued by using criteria set forth by research articles and from clinical practices. In class discussions and role plays, various factors such as race, ethnicity, social class, and the personal profile of the therapist will be shown to have a direct impact on therapeutic interventions. In-class exercises will give students an opportunity to be witnesses and observers of the therapeutic process and to experience therapy as a team effort.
Prerequisites: COUNSL 614, 621 and 622.
Fall - Year Two
- COUNSL 606 Ethical Standards & Professional Issues in Counseling
Credits: 3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits
Course Description: The purpose of this course is to create an awareness among counselors-in-training of their contribution in the therapeutic process and helping relationship. Topics include foundations for an ethical perspective; models for ethical decision making; ethical codes of professional organizations; client rights and counselor responsibilities; ethical concerns in multicultural counseling and with special client populations; ethical issues in specific modalities (i.e., group, marriage and family counseling).
- COUNSL 608 Abnormal Psychology
Credits: 3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits
Course Description: A comprehensive view of abnormal behavior in modern times. The course makes use of the revised DSM III classification systems of mental disorders and examines patterns of abnormal behavior including neuroses, psychosomatic conditions, psychosis including affective disorders, schizophrenias, abnormal behaviors of childhood and adolescence, sexual dysfunctions, and drug abuse. Brief coverage is also given to therapeutic treatments and their effectiveness.
- COUNSL 626 Collaborative Consultation & Larger Systems
Credits: 3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits
Course Description: How do families interface with larger systems and how do therapists intervene collaboratively? How do individuals and families interact with larger systems, and how do larger systems structure the lives of individuals and families? Relationally trained practitioners are attempting to answer these questions through collaborative and interdisciplinary team-focused projects in mental health, education, the law, and business, among other fields. Similarly, scholars and researchers are developing specific culturally responsive models: outreach family therapy, collaborative health care, multi-systemic school interventions, social justice-oriented and spirituality approaches, organizational coaching and consulting, among others. This course explores these developments and aims at developing a clinical and consulting knowledge that contributes to families, organizations, and communities within a collaborative and social justice vision.
Prerequisites: COUNSL 622 or Permission of Instructor.
Spring - Year Two
- COUNSL 624 Sexuality & Intimacy in Families & Family Therapy
Credits: 3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits
Course Description: Sexuality and intimacy are major issues for couples and families in therapy. This course explores various approaches to understanding sexual functioning and intimacy and family therapy clinical interventions. Students analyze and critique historical approaches to sex and marital therapy. The course examines an array of family therapy models including object relations, intergenerational, purposive, solution, and narrative, and larger systems approaches. Within a multicultural framework, specific topics related to issues of sexual diversity, gender identity, sexual offending, and victimization are studied. The primary learning methods include literature review, lectures and discussions, experiential exercises (sexual genogram construction), and role-plays.
Prerequisites: 3 Counseling Courses.
- COUNSL 627 Couples Therapy
Credits: 3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits
Course Description: This course will focus on principles, theory, and methods effective in therapy with couples. Family therapy theories from a variety of perspectives, from modernism to postmodernism, will provide the basis for understanding and implementing couples therapy. Topical issues such as domestic violence and biracial and same-sex couples will be interwoven into classroom discussions and role-plays. The influence and impact of socioeconomic and sociocultural factors (including issues of gender and power) on couple relationships will also be examined. Students will gain knowledge of the content and methods of couples therapy through selected readings, classroom discussions, videotapes, and role-play exercises.
Prerequisites: COUNSL 614, 621 and 622.
- COUNSL 628 Contemporary Family Therapies
Credits: 3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits
Course Description: This course is an advanced seminar that reviews current trends in family therapy and examines postmodern psychotherapies as they are applied in clinical, school, and larger systems contexts. Theoretical concepts and clinical applications will be drawn from feminist, constructionist, and poststructuralist theories. Special attention will be given to the relationship between larger social contexts and contemporary family configurations. Topics for discussion will include: gay and lesbian families, family violence, and postmodern ideas in work with children, outreach family therapy, and factors affecting the therapist's role.
Prerequisites: COUNSL 625 or Permission of Instructor.
Summer/Fall/Spring - Year Three
- COUNSL 698 Internship in Family Therapy
Credits: 6 Credits per semester for a total of 18 credits.
Course Description: Students are placed in community agencies or public institutions as interns under the direct supervision of an AAMFT Approved Supervisor or Approved Supervisor in Training. Students must complete a total of 900 hours. Students meet weekly with a faculty member in a three-hour seminar.
Prerequisites: A minimum of 18 credits COU 608, COU 614, COU 621, COU 622, and COU 620 or 617, and a course of your choice from the family therapy curriculum. In addition, COU 606 and COU 625 must be taken prior to or concurrently with the second semester (Fall Semester of your internship). In addition, students must have an average of 3.00, no more than one outstanding incomplete. Your advisor must give approval before application for placement in an internship site.
