Marriage and Family Therapy (M.A.)

This course provides the student with an overview of systemic concepts and systemic functioning. It includes structure, development, health, and dysfunction from traditional systemic theoretical constructs and approaches. Particular emphasis is placed on acquiring a systems perspective and applying that perspective to families and other systems.

This course is designed to provide an understanding of working with children, adolescents, and their families. It will focus on treating a variety of presenting issues, as well as provide several theoretical perspectives for working with families with children and/or adolescents. We will explore many clinical interventions for working with youth of varying ages, and the course will include play therapy. Students will have many experiential opportunities to learn about play therapy techniques and interventions. Careful attention will be paid to ethical issues, laws regarding mandated reporting, duty-to-warn, when treating children and adolescents, as well as cultural and diversity issues will be addressed.

This course examines human relationships with particular reference to their various forms, functions, and patterns of development. The processes of attachment, separation, individuation, and differentiation are highlighted and are used in a contextual (systemic) framework to examine each relationship. Special emphasis is placed on the clinical applications of this knowledge to couples and families. The student is required to complete a study of one of his/her primary dyadic relationships.