The Social Work Podcast

Episode 8: Today we're going to talk about Carl Rogers and his revolutionary approach to psychotherapy - Person-Centered Therapy. Next to Freud, no other therapist has influenced the practice of therapy more than Carl Rogers. The humanistic assumptions at the core of Person-Centered therapy stand in stark contrast to the problem-centered, expert-oriented approach of what was then the dominant model of psychotherapy - Freudian Psychoanalysis. Rogers gave us an equation that would change the concept of therapy forever: Empathy + Genuineness + Unconditional Positive Regard = Necessary and sufficient conditions for change. Although the last part - that these conditions are sufficient for change - has not enjoyed empirical support, the first part - that these conditions are necessary for change - has been confirmed in thousands of research studies over the last 50 years. In today's lecture I will look at the major assumptions of Person-centered therapy, the goals of treatment, the role and attributes of the therapist, and discuss the one technique attributed to Rogers - reflective listening. I'll end with a discussion of the contributions and limitations of Person-centered therapy.

Episode 7: In today's podcast, I talk about Existential therapy as an intellectual or philosophical approach to working with people. Although some authors have attempted to manualize Existential therapy (most recently Keshen, A. (2006). A new look at existential psychotherapy. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 60(3), 285-298), the existential approach is not known for specific techniques or procedures. Rather, its influence has been most notable in encouraging clinicians to focus on the ideas of freedom of choice, the responsibility that accompanies choice, and the notion that the inevitability of death is what gives life meaning.

Episode 6: In this lecture, I discuss key elements of Adler's Personal psychology and how this approach contrasts with Freud's theory. The contrast between Adler's and Freud's approaches can best be summed up in the quote "We are pulled by our goals, rather than pushed by our drives."

Episode 5: In this lecture, I discuss key elements of Freud's theory of personality and how that translated into his approach to therapy. The central goal of Freudian psychoanalysis is to make the unconscious conscious.

Episode 4: This is part two of a two-part series on Crisis Intervention. In this lecture, I discuss individual crisis intervention within the context of Roberts's Seven-Stage Model of Crisis Intervention, and the most popular group crisis intervention model currently in use, Critical Incident Stress Debriefing. The podcast ends with a detailed review of suicide assessment.

Episode 3: This is part one of a two-part series on Crisis Intervention. In this lecture, I provide a brief overview of the history of modern crisis intervention and crisis theory. I discuss two approaches to crisis assessment, Myer's Triage Assessment Model and the Dilation-Constriction Continuum model.

Episode 2: This is the second part of a two-part lecture on diagnosis and assessment. In the first episode I reviewed the history of the DSM and the multiaxial system. In this lecture, I discuss the Bio-psychosocial-spiritual (BPSS) assessment as the means for providing context for the client's presenting problems. I discuss the purpose of each of the four life domains and how the information is used in social work practice. Emphasis is placed on solution-focused approaches to assessment.I end with a brief description of traditional format for organizing observations about the client - the Mental Status Exam.

Episode 1: This is the first part of a two-part lecture on diagnosis and assessment. The Bio-psychosocial-spiritual (BPSS) assessment and the DSM diagnosis are the two most common types of assessments made by social workers. In this lecture, I briefly review the history of DSM diagnosis, from the creation of the first ICD in 1900 to the most recent text revision of the DSM-IV in 2000. I discuss the multiaxial system and provide examples. I transition from DSM diagnosis to the BPSS assessment by discussing the similarities and differences between the two assessments.