Intervention in Family Systems

Code:

P746

Acronym:

ISF

Keywords
Classification	Keyword
OFICIAL	Psychology

Instance: 2016/2017 - 1S

Active?	Yes
Responsible unit:	Psychology
Course/CS Responsible:	Integrated Master Psychology

Cycles of Study/Courses

Acronym	No. of Students	Study Plan	Curricular Years	Credits UCN	Credits ECTS	Contact hours	Total Time
MIPSI	26	Official Curricular Structure	4	-	6	54	162

Teaching language

Portuguese

Objectives

Intervention within family systems encompasses counseling, psychotherapy and psycho-education, but also training and consulting. Clients can be individuals, groups, institutions and communities that represent a given psychosocial environment. Students will learn skills in order to help individuals, couples or families to constructively deal with developmental tasks or crisis throughout their life cycle and improve quality of life. The syllabus shows the continuity between individual, family and contextual psychology. That is, students are trained to acquire abilities that allow them to analyze the individual in his uniqueness on a multisystemic level. The main purpose of this curricular unit is not to train family therapists, but to prepare students to the need of a developmental perspective, dialectic, circular and contextual intervention.

 

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Learning outcomes and competences

Working method

Presencial

Program

Clinical psychologist and therapeutic team: fundamentals and presenting the FPCEUP Clinic.

The emergence of a new discipline and its historical framework within the scientific community context;

Psychosocial development as a dialectical process in the interaction of biological, psychological and contextual (proximal and distal) factors.

Family psychological development and family life cycle - psychological assessment and intervention:
- leaving home and diferentiation;
- premarriage stage and prevention programs;
- childless couple, pregnancy, infertility, perinatal death;
- parenthood: promoting positive parenthood, parent-child relationships;
- single-parent families;
- families with adolescents;
- divorce: characteristics, contexts and theories;
- remarriage: characteristics, consequences and psychological determinants;
- lauching children;
- later life;

Family therapy pioneers, models and theories;

Integrative models and constructivism and attachment theories;

Psychological Intervention within families: paradigms, models and intervention techniques;

Diagnosis techniques: hypothesizing, circular questioning, neutrality, strategizing, genogram;

Prescription techniques: positive conotation, rituals, sculptures, metaphors and narrative ideas, paradoxical prescription, invariant prescription, narrative letters, greek chorus;

Integrating systemic models in different contexts (e.g. schools);

Mandatory literature

Dallos,R & Vetere,A.; Attachment narrative Therapy: Integrating, sYstemic and attachment therapies., Routledge, 2009
Jonson, S.M.; Attachment processes in couple and family therapy, Erdman, 2003
Mark Rivett & EddY Street ; Family Therapy.100Key points & techniques , N.Y: Routledge, 2009
Thomas W. Roberts ; A Systems Perspective of Parenting, Brooks/ Cole Publishing Company., 2008
Juffer, F.; Bakermans- Kranenburg,M. J. e IJzendoom, M.H.; Promoting Positive Parenting. An Attachment- based intervention., 2008
Burns, L.H. and Covington, S.N. (eds) ; Infertility Counseling: A Comprehensive Handbook for Clinicians, Parthenon, New York, 2009
P.M. Matos,C. Duarte, M.E.Costa ; Familias questões de desenvolvimento e intervenção, Porto: Livpsic, 2011

Teaching methods and learning activities

This course is organized in both theoretical (2h) and practical (1.5h) classe on a weekly basis. As this CU aims to provide training for future clinical psychologists, we aim to transfer evidence-based knowledge in a clear way, encouraging learning, reflection and communication.

In theorectical classes we use oral presentation using audio-visual support. Nevertheless, students are consistently participating through feedback, discussion of dilemas and role-play.

With the exception of erasmus and mobility students, each student will have a supervisor attributed to him/her and will observe a therapeutic process taking place at the FPCEUP clinic. Each student presents his/her clinical case in pratical class.

In practical classes students learn diagnosis ansd intervention techniques and watch psychological intervention films from varied models and problematics.

Evaluation Type

Distributed evaluation with final exam

Assessment Components

designation	Weight (%)
Exame	50,00
Participação presencial	25,00
Trabalho laboratorial	25,00
Total:	100,00

Amount of time allocated to each course unit

designation	Time (hours)
Apresentação/discussão de um trabalho científico
Elaboração de relatório/dissertação/tese
Estudo autónomo
Frequência das aulas
Trabalho de campo
Trabalho laboratorial
Total:	0,00

Eligibility for exams

According to regulation.

Calculation formula of final grade

Special assessment (TE, DA, ...)

Due to language, cultural, and time restrictions, erasmus and mobility students will not be involved in a therapeutic process.
Instead, they should write a paper with a subject that can be defined by themselves and the teacher.