Yoel is a 16-year-old adolescent from Israel. He comes from a Jewish religious background. His parents are academics; his mother is a dean at a university, and his father is a lecturer (during the first meeting, it became clear that he had taught me during my undergraduate degree studies).
Yoel is the youngest of four siblings. He and his older sister were adopted at the age of two months. His parents describe him as being a tiny infant with a considerable developmental delay (most likely- Neonatal withdrawal syndrome; however, no documentation is present from his birth). Yoel currently suffers from visual impairments and problems with fine motor skills. Until a year ago, he studied in a small class in a regular school and moved to an educational framework designed for students who had dropped out of school. Yoel’s parents were seeking therapy due to behavioral difficulties: Yoels’s difficulty accepting authority and anger fits that include breaking objects, physical and verbal violence towards his parents and sister. His mother describes situations in which “she is walking on eggshells” and is afraid of his responses.
Yoel spends most of the hours of the day in front of the computer screen, even at the expense of going to school. Yoel has no significant social relationships.
Every attempt to persuade him to go to therapy failed and resulted in violent fits of anger. The school referred his parents to a psychiatrist who refused to diagnose Yoel without his presence at the meeting. The psychiatrist referred his parents to me.
In the meetings with the parents, the following strategies were used:
• therapeutic goals were defined,
• usage of ‘homework’: setting firm boundaries, prioritizing issues to tackle,
• seeking guidance and support from therapeutic alliances in between sessions.
• DBT strategies were taught to the parents in order to help them teach their child: distress tolerance and reality acceptance skills.
• strengthening positive behavior and trying to discourage negative behaviors presented by their child( both actively and passively).
Pragmatic pluralism: i integrated different methods and perspectives and tailored the intervention- using strategies from dbt and using my understanding of the family dynamics through the systems theory.
cf: the factors that contributed to the success of the therapeutic process: by setting mutual goals with parents, adapting the goals and skills based on the parents’ beliefs and religious background. Rationalizing the issues, tools, and skills.
4. Final Paper Assignment (45%)
Requirements
• Use headings!
• Respond to all bullet points (feel free to vary the order in Part 2 to fit your needs and
create a logically flowing narrative)!
Part 1 (4-5 pages): Assessment
o Look at PPT titled “Assessment Portion of Final Paper” for details on the required
elements
▪ Key case information
▪ Multi-theoretical case conceptualization- see case on word document called case presentation. Feel free to change details in case or add details
▪ Putting it together (including convergence & divergence)
▪ Treatment goal(s) and clinical intervention(s)
• Part 2 Treatment/Intervention (6-7 pages)
o Psychotherapy integration/clinical pragmatic application to your case study→
to avoid dogmatic purism, willy-nilly eclecticism, or reductive versions of EBP, use
the following values and principles [based on the orienting perspectives of clinical
pragmatism discussed by Borden (2021]to guide your discussion on intervention…
▪ Human particularities, client as an individual, and their subjective domains
of experience
▪ Personal agency, self-determination, and choice
▪ Therapeutic relationship and collaboration
▪ Co-creation of meaning and narratives that deepen understanding of life
experience and the future
▪ Pluralistic approaches to understanding that offer plausible ways of
formulating the issues and may help
• Address how you are actualizing Winnicott’s idea of clinical practice
as “experiments in adapting to need” by showing how you would
integrate a variety of perspectives based on specific and concrete
client/situation need and circumstances.
• Discuss timing of approaches/strategies.
• Focus on one (or more) of the contemporary approaches* to PI
[Common Factors (CF), Theoretical Integration, Assimilative
Integration, Technical Integration, including CE; Unified Protocol,
Unification, Stepped Care] *this should be a very well-developed
focus of your paper.
▪ Varied opportunities for experiential learning
▪ Fostering a sense of mastery and skill acquisition
▪ Connect to neuroplasticity
• E.g., repetition for skill acquisition, right-brain to right-brain
communication for emotion regulation in the therapeutic relationship
▪ Discuss and demonstrate how you would “establish a point of view that
encompasses a range of perspectives and preserves the distinctive
therapeutic style” of your clinical practice
▪ On-going assessment of progress and outcomes
In other words, use these concepts (in any order you like) to frame your discussion
on intervention with a client—can be a new client or the one from your case
presentation.
• Part 3: Conclusion
o Circle back to your 1-2 treatment goals. How will (or was) PI beneficial (or not) for
supporting client’s goal attainment?
▪ Provide at least 10 scholarly references.