Argosy University
COURSE SYLLABUS
Course Number PP7610
Course Name Extended Practice in Empathic Responding
Faculty Information
Faculty Name: Ted Welsch, Psy.D.
Campus: Argosy University Chicago
Contact Information: Phone: Office 815-577-6686 Cell 815-954-6664
E-mail:
Office Hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays by appointment
Short Faculty Bio: I graduated from the Illinois School of Professional Psychology and have my own private
practice in Plainfield, Illinois (southwest of Chicago) where I work with individual adults and adolescents as well as couples and families. I work from a non-directive, client-centered approach in therapy. I also provide integrated psychological assessments.
Course description:
This course offers students extended practice in empathic responding. Students will meet with partners exchanging sessions with each other throughout the year and will meet with an ongoing consultation group.
Course Pre-requisites:
Required Textbook:
Author(s): Haugh, S. & Merry, T. (Eds.)
Title: Empathy Rogers’ Therapeutic Conditions: Evolution, Theory and Practice, Vol. 2.
Publisher: Ross-on-Wye
ISBN: 1 898059 30 6
Edition: 2001
Technology: Pentium III CPU/ Windows 98; 128MB RAM printer; Microsoft Office: Acrobat (full version); Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 (PC), 5.0 (MAC), or Netscape Navigator 4.08; Norton Antivirus.
Course length: 7.5 Weeks
Contact Hours: 24
Credit Value: (Note: this is1 ½ credit hours per term, which can be taken separately)
Program Outcomes: The Doctoral program in Clinical Psychology at Argosy University, Chicago Campus is an APA accredited program (APA, 750 First St. NE, Washington, DC 20002, 202-336-5500). This program is designed to educate and train students so that they may eventually be able to function effectively as clinical psychologists. To ensure that students are prepared adequately, the curriculum provides for the meaningful integration of theory, training and practice. The Clinical Psychology program at Argosy University Chicago Campus emphasizes the development of attitudes, knowledge, and skills essential in the formation of professional psychologists who are committed to the ethical provision of quality services. Specific objectives of the program include the following:
· Goal 1: Prepare professional psychologists to accurately, effectively, and ethically select, administer, score, interpret, and communicate findings of appropriate assessment methods informed by accepted psychometric standards and sensitive to the diverse characteristics and needs of clients.
o Objective 1a: Accurately and ethically administer and score various psychodiagnostic instruments.
o Objective 1b: Accurately interpret and synthesize assessment data in the context of diversity factors, referral questions, and specific objectives of the assessment, and organize and communicate results in writing and orally.
o Objective 1c: Examine psychometric properties of psychological assessment instruments, and use that knowledge to evaluate, select, administer, and interpret psychological tests and measures appropriate for the client, the referral question, and the objectives of the assessment.
· Goal 2: Prepare professional psychologists to select, implement, and evaluate psychological interventions consistent with current ethical, evidence-based, and professional standards, within a theoretical framework, and with sensitivity to the interpersonal processes of the therapeutic relationship and the diverse characteristics and needs of clients.
o Objective 2a: Synthesize the foundations of clinical psychology, including psychopathology, human development, diagnosis, diversity, ethics, and various therapeutic models in clinical applications.
o Objective 2b: Select, plan, and implement ethical and evidence-based interventions with sensitivity to the diverse characteristics and needs of clients.
o Objective 2c: Demonstrate knowledge, skills, and attitudes to effectively implement and participate in psychological consultation and supervision.
Objective 2d: Demonstrate personal development and self-reflective capacity, including growth of interpersonal skills, and therapeutic relationships.
· Goal 3: Prepare professional psychologists to analyze the complexity and multidimensionality of human diversity, and demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to understand diverse worldviews and the potential meaning of social, cultural, and individual differences for professional psychological services.
· Goal 4: Prepare professional psychologists to examine the historical context and the current body of knowledge of biological, cognitive, affective, developmental, and social bases of human functioning.
· Goal 5: Prepare professional psychologists to critically evaluate the current and evolving body of scholarly literature in psychology to inform professional practice.
Program Outcomes: The Master’s Program in Clinical Psychology has been designed to educate and train students to enter a professional career as MA level practitioners. Argosy University, Chicago Campus provides students an educational program with all the necessary theoretical and clinical elements that will allow them to be effective members of a mental health team. The program introduces students to basic clinical skills that integrate individual and group theoretical foundations of applied psychology into appropriate client interactions and intervention skills
In addition, the Program offers excellent preparation for those considering application to the Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology.
Course Objectives:
Course Objective / Program Goal / Method of AssessmentIdentify Empathy as a core condition of the Person-Centered Approach and understand its importance in the theory. / Goal2a, 2b, 5
Scholarship / Article critiques, peer critiques
Provide in depth opportunity to explore Person-Centered core condition of Empathy as an effective therapeutic intervention / Goal 2c, 2d-
Intervention / Practice sessions, peer critiques
Examine issues of diversity as they affect the administration of the Person-Centered approach in clinical practice / Goal 3,
Diversity
Goal 5 scholarship / Article critiques, practice sessions, peer critiques
Learning objectives
1. To enhance your empathic understanding response capability through regular
sessions with a co-counselor from the class or with clients.
2 To develop your ability to attend to the other person’s expressions of meaning while at the same time remaining aware of your own ongoing flow of inner experiencing.
The assessment of your growing capability in these areas will occur through feedback from the group’s listening to your work and through your own self-report regarding your increasing sense of internal ease with the process, and from an evaluation of transcripts of two 20-30 min tape segments.
Criteria for Empathic Responding
In your empathic responding, you will be trying to express your deepest understanding of what the person is trying to say in a way that is both accurate and congruent. In so doing, you will attempt to stay within the other person’s frame of reference without introducing any of your own ideas or interpretations (except as they help you understand and express your understanding of what the person is experiencing him or herself in the moment). You will not be attempting to direct the person’s process in any way or to initiate lines of inquiry.
The simplest criterion for the success of an empathic response is the other person’s experience of feeling understood in the moment (or the lack of such experience). When you have understood the other person and expressed your understanding well, he or she will usually have an immediate experience of recognition and convey this directly or indirectly--by a slight release of tension, an expression of agreement or an intensification of feeling and self-exploration.
There are no absolute formulas as to how you should develop your ability to understand empathically or to convey your understanding. Individual people may be quite idiosyncratic in their ways of processing experience, and sometimes people can express their understanding in personally unique, but highly effective ways. However, in learning to respond empathically, the following guidelines are usually helpful.
1. Try to take the other person’s experience inside yourself to feel as well as cognitively understand what it must be like to be in his or her shoes, to look at experience as he or she does; try to convey that feeling and understanding in words.
2. Respond to the person’s key points. Sitting in silence may allow you to feel a sense of understanding, but it doesn’t let you check as to whether your understanding is accurate and it doesn’t let the other person know whether you are really getting the subtlety of the meaning he or she is trying to convey.
3. Avoid asking questions. Usually questions have the effect of directing the person’s exploration. As an alternative, you can often say the part which is clear to you and leave the rest open ended. (For example, “So, your mother told you to stay home and that really got to you somehow” as opposed to “What did you feel when your mother told you to stay home?”)
4. When a person is explaining a subject that is as least somewhat clear to him or her, try to grasp the exactness of the meaning or point being made. Often this involves grasping the person’s main theme with some subtlety and then grasping the exactness of a number of related facets which the person explores around that core theme and conveying these to the person. (Ref. Wexler)
5. Often when a person is discussing an issue of importance, he or she will come to a central aspect of the issue which is troublesome, but not yet fully clear to him or her. Yet the person typically has some implicit felt sense of the issue and its meaning. At this point, it is often helpful to respond in a way that makes space for the person’s own inner search. This can be done by saying the exact words that seem pregnant with meaning or by using open-ended words to frame the area of unclearness that the person is feeling into. (E.g. “His words were like a buzz saw” or “Something about those words really got to you…”) (Ref. Gendlin)
6. Often, when a person is getting close to a subject that is personally important, but not yet clear, he or she will describe the situation with vividly pictured scenes or metaphors. These scenes or metaphors are often evocative of layers of feeling and meaning which the person has not previously articulated. If you can take these vivid scenes or metaphors inside yourself and respond with crucial aspects of the same images you will often allow the person to resonate with them and allow other layers of feeling and meaning to emerge. (Ref. Rice)
7. You may find that you intuit feelings or meanings which seem to be present to the other person but not clearly expressed. Such understandings are “high risk” in that they may touch on feelings and meanings which are central to what the person is trying to convey to you (and, in your sensing them and expressing them, the person may feel very deeply understood). On the other hand, such intuitively sensed feelings and meanings may reflect your own preconceptions and biases and not in fact relate to the other person’s experience of the moment. You are encouraged to express such high risk understandings as long as you are tentative about them and willing to let go of them if they don’t seem to match the other person’s immediate experience.
8. Sometimes people express themselves in ways that are intense, negative, or seemingly irrational. Do not be afraid to stay with these in their full force. Don’t try to reshape your responses in directions that you think would be more rational or constructive or temperate. Typically, people have been alone with these aspects of their experience. Often, it is only when they can freely explore them in the company of a nonjudgemental other person that they can fully feel into these experiences, release feelings, and allow alternative thoughts, feelings and memories to emerge.
9. It is important to try to sense the most personally important edge of what the other person is saying to you, and when you understand well, the other person may spontaneously feel things more intensely and explore issues more deeply. Do not, however, feel that you should try to get the other person to explore issues at deeper levels or emotionally-intense ways than he or she seems to be pursuing on his or her own. The person that you are listening to may find that it is right to explore issues at different levels of depth at different times, and this choice in itself is part of the self-actualization process.
Assignment Table
Class / Topic / Readings / Assignment1 / Empathic Understanding: an introduction. Go over syllabus, assign partners, and introduce the concept. Readings assigned to be read before the first class. / Introduction to Volume 2: Empathy (pp. vii-ix).
The History of Empathy in the Client-Centered Movement (pp. 1-15) in Empathy Rogers’ Therapeutic Conditions: Evolution, Theory and Practice, Vol. 2.
2 / Developing an Understanding of the concept / Brodley, B. T. Empathic understanding: Observations of a CC practice and Rogers, C.R., The Necessary and Sufficient Conditions of Therapy (Handouts)
3 / Observations of Empathic Understanding in a Client-centered Practice (pp.16-37) in Empathy Rogers’ Therapeutic Conditions: Evolution, Theory and Practice, Vol. 2. / First Tape due
4 / Empathic Understanding Grows the Person…(pp 86-98) in Empathy Rogers’ Therapeutic Conditions: Evolution, Theory and Practice, Vol. 2.
5 / Rogers, C.R., Empathic: An unappreciated Way of Being (Handout)
6 / Empathy in psychotherapy: Vital Mechanism? Yes. Therapist’s conceit? All too often. By itself Enough? No (pp. 38-52) in Empathy Rogers’ Therapeutic Conditions: Evolution, Theory and Practice, Vol. 2. / Last Tape due
Bohart, A. How Do Clients Make Empathy Work? (Handout)
Other readings may be recommended depending on class discussion.
Students will tape at least seven sessions of an hour each with partners, keeping a journal relating to each session. Students will present a tape-segment of empathic responding to the group at least once during the class, with a transcript of 20-30 minutes of the tape. A second 20-30 minute segment, with transcript, along with a short paper reflecting on progress in empathic responding (and any other relevant thoughts and feelings about the empathic understanding response process) will be due at the time of the last class.
Readings
Students will choose six articles or chapters relating to empathic responding from the required reading text or other scholarly articles. They will keep a journal (approx ½ to 1 ½ pages per article) summarizing the article in a few sentences and offering any thoughts, feelings, associations and the like which emerged in them in response to the reading as well as how these articles relate to their practice sessions.