 |
Philosophy
Who we are, what we teach, and how we do relationships.
The three core principles that guide our clinical and pedagogical practices in the Seton Hill University Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT) Program are:
- the importance of relationships for mental health.
- the centrality of cultural context and social justice for effective therapy.
- the self of the therapist as the most important therapeutic tool.
We believe that all human experience unfolds within relationship (with self, with family members, with community members and with cultures). These relationships are powerful, and can initiate, support or block positive solutions to human dilemmas. No single element is more important for mental health than the relational contexts in which we live. This relational\systemic emphasis is at the heart of who we are as people and intrinsic to the ways in which we believe, think, teach and practice.
Cultural context and social justice is the lens through which the program faculty understands the world. Human relationships are interwoven with cultural systems that privilege some and devalue others. Gender, race, ethnicity, culture, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, religion, health/ability and age shape the ways we experience and relate to ourselves and others and therefore must be addressed in any therapeutic setting. Our program works from the premise that through our differences our humanity is both tested and affirmed. It is an important therapeutic skill (and indeed an important relational skill in general) to be able to stay connected with those who are different from us, and to view these differences in humanizing rather than dehumanizing ways. We teach students to understand the ways that privilege, subjugation and power organize relationship dynamics and impact mental health. We examine how power affects the choices therapists make in human interactions and help our students make more conscious choices to allow differences and power imbalances to be handled more effectively in therapy. In addition to infusing our curriculum, our internship sites, our students and professors with attention to difference, we also set aside one course in the curriculum, Multicultural Therapy, dedicated to specifically examining, acknowledging and addressing ways in which students and their clients' worldview, life experiences and the process of therapy are shaped by these issues and dynamics of privilege and subjugation.
Finally we believe that the self of the therapist is the most important therapeutic tool and as such it is critical for students to focus on their self development, identifying and exploring the ways in which their personal beliefs, experiences and reactions impact their role as therapists. This 'looking within' process prepares students with a better understanding of themselves and recognition of ways in which their interpersonal coping styles, their family of origin experiences, and their cultural identities shape and inform their emerging identities as family therapists. This process of self development is interwoven into each class, supervision and experience in the program from the admission interview through graduation.
The program strives to create a unique shared learning environment: where every member is both a student and a teacher; where we work to act from our best selves believing in the competence and resilience of human beings; where differences are explored and recognized without being solved or watered down; where we do not seek to 'fix' clients or each other but rather to affect one another; and where many truths can co-exist and each person's unique identity is respected.
|
|
|
