Lexicon of Couples and Family Counseling
J - L
J
Jackson, Don. Co-founder and developer of Mental Research Institute model of family therapy. Worked with Virginia Satir on the development of conjoint family therapy while she was at MRI.
Jacobson, Edith. An object relations theorist.
Jacobson, Neil. A behavioral therapist.
Johnson, Susan. Scholar and developer of Emotion-Focused Therapy with Couples. Her work involves an application of attachment theory for connection and healing within the couple relationship.
join/joining. A structural family therapy process by which the therapist accepts and accommodates the family or family members to win their confidence and sidestep resistance.
Jones, Mary Cover. In 1924, following up on John Watson’s experiment with Little Albert, Mary Cover Jones reversed an induced phobia with a little boy named Peter.
Journal of Marital and Family Therapy. Professional journal of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapists (AAMFT).
Jung, Carl. A contemporary and early colleague of Sigmund Freud who developed the concepts of the collective unconscious and psychological archetypes. The focus of his work was often in dream analysis.
justice. From principle ethics: Implementing fairness to all parties involved; considering the social contexts of lives and challenging and correcting injustice.
K
Kantor, David. Together with Fred Duhl, he was a major contributor to the development of the field of family therapy.
Keith, David. A co-therapist with Whitaker and a scholar-practitioner of symbolic-experiential family therapy.
Kernberg, Otto. An object relations theorist and psychoanalyst.
kinesics. The study of body language.
Kfir, Nira. An Israeli Adlerian therapist who invented personality priorities, a conceptualization similar to Satir’s communication stances.
Klein, Melanie. An object relations theorist.
knowledge-positions. The conceptualization of positions or stances fused with the epistemology that underlies these positions. Michel Foucault believes that certain knowledge-positions tend to become dominant in any society, and they then exist to reinforce themselves and eliminate or minimize alternative knowledge-positions.
Kohut, Heinz. An object relations theorist.
Krumboltz, John and Helen. Cognitive-behavioral therapists who applied the model to raising children. John Krumboltz is a leading scholar-practitioner who studied with B. F. Skinner.
L
labeling and mislabeling. A type of cognitive distortion: Attaching trait labels to self or others for what is essentially a single or small set of incidents, as in making a mistake and declaring oneself stupid or declaring that an adolescent’s desire to watch TV rather than practice the violin as a sign of laziness or indolence.
latency period. Part of Freud’s phallic stage; after repression of sexual desires, children tend to hang out with and learn from same-sex peers until puberty.
Lazersfeld, Sofie. Originated the concept of the courage to be imperfect, used extensively by the Adlerian psychiatrist, Rudolf Dreikurs.
learned helplessness. Martin Seligman’s cognitive-behavioral concept related to depression and helplessness.
Lebow, Jay L. Professor and researcher at the Family Institute at Northwestern University; co-author of Common Factors in Couple and Family Therapy.
lens. Another word for perspectives or metaframeworks in family practice.
lesbian. Women with a sexual/affectional orientation for and toward other women.
lesbian feminists. Feminist therapists who believe that heterosexism is at the core of women’s oppression with its insistence on male-female relationships and sexuality, its sexualized and romanticized images of women, and its almost total marginalization of strong women in same-sex relationships.
liberal feminists. Feminist therapists who see therapy as a means of empowering the individual woman and helping her to overcome the limits and constraints of patriarchal socialization. Personal fulfillment, dignity, and equality were sought as a means of negating male privilege in both social and work environments.
libido. Freud’s term for sexual energy.
Lidz, Theodore. A psychoanalytically trained therapist who worked and taught at Yale University and who focused on fathering practices in families with schizophrenic patients, relieving mothers of their often-blamed position.
life tasks. An Adlerian concept that designates social relationships, work or occupation, and intimacy as unavoidable tasks for all human beings; used in assessment of individuals and families.
linear causality. One-way cause and effect such that the first event in a sequence causes the second or subsequent event without reciprocity.
linguistic therapy. A model of individual and family therapy developed by Harold Goolishian and Harlene Anderson that asks therapists to adopt a not-knowing position and that privileges clients-as-experts.
Lipchik, Eve. A clinical social worker who joined the Brief Family Therapy team and helped to develop solution-focused therapy. Her scholarship often centers on the relationship of theory to practice with a special emphasis on the epistemology of solution-focused therapy.
Little Albert. Refers to a case in which John Watson created a phobia in a little boy using classical conditioning principles.
Little Hans. Refers to a case in which Sigmund Freud coached a father on how to provide psychological treatment for his son.
logical consequences. Dreikurs’ term for the creation of a learning consequence by an outside agent (e.g., parent or teacher) when a natural consequence will not have a desired effect. Logical consequences address the needs of social situations.
Lowe, Raymond. An Adlerian family therapist who studied with Rudolf Dreikurs; for years, he ran a family education center on Saturday mornings at the University of Oregon.
Luepnitz, Deborah Ann. A feminist family therapist and author of The Family Interpreted: Feminist Theory in Clinical Practice.