Master of Arts (M.A.) in Couple + Family Therapy

Focus on a special topic in the field of Couple and Family Therapy providing knowledge and skills for developing CFTs. The Special Topics elective courses are designed to examine special interests, including current and emerging issues for couples and families, areas of social justice, and professional matters for CFTs.

This course is about understanding conflict, resolution, and divorce mediation from a relational lens and through a systemic perspective. The framework will be expanded to include the global context of conflict resolution, conceptualizing and applying a social justice orientation.

This course will address biopsychosocial and spiritual aspects of illness and disability and their impact on the couple and family systems. Self-of-the-therapist work and the impact of dimensions of culture, power, and privilege will be emphasized throughout the course. Also, issues of collaboration between marriage and family therapists and other healthcare professionals will be discussed.

This course examines the impact of aging on family dynamics and relationships including the processes of development in later life, intergenerational issues, and the crises or transitions experienced throughout the family life cycle. The effect of a population that is living significantly longer on these family issues is explored. The course also addresses communication, mediation, and caregiving with aging family members.

This one-credit doctoral special course covers techniques such as the kinetic family drawing, self-as-animal, the family floor plan, sand tray, build-a-house, video play therapy, family puppet interview, family school, and music therapy. This is a hands-on experiential class.

This course is designed to explore the scholarly works of bell hooks and Ken Hardy. Multiple writings of bell hooks and Ken Hardy provide frameworks to increase critical thinking in examining complex layers of cultural forces that impact lived experience and propose paradigms for impacting systemic change.

This course will provide students with an overview of conceptual and empirical issues in adult attachment theory and its theoretical application in working with couples. Through the use of vignettes, role-plays, and educational videos, students will be helped to conceptualize dyadic stress with an attachment focus to work with couples to recreate healthier bonds.

The purpose of this seminar is to examine specific issues for families who are experiencing divorce. Topics include the culture of divorce, the impact of divorce, the aftermath of divorce for men, women, and children, and remarriage and blended families.

Infidelity is a common presenting problem in couple, family, and individual therapy with presentation ranging from the aftermath for couples and families to individuals deciding between their partner and their affair. This seminar will define infidelity understanding the critical issues and look at the treatment of infidelity in couples, families, and individuals as well as reflect on the impact of treating infidelity on clinicians.

Popular culture is often absorbed without thinking critically about its content or consequences. This is remarkable given the enormous impact it has on our lives, our identities and our consciousness. We often do not stop to think or question the underlying assumptions of popular culture, nor do we think about for what or whom such assumptions or content may support.

The Consensus Rorschach (CR) is a projective technique for the assessment of couples that has been used to elicit and analyze communication styles, power and control dynamics, emotional processes, and interpersonal stress dynamics. This seminar will provide the history of the technique, training in the administration and interpretation of the protocol, and cutting edge research on the use of the Consensus Rorschach with couples.

This seminar will focus on meeting the needs and working with families with a child with special needs. Learning objectives include a focus on the impact of a child with special needs on the family including parenting issues, the couple relationship, and on siblings.

One important aspect of a career in the field of mental health is writing and publishing. Whether it be a research paper, essay, book, or blog, putting our insights into written word can be a crucial component of being a clinician.

This course will explore Kink and BDSM practices in sexuality within a systemic framework. Students will be expected to engage in intrapersonal work exploring their own attitudes and biases about Kink and BDSM practices and analyze how countertransference may impact their clinical work.

Perinatal mood disorders and the special issues that present during the perinatal period are prevalent. This course will examine the unique challenges and special considerations when working with couples and families during this period in the family life cycle.

This course will explore various forms of consensual nonmonogamy within a systemic framework. Through didactic learning, the student is expected to gain knowledge regarding the various relational configurations of consensual nonmonogamy and an understanding of the specific vocabulary utilized by those within the community.

While there is a shared need to connect to self and others, the differences between men and women and how they connect are distinct in some ways. Clinical understanding related to the needs of each gender should not be based solely on assumptions and personal experiences but should also include an integration of human development knowledge and empirical research.

This course is designed to help students critically examine and explore stereotypes specific to women of color. This course will focus on the intersectionality of race, gender, class, and geographical variables that create racialized gender stereotypes for women of color.

This seminar will focus on suicide as an issue of clinical risk management in therapeutic work with families. A self-of-the-therapist lens will be used to help develop the student’s ability to respond to clients in crisis specifically focusing on interpersonal behaviors, reactions, risk factors and intervention strategies. Suicidal ideation as well as working with families after loss to suicide will be reviewed.

This course will explore developmental sexuality across the lifespan including sexual and reproductive anatomy and physiology, human sexual response cycles, and the normative developmental tasks and challenges related to sex and sexuality from a biopsychosocial perspective. Competency understanding, assessing, and conceptualizing sexuality in a sex-positive way at various life stages including clinical interventions and improved communication skills addressing common challenges will be introduced.

This course is an intensive in-person and experiential workshop designed to allow participants to examine and process their sexual attitudes, values, and beliefs through exposure to various sexual themes. Highly experiential in nature, the SAR involves exposure to films, documentaries, lectures, guest speakers and workshop activities with a focus on processing in both large and small groups.

This course will cover the practice of sex therapy through the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of psychosexual disorders in the DSM-V including sexual issues arising from trauma, medical or mental health factors, relational factors, or environmental factors. Students can expect to learn several models and theories from both an individual and relational perspective to effectively diagnose and treat sexual functioning issues, as well as out-of-control sexual behaviors and paraphilic disorders.