Assignment 2

Due Week 3

This assignment provides the opportunity for you to demonstrate your ability to apply the concepts covered throughout the course. This assignment MUST be typed, double-spaced, in APA style, and must be written at graduate level English. You must integrate the material presented in the text and cite your work according to APA format.
Culture and Legal/Ethical consideration are required. [This information can be found in Part I as well as in chapters throughout the course text]. You are also encouraged to use outside cultural resources to enhance your understanding.
Use the Case of Stan and Case of Gwen as a guide to theoretical application, referencing in APA style.

See Sample Vignette Analysis located under Resources

Your response to each vignette should be 1-2 pages per vignette for a total of 5-6 pages for the entire assignment plus a title and reference page.
Do not copy and paste the vignettes into your written response
Vignette One
Jack, a 28-year old man, tells you: “Most of my life I have felt pushed and pulled. My father pushed me into school, sports, and so forth, and over the years my resentment grew for him. He was always directing and controlling my life and beating me when I challenged his authority. My mother always gave me a warm, unconditional love and tried to pull me under her protective wing. My parents divorced when I was 18 and without parental control I began a life of self-will in my relationships and in my use of drugs and alcohol. On graduating from college, I rejected my father’s wishes to pursue a career and returned to school to seek another degree. In some ways it’s just a place to be that I like. Most of my life revolves around living for today, a hedonistic style that has no concreteness of goals and aspirations, with a lack of definition of `what a man should be.’ I float in and out of people’s lives. They see an image of me as a despoiler of women, a drug freak, and a cold bastard. My fear is that I am nothing more than that image, that I am empty inside. I want to be able to open up and let people see the warmer, more sensitive sides of me, but I have terrible difficulty doing that. I have a strong need to become close and intimate with others, yet I never let myself become vulnerable because I fear being dependent on them and trapped by their love.”
Assume that Jack comes to you for personal therapy and that all you know about him is what he told you above. Answer the following questions on how you might proceed with Jack within a Psychoanalytic frame of reference:
1.    As a psychoanalytic therapist, do you think that Jack’s current unwillingness to become vulnerable to others out of his fear of “being dependent on them and trapped by their love” has much to do with his mother’s unconditional love? How might this experience be related to his relationships with women now?

2.    Jack describes his father as an authoritarian, controlling, and cruel man who apparently had conventional ideas of what he wanted Jack to become. What are the underlying psychological aspects that you see involved with Jack’s rejection of his father’s wishes? How might you use psychoanalytic counseling theory to explain the fact that in many ways he became what his father did not want him to become?
Vignette Two
Alice and Javier, both in their early 30’s, have been married for 7 years and have three young children. Javier is a Latino, and Alice is a Pacific Islander. Neither his family nor hers was very supportive of marrying a person “not of your own kind.” Consequently, Javier and Alice do not see their parents very often. She feels a real gap without this connection with her family; he maintains that if that’s the way his family wants it, so be it. They have been having a great deal of difficulty as a family for several years. Alice seems to think that Javier is far too strict with the children, demanding full obedience without question. He admits he is a hard taskmaster, but he says that’s the way it was for him in his family.
Alice would like to get a job, yet she stops herself from considering it because Javier becomes extremely upset when she even mentions the issue. His response is: “Why can’t you be satisfied with what you have? It reflects poorly on me if you have to go outside and get work!” Alice has tended to assume the role of keeping peace in the family, almost at any price. This means not doing many of the things she would like to do, lest it lead to an escalation of the conflicts between them. Alice has finally decided that even if it rocks the boat and causes a storm, she cannot continue living as she has. She has asked Javier to go to counseling with her. He has agreed, reluctantly, mostly to understand her better and “do whatever can be done to help her.”
Assume that Alice and Javier come to you for personal therapy and that all you know about them is what they told you above. Answer the following questions on how you might proceed with this couple within an Adlerian frame of reference:
1.    As an Adlerian therapist you will want to make sure that your goals and the goals of Alice and of Javier are in alignment. How might you go about this? What if Javier and Alice have different goals? How might the fact that he is a Latino and she is a Pacific Islander be significant in setting goals?

2.    If you had to speculate at this moment, what are Alice’s “basic mistakes”? Javier’s?  What specific Adlerian techniques might you be most inclined to employ in working with this couple?
Vignette Three
Paul, a 30-year old gay man, has recently found out that he has AIDS. He knows that the disease is serious and likely requires treatment throughout his life. Paul is seeking counseling to help him deal with accepting his diagnosis without resentment and hostility. He is filled with rage over his fate; he keeps asking why this had to happen to him. He tells you that at first, he could not believe the diagnosis was correct. When he finally got several more professional opinions that confirmed he had AIDS, he began to feel more and more anger—toward God, toward his healthy friends, whom he envied, and generally toward the unfairness of his situation. He tells you that he was just starting to live the lifestyle he denied himself all of his adult life and that he had a direction he was going in professionally. Now everything will have to change. After he tells you this, he is sitting across from you waiting for your response.

Assume that Paul comes to you for personal therapy and that all you know about him is what he told you above. Answer the following questions on how you might proceed with Paul within an Existential/Person Centered frame of reference:
1.    Paul tells you that one of the reasons he is coming to see you is his desire to accept his fate. How would you work with him to gain this acceptance? What specific things might you do to help him find ways of living the rest of his life to its fullest?

2.    Do you see any possibilities for helping Paul find meaning in his life in the face of death? What diversity issues and ethical considerations might arise in your work with Paul?
Needs to be in detail! Please see sample vignette below.

References:

Corey, G.   (2017).   Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy.   (10th ed.).   Belmont, CA   Cengage.    ISBN: 9781305263727

To complete this assignment, choose a day that will be your “Day of Compassion” and try your absolute best to live each minute of that day as compassionately as possible. In other words, for a full 24-hour period you should do your best to reduce suffering of others, help those in need, be considerate and respectful, and avoid causing harm to any living being.

When carrying out this assignment, leave no behavior unexamined — from watching TV to eating lunch to decisions about giving time or money to others. That is, don’t limit yourself to simply holding the door open for a stranger or petting a lonely dog; think about all the unnecessary suffering in the world, and strive for the greatest impact and deepest level of compassion without being phony or insincere. It is up to you to define what compassion is and to decide how best to realize it.

If you are already quite compassionate, try being compassionate toward groups you don’t often focus on, and even if your actions don’t differ much from how you normally behave, carefully observe and analyze what transpires during the day. If outside events make it difficult for you to participate on the designated day, or if you feel dissatisfied with your performance of the assignment, feel free to repeat the exercise on a later day.

Note: To minimize any bias in social reactions, it is best if you do not tell others about the class assignment until after the Day of Compassion is over.

Part 2:

Submit a social psychological analysis of what the day was like (3-4 pages double spaced). Here are a few sample questions you might address:

• How did you define compassion, and who were the recipients of your efforts?
• If your behavior was different than normal, which person did you like more: the “Day of Compassion you” or the “normal you”? If you preferred the “Day of Compassion you,” what are the psychological factors that prevent this “you” from coming out?
• What are the psychological costs and benefits of behaving compassionately? In your view, do the benefits outweigh the costs?
• How did others respond to your compassion? Do you think they noticed a difference in your behavior? What attributions did people make for your behavior, and why?
• If you wanted to encourage others to behave as you did during the Day of Compassion, what psychological techniques would you use? How can social psychology be used to foster compassion?
• If you were to predict your behavior one month from now, do you think it will be changed in any way as a result of participating in the Day of Compassion? If so, how? If not, why not?

You can earn up to 50 extra credit points for a well done assignment.

“The problem is whether we are determined to go in the direction of compassion or not. If we are, then can we reduce the suffering to a minimum? If I lose my direction, I have to look for the North Star, and I go to the north. That does not mean I expect to arrive at the North Star. I just want to go in that direction.”
~Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace (1987)