Mental Research Institute (MRI): Study for CA MFT Licensing Exam

- Palo Alto, California
- One of the leading sources of ideas in the area of interactional/systemic studies, psychotherapy, and family therapy
- Applied research and theory development
- One of the founding institutions of brief and family therapy

- Jay Haley
- Paul Watzlawick
- Richard Fisch
- Jules Riskin
- Virginia Satir
- Salvador Minuchin
- R. D. Laing
- Irvin Yalom
- Cloe Madanes

Cybernetic (runaway positive feedback loops)

Unchecked positive feedback that causes a family or system to get out of control, compounding a system's errors

1) Identify the feedback loop
2) Find the rules governing it
3) Change the loops and rules

Gregory Bateson

- Simply change the current problem (run away positive feedback loop) and send the family home, even if there are other serious problems.
- Make the family form clear, straight forward, immediate, behavioral goals and stick to them

- Reframing
- Outpositioning
- Paradoxical interventions
- Symptom prescription
- Restraining techniques

- Providing the family with a rational for treatment
- The MRI therapist may not believe what they tell the family, but that is unimportant as long as its a rational explanation. The point of it is not to bring insight, but to induce compliance

Having someone take the role other family members place on them to the extreme

- Compliance based, to simply get the family to change their behavior by complying with a directive
- Or defiance based, in the hopes that the family will defy the directive and improve

- Prescribing the problem
- To expose the family's hidden relationships

Telling the family they can't move very fast because they aren't ready

1) Introduction and setup - MRI's limit session to 10 and set up a powerful motivator
2) Definition of the problem in clear behavioral terms
3) Estimation of the behavior (run away positive feedback loops) maintaining the problem
4) Setting goals
5) Selecting and making interventions
6) Termination