Family Therapy II Practice Exam

Directing the client to deliberately continue or amplify the problematic behavior is a paradoxical intervention used in some systemic/family therapies. This approach, often called prescribing the symptom, requests that the client maintain or even exaggerate the symptom on cue. The purpose is to reveal how family members’ interactions and responses are sustaining the problem, making the function of the symptom visible and changeable. By choosing to keep the symptom alive, the family can observe the predictable patterns it creates—who steps in, who withdraws, what triggers escalation—and thereby gain new insight into how to alter those dynamics.

The other ideas describe different aspects of family dynamics without directing continued symptom behavior. Interactional patterns refer to the recurring sequences in which family members interact. Family rules are the norms that guide behavior within the family. Circular causality is the concept that causes and effects loop back on each other in a cycle, rather than a linear cause-and-effect. Prescribing the symptom uniquely captures the act of instructing the client to keep the problem going to illuminate and disrupt the surrounding dynamics.