Jo Nol, PhD, MS, LCSW
Friday, February 28, 2025
9:30 am – 4 pm
5.5 CECs
Registration Fee: $125
10% discount for UConn SSW Alumni and current SSW Field Instructors
Across all helping professions, research shows that techniques don’t lead to better outcomes. Have you ever wondered why the DSM doesn’t guide treatment more effectively? And, what explains why some therapists are better than others if it isn’t the theory they’re using?
Control-mastery Theory, emerging from decades of elegant research, can help answer these questions and provides ways to understand how therapy works across techniques, practitioners and clients. This perspective may be the best way to learn to be a better therapist.
In this introductory workshop you will learn the basics of this approach which you can begin to apply to your work right away. There is actually no evidence supporting the idea that one technique is superior over another. But there is strong research evidence for the therapist’s increased effectiveness when responding to an individual client’s particular problems and goals. This means to be effective and truly helpful therapists need to understand what the individual client wants and how they will use therapy to achieve those goals.
Control-mastery is more a stance than a list of techniques based on an empirically derived method of case formulation, called the Plan Formulation. The Plan Formulation approach provides a learnable framework for understanding a client’s conscious and unconscious goals, the beliefs and obstacles that prevent the client from pursuing their reasonable goals toward a more satisfying and functional life, traumatic experiences that contributed to the development of those obstacles, and what the most helpful stance is that the therapist can take. This theory helps you understand not only what to do, but how to be a particular client’s therapist.
This workshop will provide participants with the Control-mastery case formulation method and how to use it, an understanding of how trauma shapes beliefs, both conscious and unconscious, how the therapist attitude can help to change those beliefs, and be more flexible, creative, and case specific with clients.
- Using lecture, discussion, and in-depth case examples demonstrating the application of this stance, participants will:
- Learn the fundamentals of Control-mastery Theory
- Understand how this theory advocates for an individual “client-driven” approach
- Develop an appreciation for how necessary countertransference is and how to utilize it to deepen their understanding of what the client is trying to resolve
- Understand the Control-mastery perspective on trauma
- Practice application of the principles of the theory on clinical cases