Supervised Field Training

Hands-on clinical experience and intensive individual and group supervision provide preparation for a rewarding career.

Clinical experience is provided through the various Family Institute clinic and community sites that offer students the opportunity to work with a variety of client populations. An integral part of The Family Institute, the Bette D. Harris Family and Child Clinic is committed to offering top quality, affordable treatment to individuals, couples and families regardless of their ability to pay.

1. Students gain hands-on clinical experience under the close supervision of highly experienced marriage and family therapists.
2. Students begin seeing clients in November of their first year and continue seeing clients until they graduate, accumulating a minimum of 500 hours of face-to-face contact with clients, including at least 250 hours with couples and families.  Students will obtain more than 250 hours of group and individual supervision over the 2 years.
3. Supervision is conducted weekly, both on an individual basis and in small groups. Faculty supervision methods include direct observation and videotape/audiotape recordings of students’ therapy sessions.

Build your future on a solid theoretical and clinical approach

Systemic, integrative family therapy, pioneered at The Family Institute, addresses emotional, behavioral and relational problems in the context of both familial and extra-familial relationships. The influences of biology, psychodynamics, gender, socioeconomic status, culture and life cycle are used to help clients understand and address their problems.  For further review of The Family Institute approaches, see Pinsof (1995) Integrative problem centered therapy and Breunlin, Schwartz, and MacKune-Karrer (2001) Metaframeworks.