The Myers–Briggs type indicator (MBTI) was designed to help people understand themselves and others by helping them appreciate the diverse strengths of different personality types. It has been widely used in counseling as well as business to work on team building and relationships. There is, therefore, room for using this assessment within the field of student affairs to help build teams and groups both for professionals in the field and for students. This chapter discusses the basic information about the MBTI and implications for student affairs. The instrument is considered as a personality assessment for normal individuals designed to assess personality type. The MBTI offers strength-based guidance in every realm of living concerning individual growth to interpersonal relationships, in academic matters to spiritual terrains. From the office of the president to the chaplain, the MBTI is a useful and effective tool on a college campus.

This chapter reviews the questions that are frequently asked in solution-focused therapy (SFT) and how they can be used with couples. It discusses the miracle question, the scaling question, and exception-finding questions, many of which have been written about extensively over the years. Solution-focused questions spring from a therapist’s curiosity curiosity is the foundation of solution building. Deciding which partner to question at a particular moment in the session is an important skill for a couple’s counselor. Solution building is a process of co-constructing a conversation between the couple and the therapist, and all three must take their turn in the conversation. Third-person questions are also a powerful way to bring a couple’s entire support system into the session. Presumptive language is very important in developing solution-building questions. Some questions are crafted to create a picture of the preferred future and to fill it with as many details as possible.

Eliciting a description of a couple’s ideal future without getting sucked into the problem story is one of the hardest tasks in solution-focused therapy. In order to stick to a description of the “future” a therapist must have the discipline to refrain from following the client’s lead toward the use of “problem language”. The process of gathering details about a preferred future is therapeutic in itself. Often nothing more needs to happen for the couple to make significant and lasting changes in their lives and in their relationship, and the more thorough their description of their future, the more good it’s likely to do. The role of a solution-focused marriage counselor is to remind couples of the process that was in play when they first fell in love, and what skills each partner brought to the relationship in its early days.

Students may enter higher education with a strong set of ideals, firm models of career options, and certain confidence in their ultimate direction; however, it is not uncommon for students to begin college unprepared for life after graduation, let alone housing assignments and first semester coursework. This chapter focuses on the difficulties surrounding the major choice, the factors that influence decision making, career theories in student affairs, and campus and community resources available to assist students in gathering important data about their major and career choices. Selecting a college major and making career decisions are not easy, and require self-knowledge, self-examination, and research on what is available in the world of work. Essential to student success is the ability of student affairs professionals to accurately recognize when students are struggling and make an appropriate referral for career counseling, academic support services, or personal counseling.

This chapter describes the various roles and functions of the treatment program or clinical management staff in the residential facility. It characterizes the roles of support staff and agency personnel. Teachers, physicians, nurses, psychologists, social workers, lawyers, and accountants in the TC ply their professions in the usual way. The relationship between staff and peer roles is rooted in the evolution of the Therapeutic Community (TC). In the TC approach, the role of staff is complex and can be contrasted with that of mental health and human service providers in other settings. An array of staff activities underscores the distinctively humanistic focus of the TC. The chapter describes how primary clinical staff in the treatment program supervise the daily activities of the peer community through their interrelated roles of facilitator, counselor, community manager, and rational authority. Other staff provide educational, vocational, legal, medical, and facility support services.

This chapter discusses the type of group work using rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT) principles and practices. Several methods of psychotherapy, such as psychoanalysis, employ group therapy for expediency reasons. REBT distinctly uses an educational rather than a medical or psychodynamic model. REBT includes a number of role-playing and behavior modification methods that can be done during individual therapy sessions but that are more effective in group. Clients who are shy or who have interpersonal problems are particularly encouraged to join a group because it is often more therapeutic for them to work out their problems with their peers than to work on them only with an individual therapist. In cognitive-behavioral therapy in general and in group REBT in particular, the activity level of the therapist tends to be high. Group REBT and counseling especially have intrinsic disadvantages and limitations when compared to more individualized REBT proc.

This chapter explores vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, and burnout and the potential impact on professionals who treat victims of military sexual trauma (MST). Professionals who provide counseling to sexual trauma survivors will be affected by the exposure to the personal and, sometimes, graphic accounts of sexual victimization reported by their clients. Although brief exposure to extreme or shocking trauma material can have a significant impact on the helping professional, prolonged exposure to emotional pain and the explicit details of other people’s suffering can be more problematic. Psychologist Jacob Lindy pointed to this concern in his book on treating war veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Burnout was originally used in the 1970s by psychoanalyst Hebert Freundenberger in reference to occupational exhaustion. Burnout may involve psychological, physical, or behavioral symptoms in both personal and professional settings.

This chapter addresses three categories of supervision models: developmental models, counseling theory-based models, and social role models. Clinical supervision is a core function of counselor training and development. In early stages of the supervision process, counselors use supervision to become more fully competent in all areas of professional practice, which includes theory development and utilization. Supervisors use models of supervision in a manner similar to the way counselors use counseling theories. Developmental models of supervision center around the belief that change occurs over time and that supervision will adjust supervisory interventions to align with the counselor’s evolving performance. Cognitive behavioral supervision (CBS) models represent the convergence of cognitive theories, behavioral theories, and counselor supervision. Social role models may be conceptualized as the combination of a carefully selected role and an intentional focus on a specific area.

Although there is a scarcity of specific research on leadership principles and practices and the community/mental health/clinical counseling profession at the agency level, a number of leadership theories can be related and applied to the counseling practice. Leadership is defined as a process that is established and implemented by a group of individuals working together to achieve a common goal. One prominent theory of followership as it relates to leadership is the leader-member exchange (LMX) theory. Although the focus of servant leadership appears to be on the leader and leader behavior, the perceived outcomes of servant leadership include follower performance and growth, organizational performance, and societal impact. The nature of the mental health field is one of multiple constituencies working together to promote the well-being and mental health of individuals and communities, and the process of leadership is a natural fit for implementation in professional practice.