Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) Practice Exam

Which concept refers to an impasse in treatment when couples have some insight but still differ in their marriage wants?

1. Discontinuous Change

2. Framo's Couples Therapy

3. Discriminative Stimulus

4. Disease Model of Addiction

The correct answer is: Framo's Couples Therapy

Framo's Couples Therapy focuses on the dynamics within relationships and explores the interactions and underlying feelings of the partners involved. One of the key ideas in this approach is that couples may reach a point in therapy where they have gained some insight into their issues but continue to maintain different wants or needs regarding their marriage. This situation can create an impasse in treatment where progress stalls, despite the awareness of the problems. This concept emphasizes the complexity of marital relationships, where understanding and insight alone are not sufficient to lead to resolution or agreement on marital wants. Framo's theory suggests that therapists need to facilitate further dialogue and exploration of these differing desires to help couples navigate through the impasse and work towards a deeper level of understanding and compromise. The other concepts listed do not directly relate to the specific scenario of couples facing an impasse despite having insight into their differences. Discontinuous Change refers to a psychological theory about abrupt, qualitative shifts in behavior or cognition, which does not specifically address marital differences. A Discriminative Stimulus is a behavioral concept related to stimuli that signal the availability of reinforcement, and the Disease Model of Addiction is a framework for understanding addiction as a medical condition, neither of which pertains to the intricacies of marital therapy dynamics as outlined by Framo