Experiential Therapy

Program Overview

The Doctor of Marriage and Family Therapy in Experiential Therapy is for practitioners who have noticed that families can explain their problem perfectly and still not change. The experiential tradition holds that insight is not the agent of change: experience is. What happens in the room — the moment a father actually says the thing, the moment a family sees its own shape from the outside — does what another week of analysis will not. Students work through the tradition's founding figures and methods. Virginia Satir's communication stances, family sculpting, the parts party, and her insistence on self-worth as the root issue; Carl Whitaker's symbolic-experiential approach, his use of absurdity and the therapist's own person as an instrument; Walter Kempler's gestalt family therapy, with the empty chair and present-tense confrontation; and Leslie Greenberg's later emotion-focused work, which gave the tradition an empirical vocabulary for emotional processing, unfinished business, and self-criticism. Method courses cover staging enactments, working with the body and the moment, expressive and creative techniques, and the discipline of therapist self-use, including the supervision that makes it safe. Because the model puts the therapist's own presence to work, formation matters as much as technique, which suits a Christian practice that has always held that the character of the minister shapes the ministry. The doctoral project tests an experiential intervention or training design in the student's own setting. Graduates lead family ministries and counseling programs, train practitioners, teach the tradition, and develop experiential curricula for retreats and intensives.

Core Courses

• EXP 801 — Foundations of Experiential Family Therapy (6 credits)
• EXP 812 — Satir: Communication, Self-Worth, and Sculpting (6 credits)
• EXP 824 — Whitaker and Symbolic-Experiential Practice (6 credits)
• EXP 836 — Gestalt and Emotion-Focused Method (6 credits)
• EXP 848 — Enactment, Expression, and Safety (5 credits)
• EXP 860 — Applied Research Design in Family Therapy (4 credits)
• EXP 899 — Doctoral Project in Experiential Practice (24 credits)

Admission Requirements

• Master's degree in marriage and family therapy, counseling, psychology, ministry, or a related field
• Experience in counseling, pastoral care, chaplaincy, or family ministry
• Statement of purpose describing the people you serve and the model you want to master
• Current resume or professional profile
• Official transcripts from prior institutions when available
• Case write-up, teaching sample, or research paper when requested