Power, Authority, and Grace:
Therapy with Oppositional Youth and the Adults that Care for Them

with Jim Keim, MSW, LCSW

                              a workshop for clinicians                                               

This workshop presents a highly effective, four-step intervention for oppositional behavior that works in part by reviving the adults in the system to respond in more soothing, warm, and effective ways. An unusual aspect of the therapy is its focus on the different perceptions of power that oppositional youth and adults have. The concepts of process orientation, tagging, two-tiered consequences, and a reinterpretation of hierarchy are reviewed in detail.

Why is it that discipline techniques that work well with the majority of youth seem only to escalate confrontations with oppositional ones? This workshop answers this question and provides non-confrontational techniques proven to work in homes, school, institutions, and other settings. A central part of the intervention is understanding the authority styles of the adults interacting with oppositional youth. When these adults have been abused by authority themselves, they seem to have particular difficulty and pain in dealing with oppositional youth and especially with therapists that fail to take such experiences into account. Another central part of this intervention is the exploration of the world of the oppositional youth. We will review the different manner with which oppositional youth view confrontation and the way this viewpoint serves to escalate confrontation with well-meaning adults. We will also look into the interplay of anxiety, information processing differences, and attachment issues. This workshop is especially interested in how to motivate tired, angry parents, teachers and others to use soothing techniques with oppositional youth.  The concepts of process orientation, tagging, two-tiered consequences, and a reinterpretation of hierarchy are reviewed in detail.  

James Keim, LCSW served as Director of Training for Jay Haley and Cloe Madanes at the Family Therapy Institute of Washington. He is co-author of the book, The Violence of Men, with Cloe Madanes and Dinah Smelser and a contributor of chapters of eight other books on psychotherapy. James Keim was the Director of the conference, Oppositional Youth, hosted at the National Institute of Health. He presented on Oppositional Defiant Disorder at the National Conference of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy and received a "Best of 1996" rating for his presentation . While at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, he founded projects related to training in generic clinical skills and therapy with families whose members have experienced traumatic brain injury. James is also a founder of the Southeast Asia Children's Project which trains clinicians to treat victims of human trafficking in that region of the world.

Where: Alliant International University

             1 Beach Street, San Francisco, CA 94133

When:  Saturday, October 1^st, 10-5pm

To register, please click here

For more information please email us at info@difficultchildbayarea.com or call (415) 685-3716