ASSESSING
COMPETENCIES
The personal experiences, competencies, and
ambitions of family members are
important both for building trust in therapy and for giving the therapist clues
as to the most appropriate direction to proceed. The therapist can use
his knowledge in these areas to create arguments
in favor of home detoxification and to develop goals of treatment that are tailored to the family. The
basic idea is to make use of what the
family members know already, whatever skills they already have. This allows therapy to be based on
success and strengths.
Strategy evolves by observing the family's
reaction to new in-formation. Such new information might be drawn
from the addict's knowledge of drug pharmacology and drug use (such as with the
cases in Chapters 7 and 10). He is asked to share his expertise with the family. This could show the
addict in a competent light, which can create trust between the
family, the addict, and the therapist. The therapist's view that the
addict is competent reflects favorably on the family's competence. The
therapist can point out that in order to obtain street drugs
consistently and successfully, the addict must be competent in acquiring and
handling money. Discussions exploring this topic can make the addict more
competent in his parents' eyes, and this competency reflects back on their
skills as parents. Mean-while, the addict's competence on these topics is
also being trans-mitted to the family as they become acquainted
with the variety of alternatives the addict has at hand to obtain and
use drugs. This knowledge places the family in a better position
to understand the addiction and consequently help the addict to
detoxify at home. It also
SAMUEL M. SCOTT JOHN M. VAN DEUSEN
