Central Connecticut State University School of Education
	Faculty & Staff

	Daniel Wiener
	Professor

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I have been training professional psychotherapists for the past eighteen years and am currently teaching Marriage and Family therapists (MFT's) to graduate students at CCSU. I strongly believe in the importance of therapists developing themselves as effective healing and change agents for both their clients and themselves. The competent practice of MFT requires a synthesis of knowledge, judgment, skill, and personal presence (use of self) which cannot be imparted by conceptual learning alone. I have found that experiential learning (particularly action methods that involve physical movement and dramatic enactment) promotes growth in use self far more effectively than does the exclusive use of verbal conceptual methods. Since 1985 I have been developing a distinctive clinical action approach to relationship therapy which I call Rehearsals for Growth. I have both published and presented extensively on this approach over the past thirteen years; more information on Rehearsals for Growth is available on my website, www.rehearsals.com/rfg.

In promoting a use of self perspective to the study of family systems thinking and clinical practice I am continually monitoring the class context to maintain a balance between an overdistanced stance, in which family process in self as well as others is objectified and stripped of feeling, or an underdistanced stance, in which the student becomes emotionally reactive to, and part of, the family emotional process. To this end I attempt to establish and maintain a safe, supportive classroom atmosphere that encourages inquiry and self expression.  

Courses I teach:

MFT 556     Systemic Perspectives on Mental Disorders

MFT 552     Experiential, Intergenerational and Psychodynamic Family Therapies

MFT 554     Couples Therapy

CNSL 580      Use of Self in Therapy

MFT 557       Action Methods in Family Therapy

MFT 583       Marriage and Family  Therapy  Practicum I

MFT 584       Marriage and Family  Therapy  Practicum II

MFT 585        Marriage and Family  Therapy Internship