Could You Be A Family Therapist? Required Professional Criteria
Here are two important questions from a psychology undergraduate: What are the professional criteria required for a family therapist?What personality traits are expected?
Who Can Be a Family Therapist?
People from various professions, such as social workers, nurses, psychologists, psychiatrists, and physicians, can be accepted to Family Therapy training programs. This is true everywhere in the world.
There are intensive graduate program of two years or a graduate program of longer durations aimed at working people. For these, sessions are held at night or at weekends.
Choose a profession that appeals to you, where you feel you could be happy. The job you choose will eventually shape your personality.
In Turkey, there are Couples and Family Therapy graduate programs in a few universities. As the number is rather limited, however, some who wish to become Family Therapist either go to a university abroad or try and move forward through private training programs available in the field, after receiving a graduate degree in Clinical Psychology.
From the point of view of legislation, we see that the concept of Family Therapy has become somewhat confusing for the last few years.
The regulation which took effect in 2012 stipulates that “a bachelor’s degree from a four-year program in social workers, psychology, sociology, psychological counseling and guidance, medicine, nursing, or child development is required to enrol in a training program in family counseling.”
Professional Criteria: Requirements for Becoming a Family Therapist
The same regulation stipulates:
“…. those who receive a certificate after completing a training program in family therapy, involving at least three hundred hours of theoretical and a hundred and fifty hours of practical training, of which at least thirty under supervision, thus a total of four hundred and fifty hours of training, approved by either the Ministry of Education, the Board of Higher Education, or a university, acquire the title of Family Counselor.”
This stipulation is in conformity with the international criteria.
Apparently, the main issue is to find the people and institutions who offer quality training. In fact, the Ministry of Family and Social Policies states the following in an announcement they published in 2015 concerning Family Counseling Certificate Programs:
“National proficiency and examination-certification efforts still continue. … Beware of the educational establishments making promises that do not conform to regulations.”
Personality Traits a Family Therapist Should Possess
Some have an inborn ability for music, sports or art. Yet they still have to put in a lot of work and also need some luck to be successful in those fields. Malcolm Gladwell explains and illustrates in his book ‘Outliers’ that as many as 10,000 of practice is needed in order to master a skill.
On the other hand, people who do not possess an extraordinary gift in any field may achieve considerable success through hard work and serious practice.
It’s important it important that everyone should be able to study in a field in line with their gifts as well as their aspirations. So choose a profession that appeals to you, where you feel you could be happy. Personality is not constant, it evolves continuously through your life as you collect more experiences. The job you choose will eventually shape your personality.
I believe professional citeria most valuable for a Family Therapist is to develop the following personality traits:
- Ability to see the whole
- Ability and desire to question the system
- Analytical thinking skills, some degree of defiance
- Love of reading
- Not being afraid of conflict
- Non-judgmental attitude towards different aspects of the human nature
- Ability to view causality from a cyclical perspective
- Flexibility
- Daring to be different and to stand out whilst protecting their unpretentiosusness
- Compassion and acceptance
- Love for fellow humans, altruism
- Openness to get help
- Ability to view themselves, their family, their life critically
- Willingness to keep studying and learning and receiving supervision throughout their working life
- Ability to value themselves without taking themselves too seriously
- Ability to change along with their clients
You can also read The Beginner’s Reference Guide to Family Therapy on my website.
You can consider joining our Foundation Course in Family Therapy and Online Supervision Group if you need support to increase your competence after you have received your degree.
Click here to read about how I became a family therapist.
