On this episode of Inside Wheaton, our host, Greg Wheatley, talks with Associate Professor of Marriage and Family Therapy and Director of the Marriage and Family Therapy program, Dr. David Van Dyke. They discuss Dr. Van Dyke's work with the MFT program at Wheaton and some of the ways in which family therapy counseling works. They also talk about his concept of "relational dances" in which a therapist focuses on the dynamics at work in a group of two or more people.
Greg: The program itself is new, a couple years?
Dr. Van Dyke: That’s correct. In 2012, we had our first incoming class. The master's program in Psychology at Wheaton has been an existence since 1976. Fran White started it coming off the mission field and felt called to minister to families and individuals through counseling. She was given the word of Isaiah 61, which we’ve kind of embraced as our verse for the marriage and family therapy program. The history of Master's program at Wheaton for mental health counseling started out as a counseling degree, and then changed in the 80’s to clinical psychology masters, and recently, neither licensure—the LMFT, or the LCPC—were being met by the master's degree, so we developed two new master's programs, a master's in marriage and family therapy and a master's in clinical mental health counseling.
Greg: Talk just a little bit about the differences in the meanings of clinical psychology versus counseling, versus therapy. Help us out.
Dr. Van Dyke: The clinical degree here at Wheaton College is a PsyD degree, so it’s a doctoral degree working on not just clinical skills but research, scholarship, and assessment. The counseling degree is more of an individual-based degree, focusing on what’s happening within the individual. They do family therapy, but the way they conceptualize brokenness,healing, health, and pathology is more from an internal experience. Family therapists is working with more than just one individual in the room, it’s really how we conceptualize sin, brokenness, health, pathology and healing, and it’s relational. It's looking at the context and the relationships shape our experience and provide how we feel and how we think. So we focus on the relational part. It’s “both and”, it’s individual and context in our degree program, emphasis on the context part.
Greg: It’s interesting as I look at your website and your college web page. Some of those words jumped out at me, some of the things you said—experiencing God in relationship, in community. I love the phrase—I don’t know if you wrote it or your press-agent – “relational dances”. It’s very colorful. Talk about what you mean by that.
Dr. Van Dyke: I might think about a fight a couple might have. A husband and wife are fight about who takes out the garbage (I know that never happens in the Wheatley household). An individual perspective might be, if the husband would just do it, the wife wouldn’t have to nag, and the garbage would be taken out. A different way of punctuating it is if the wife wouldn’t nag, the husband would do it, and the garbage would be taken out. A systemic perspective is the dance they do—the complaining and resisting, and it’s not “either or”, it’s“both and”. It’s the dance they do around because it’s about more than taking out the garbage. It’s about being heard, being seen and how they’re doing the relationship. The behavior is a function of how they’re doing that relationship. So it moves from a linear kind of idea to a circular idea.
Greg: Let’s stay with that mundane example, although it’s not mundane and it would have happened. If you stay with that, I suspect then what you’re saying is your counseling would not be “well look, husband, just suck it up and take this out.” You’d want to look more deeply at what was going on in that dance.
Dr. Van Dyke: Correct. We'd look at the dance, we'd look at how are they connecting, how are they be able to be vulnerable with each other and be known. What does taking out the garbage mean to each of them and how is that being expressed in the nature of their relationship? I’m sure there’s disappointment, there’s expectation and it’s unpacking that idea that the dance goes around. A lot of times what we as marriage and family therapists see there’s people coming in doing lots of different dances. Spilt milk is another kind of mundane one. Let’s say there’s tension in a marriage and a child spills the milk. All of a sudden that both parents can look at the kid and see what’s happening and get upset about milk. Enough repetitions of that, the child’s misbehavior becomes a function of the system and it eases the anxiety between the couple. So our job as marriage and family therapists is to really look at what’s the relational dance with the couple, in the family, and how is that maintaining the problematic behavior? It translates into integration of our faith, and how we think about ourselves as relational beings.
Greg: Just a second ago you use some words like brokenness and sin. I’m assuming that a lot of mainstream counselors who are not Christians would have no room for words like that.
Dr. Van Dyke: Then with them I would say pathology.
Greg: How do you counsel differently for a family or a person who comes in and says clearly “I’m a believer and I need some help here”and someone who comes in, who has no religious affiliation whatsoever.
Dr. Van Dyke: For me, personally, I think it’s a language issue; it’s not so much a relational issue. I’m going to come around that question in a little bit distant way. I think about integration really as second-order change, so if we have a dance that’s going on and we’re stuck in that, pathology is going to be that "stuckness" of how we relate for us as believers. We’re bound by sin, because of original sin and the sin we contribute, we’re stuck in a relational violation with God, and there’s nothing we can do about that. The dance that we have, there’s no ability for us to choose outside of that. We’re stuck. Families are stuck. It might be pathology, depression, anxiety, conduct behavior by a child, or infidelity in a couple's relationship. They’re stuck. And the patterns that they’ve developed from family history, what they’ve experienced, we only can know what we can know. The only way out for us, as believers, is the redemptive work of Christ. Then, there’s a second order change—all of a sudden the context has changed and we have new possibilities for relating differently with God through Christ. As a family therapist whether I’m working with a believing family or individuals that believe in Christ or not, I see myself as coming in and my students and professionals coming into the system and shifting the system so that there’s new possibilities. Will they choose those? I don’t know. But from an internal standpoint, I see myself being Christ-like in that context. With people that have shared faith, we would probably use the same language. When I’m working with a family that might have Muslim belief system, Hindu, agnostic, the language I use is different, but the truth and how I engage in the system is the same.
Greg: And as far as you’re thinking without verbalizing it, you’re still thinking the same things that you want to enter into the middle of this and be of help.
Dr. Van Dyke: Right. And it comes from when I was being trained at Fuller. I had a class with Ray Anderson on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It was really that idea of that space "in between" for me as a believer entering into relationship, that I bring the Holy Spirit into that space, and so it becomes a sacred space, regardless of what the other person's response is. That’s been very powerful for me as a clinician and as a professor to have that partnership and that relationship enter in to the relationships I have.
Greg: You also are involved as a counselor at Summit clinical services, so you have that professional outlet and then the teaching. Is that true of most professors, I mean would most professors of counseling or psychology also have their own practice?
Dr. Van Dyke: Yes, in the graduate school and the psychology programs, whether it’s Psy. D, CMHC or MFT, the faculty have released time to either do research or do clinical practice. Those of us at the Masters level mainly keep a clinical practice as well as our scholarship. And it’s really beneficial for both the students and the families that we see. We’re practicing what we preach, and we’re also being informed by what we teach. So, for me it’s the best of both worlds; that the clinical practice informs my supervision; because I’m working with families. It helps me stay really connected with what the students are going through. I can have empathy for them, challenge them in different ways, and then the teaching of the best practices of what’s out there in the research and the scholarship in form of what we do.
Greg: How would you, as you meet with families and individuals now, what’s different from a generation ago? I mean, humans are humans, would you say that? Or would you say we are seeing some really new—to use your word—"pathologies"?
Dr. Van Dyke: I don’t know if it’s changed as much as that the context has changed. The process is really similar. We are all seeking escapes from intimacy. It gets to be too much and we seek escapes. In the past, say a generation ago, 50’s and 60’s, we’re looking at alcohol as the substance for escape, workaholism as escape, that’s still there. Technology has shifted; there’s a lot more escapes with technology for kids in terms of really good social skills and relational intimacy. Technology has been a big transformative issue, and we see parents struggling with how do you monitor technology and access that kids have, not only their own technology, but what they’re exposed to from other kids at school showing videos, showing pictures. So, there’s the exposure to that material, but there’s also the experience of technology as an escape. You can think for our generation thinking of TV as that, right? We just go into TV and we escape. Now it’s everybody’s personal device. Even walking the hall it’s hard to make eye contact with students because they’re deep into their email, texting, and watching Netflix.
Greg: Now you kind of subsumed all of that under the idea of escape from intimacy. Is that the umbrella thing in your mind, is that really what we’re all sort of doing?
Dr. Van Dyke: I think so. On a spiritual level and on a relational level, if you think about the violation of relationship with God it’s about hiding, right? Form the Genesis story on, we started out naked and not ashamed, right? We’d be very uncomfortable sitting here fully knowing each other. We cover up, we escape, we find ways of avoiding being fully known, because we don’t like what we see. We realize the violations that are there, and I think from a spiritual level we see that. I see that in my practice, I see that with families, and in churches that I come alongside. We escape intimacy in lots of different ways, and being fully known and being fully vulnerable with each other. It’s very difficult.
Greg: So you are going back to…and this is where theology and psychology meet up, isn’t it? You’re looking at basically the Garden experience and saying we have inherited that—if you want to use the word pathology, or--
Dr. Van Dyke: Sin, brokenness, however you want to frame it. There’s violation that’s happened and yes we’ve inherited it. We’ve actually gotten better at it probably, and continue to practice it. So, the challenge from a marriage and family therapist is really helpful because the theology and the theory really fit well together, not only from the idea of relationships, but also on the image of God. When we look at what it means to be a person, from a family therapist perspective it’s recursive, it’s relational, it’s that “I-Thou” that Martin Buber talked about. It’s that space "in between" that our humanness exists, just as in the Godhead. Part of being made in the image of God is that we have a triune God who's in relationship with himself, and our image of being relational beings flows from a Trinitarian perspective.
Greg: When I have someone across the table in your discipline, I usually ask them in one way or another, how do you help people get over the hurdle of coming in for counseling, I mean that’s still hard for a lot of us, isn’t it?
Dr. Van Dyke: It is. It’s interesting, I think, in the United States. It’s more difficult than internationally. I’ve been consulting with mental health professionals internationally, and family therapy is very, very attractive. I was just down in Brazil, and people want to come in with their families and talk about relationships, it’s just a cultural acceptance. I think in the States, there’s more acceptance of marriage and family therapy, because it sounds safe, versus psychology, which seems to be a threat, but I think the stigma is that escape from vulnerability. I don’t really want people to see what I struggle with. In psychology and marriage and family therapy, if you have a good clinician, there’s not a lot of places to hide. So, that’s scary. And I think that’s scary in the church too, because we talk about our hope and we talk about what we believe Christ is doing, and then we have these struggles and how does that fit together? The discontinuity between that is unsettling. Being able to sit with that, and train my students to sit with people in that unsettled space is good, but getting people to get there is hard. Getting my students to get to that unsettled space is hard, but I tend to be very good at making people anxious so that’s a gift God has given me.
Greg: As you say though, it boils down to this—if you knew me you wouldn’t like me, or I’d feel threatened. Tell me a little bit more about this new program at Wheaton now just a couple years old. How do you feel about it? How are students feeling about it? You just graduated your first class?
Dr. Van Dyke: Yea, we had our first graduates this May (2014), and it’s been really exciting to see what God is doing and how this has come about. My goal, as program director, is to stay out of God’s way because it seems like He’s really moving in interesting ways in this program. It started in 2012, and we had an incoming class of 18 and they’ve graduated. We’ve hired two more faculty members. So, the first year it was just me. I felt horrible for the students that they were stuck with only me. Now, we have a faculty of three; we’re working on seeking accreditation through our accrediting body, and people are getting very excited. A majority, or probably half of our students are missionaries and international students that are really interested in coming and training, and then going back to their home countries or the mission field to serve families internationally.
Greg: So what would you say to a person who is hearing this and considering Wheaton, maybe as a prospective? What kind of person, what’s the profile of a person who would come here?
Dr. Van Dyke: Yea, we’re an academically rigorous program, but that’s not the identity that we’re seeking. Our mission is expressed in our three or four learning outcomes. We want to train competent clinicians. So, if you have a heart for relationships and thinking about relational brokenness, and coming alongside people in a giving example of who we are in relationship, that’s who we are looking for. The program is about who you are. We tell our students you’re going to be the tool in the room. It’s not a technique based thing; it’s how you’re going to be living out relationship and doing the dance in the room with them that’ll give them a new experience. We seek competent clinicians that are relationally skilled, that have a sense of interpersonal justice. What we mean by that is, our mission is to not only have private practice and work in wealthy communities, but really to serve the underserved and those on the margins.
Greg: That shows up in several people who I’ve had in here, as a hallmark of the Wheaton program.
Dr. Van Dyke: I think it’s part of the college's mission, and the Graduate School and the clinical programs are congruent with it. Where on the margins, are we going to meet people? That’s what Isaiah 61 was about too. The Lord used that in Matthew and the calling forth his ministry. This idea of, look I’m healing the blind, I’m meeting the sick, and those that are poor. We're looking for people that are interested in working in those communities and coming alongside them. Lastly, distinctly Christian integration. A lot of the integration that’s out there in psychology is about the individual and Christian faith, so we’re looking to really train clinicians to think systemically, think about this Trinitarian kind of perspective of our relationships. What does it mean? And how does marriage and family therapy and Christianity fit together? Where doesn't it? How do we navigate that? So, those are the characteristics of our program, when we’re looking for good students that fit well.
Greg: If you’re interested in that, sounds like something you’d like to take a look at, visit www.wheaton.edu or you can find more information about the marriage and family therapy program here at Wheaton. Dr. Van Dyke is the program director and associate professor of marriage and family therapy here. David it’s great to talk to you.
Dr. Van Dyke: It was wonderful talking to you Greg. Thank you.
*This interview was conducted in2014. The Marriage and Family Therapy program at Wheaton College are already accredited through COAMFTE(Commission on Accreditation for Marriage and Family Therapy Education) and received their initial accreditation May 2016.
To watch the interview video, please click the following link:
https://www.wheaton.edu/graduate-school/degrees/ma-in-marriage-and-family-therapy/faculty/
To read the Chinese version of the transcript, please click the following link:
https://www.jianshu.com/p/e5d498d9ca1b