LICSW Exam Prep – practice questions with answers
Strategic Family Therapy - correct answer ✔✔Helps families discontinue reciprocal interactions
in which symptomatic behavior recurs
Structural Family Therapy - correct answer ✔✔Helps families understand what the rules and
roles are for each family member and how the rules were created
Sibling Therapy - correct answer ✔✔Helps children develop and strengthen the bonds that exist
between them so that they can provide one another needed support
Multifamily therapy - correct answer ✔✔Provides multiple families with mutual understanding
and allows them to exchange ideas, role play, and enact psychodramas
Ego - correct answer ✔✔Reality that mediates between the Id and the SuperEgo (Freud)
Id - correct answer ✔✔Primitive, selfish aspect of personality; Pleasure seeking (Freud)
Super Ego - correct answer ✔✔Conscience; Morality; Provides motivational instincts (Freud)
Libido - correct answer ✔✔Comprised of the sexual and ego drives found in the id, libido affects
aggression and instinctual behaviors (Freud)
Neurosis - correct answer ✔✔When the superego imposes guilt on the ego to limit the impulses
of the id, neurosis results. Neuroses stem from childhood conflicts that occur when the
relationship between the libido and ego mechanisms becomes unbalanced. (Freud)
,Manifest Latent Dreams - correct answer ✔✔Distortions of life experiences in accordance with
regressive thinking processes that prevail during sleep. (Freud)
Manifest Content - correct answer ✔✔Formed as a composite of recent and distant memories,
this is the apparent content of the dream. Actually, it provides a mask for events that conceal
the latent meaning of the dream. (Freud)
Latent Content - correct answer ✔✔Underlying thoughts, dreams, and fantasies related to the
emotional reactions of early infancy, latent content gives a dream its fundamental meaning.
(Freud)
Dream Work - correct answer ✔✔Process whereby latent content becomes apparent.
Defense Mechanisms - correct answer ✔✔Although the individual is unaware of them, these
provide protection against negative feelings associated with painful events. An unconscious
process in which the ego attempts to expel anxiety-provoking sexual and aggressive impulses
from consciousness. In themselves they are not an indication of pathology, but rather an
indication of disturbance when their cost outweighs their protective value.
Examples: Compensation, Denial, Displacement, Projection, Rationalization, Reaction
Formation, Regression, Repression, Sublimation, Suppression, Counter Transference
Compensation - correct answer ✔✔An activity viewed as rewarding is substituted for the one
that produces tension; Protection against feels of inferiority and inadequacy stemming from real
or imagined personal defects or weaknesses.
Denial - correct answer ✔✔A person refuses to acknowledge a situation that causes anxiety or
distress
Displacement - correct answer ✔✔Emotion felt toward an individual or an object is transferred
to a similar person or object
,Projection - correct answer ✔✔An unconscious process whereby unacceptable thoughts and
behaviors found within the person are assigned to another; Ascribing a painful idea or impulse
to the external world
Rationalization - correct answer ✔✔Giving a behavior a socially acceptable motive; Effort to give
a logical explanation for painful unconscious material to avoid guilt and shame
Reaction Formation - correct answer ✔✔Behavior opposed to unconscious desires; Replacing in
conscious awareness a painful idea or feeling with is opposite
Regression - correct answer ✔✔Retreat to an earlier stage of development where the individual
feels more comfortable
Repression - correct answer ✔✔Person forces painful perceptions, constructs, and feelings into
unconscious; determinate of all defense mechanisms
The act of obliterating material from conscious awareness
Reversal - correct answer ✔✔Type of reaction formation aimed at protection from painful
thoughts/feelings
Sublimation - correct answer ✔✔Inappropriate social impulses are channeled into socially
acceptable behaviors; Redirecting energies of instinctual drives to generally positive goals that
are more acceptable to the ego and superego
Identification with the Aggressor - correct answer ✔✔A child's introjection of some
characteristic of an anxiety provoking object and assimilation of an anxiety experience just lived
through. In this, the child can transform from the threatened person into the one making the
threat.
, Suppression - correct answer ✔✔Person undoes various levels of consciousness,
preconsciousness, or subconciousness
Counter Transference - correct answer ✔✔Irrational reactions therapists have towards their
clients; Worker's unconscious redirection of feelings for another person or relationship toward
the client
Transference - correct answer ✔✔Client's unconscious redirection of feelings for another
person toward the worker in an attempt to resolve conflicts attached with that relationship(s)
Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD) - correct answer ✔✔Method for reducing stress in first-
responders
Conscious mind - correct answer ✔✔Area of cognition that individuals are fully aware of (Freud)
Preconscious mind - correct answer ✔✔Thoughts and feelings of which individuals may be
immediately unaware but can be accessed easily if desired (Freud)
Unconscious mind - correct answer ✔✔Contains thoughts and feelings of which all individuals
remain unaware; goal of psychoanalytic therapy is to address this and its role and influence on
the conscious and preconscious mind, along with the resultant thoughts, emotions, and
behaviors
Cathexis - correct answer ✔✔Attachment of mental or emotional ("psychosexual") energy (i.e.
feelings and significance) to an idea, object, image or person. Pain arises from loss. Objective =
directed at external world. Narcissistic = meaning only for the person.
Strategic Family Therapy - correct answer ✔✔Helps families discontinue reciprocal interactions
in which symptomatic behavior recurs
Structural Family Therapy - correct answer ✔✔Helps families understand what the rules and
roles are for each family member and how the rules were created
Sibling Therapy - correct answer ✔✔Helps children develop and strengthen the bonds that exist
between them so that they can provide one another needed support
Multifamily therapy - correct answer ✔✔Provides multiple families with mutual understanding
and allows them to exchange ideas, role play, and enact psychodramas
Ego - correct answer ✔✔Reality that mediates between the Id and the SuperEgo (Freud)
Id - correct answer ✔✔Primitive, selfish aspect of personality; Pleasure seeking (Freud)
Super Ego - correct answer ✔✔Conscience; Morality; Provides motivational instincts (Freud)
Libido - correct answer ✔✔Comprised of the sexual and ego drives found in the id, libido affects
aggression and instinctual behaviors (Freud)
Neurosis - correct answer ✔✔When the superego imposes guilt on the ego to limit the impulses
of the id, neurosis results. Neuroses stem from childhood conflicts that occur when the
relationship between the libido and ego mechanisms becomes unbalanced. (Freud)
,Manifest Latent Dreams - correct answer ✔✔Distortions of life experiences in accordance with
regressive thinking processes that prevail during sleep. (Freud)
Manifest Content - correct answer ✔✔Formed as a composite of recent and distant memories,
this is the apparent content of the dream. Actually, it provides a mask for events that conceal
the latent meaning of the dream. (Freud)
Latent Content - correct answer ✔✔Underlying thoughts, dreams, and fantasies related to the
emotional reactions of early infancy, latent content gives a dream its fundamental meaning.
(Freud)
Dream Work - correct answer ✔✔Process whereby latent content becomes apparent.
Defense Mechanisms - correct answer ✔✔Although the individual is unaware of them, these
provide protection against negative feelings associated with painful events. An unconscious
process in which the ego attempts to expel anxiety-provoking sexual and aggressive impulses
from consciousness. In themselves they are not an indication of pathology, but rather an
indication of disturbance when their cost outweighs their protective value.
Examples: Compensation, Denial, Displacement, Projection, Rationalization, Reaction
Formation, Regression, Repression, Sublimation, Suppression, Counter Transference
Compensation - correct answer ✔✔An activity viewed as rewarding is substituted for the one
that produces tension; Protection against feels of inferiority and inadequacy stemming from real
or imagined personal defects or weaknesses.
Denial - correct answer ✔✔A person refuses to acknowledge a situation that causes anxiety or
distress
Displacement - correct answer ✔✔Emotion felt toward an individual or an object is transferred
to a similar person or object
,Projection - correct answer ✔✔An unconscious process whereby unacceptable thoughts and
behaviors found within the person are assigned to another; Ascribing a painful idea or impulse
to the external world
Rationalization - correct answer ✔✔Giving a behavior a socially acceptable motive; Effort to give
a logical explanation for painful unconscious material to avoid guilt and shame
Reaction Formation - correct answer ✔✔Behavior opposed to unconscious desires; Replacing in
conscious awareness a painful idea or feeling with is opposite
Regression - correct answer ✔✔Retreat to an earlier stage of development where the individual
feels more comfortable
Repression - correct answer ✔✔Person forces painful perceptions, constructs, and feelings into
unconscious; determinate of all defense mechanisms
The act of obliterating material from conscious awareness
Reversal - correct answer ✔✔Type of reaction formation aimed at protection from painful
thoughts/feelings
Sublimation - correct answer ✔✔Inappropriate social impulses are channeled into socially
acceptable behaviors; Redirecting energies of instinctual drives to generally positive goals that
are more acceptable to the ego and superego
Identification with the Aggressor - correct answer ✔✔A child's introjection of some
characteristic of an anxiety provoking object and assimilation of an anxiety experience just lived
through. In this, the child can transform from the threatened person into the one making the
threat.
, Suppression - correct answer ✔✔Person undoes various levels of consciousness,
preconsciousness, or subconciousness
Counter Transference - correct answer ✔✔Irrational reactions therapists have towards their
clients; Worker's unconscious redirection of feelings for another person or relationship toward
the client
Transference - correct answer ✔✔Client's unconscious redirection of feelings for another
person toward the worker in an attempt to resolve conflicts attached with that relationship(s)
Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD) - correct answer ✔✔Method for reducing stress in first-
responders
Conscious mind - correct answer ✔✔Area of cognition that individuals are fully aware of (Freud)
Preconscious mind - correct answer ✔✔Thoughts and feelings of which individuals may be
immediately unaware but can be accessed easily if desired (Freud)
Unconscious mind - correct answer ✔✔Contains thoughts and feelings of which all individuals
remain unaware; goal of psychoanalytic therapy is to address this and its role and influence on
the conscious and preconscious mind, along with the resultant thoughts, emotions, and
behaviors
Cathexis - correct answer ✔✔Attachment of mental or emotional ("psychosexual") energy (i.e.
feelings and significance) to an idea, object, image or person. Pain arises from loss. Objective =
directed at external world. Narcissistic = meaning only for the person.
