Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) Practice Exam

What technique is being used when a social worker clarifies a client's feelings about being in their prison cell?

1. Reflecting

2. Paraphrasing

3. Clarifying

4. Summing up

The correct answer is: Clarifying

When a social worker clarifies a client's feelings about being in their prison cell, the technique being utilized is clarifying. This approach involves the social worker ensuring that they fully understand the client's emotions and thoughts, often by asking specific questions or reformulating what the client has shared. The goal is to gain deeper insight into the client's experiences and help them articulate their feelings more clearly. By clarifying, the social worker fosters better communication, enabling the client to explore their feelings and thoughts about their situation in a more profound way. This can lead to increased awareness and potentially facilitate therapeutic progress. The other techniques, while important in therapeutic contexts, serve different purposes. Reflecting involves restating what a client has said to show understanding, paraphrasing involves summarizing the client's statements in a different way, and summing up is typically used at the end of a session to capture the main points discussed. Each of these techniques supports communication but does not specifically focus on ensuring comprehension of the client's emotional state as directly as clarifying does.