26 History of family therapy Flashcards
Who developed Structural Family Therapy –and what is it?
A therapy developed by Salvador Minuchin that addresses problems of functioning at the level of the family. Its aim is to identify and adjust the boundaries and subsystems of family structure.
What is the idea of a triangle in Structural Family Therapy?
The problem of one parent being closer to a child than the other parent. Disrupts parent subsystem.
What is Milan Systemic Family Therapy?
A therapy that looks at the patterns of family dynamics, and how families get stuck in certain patterns. Taking the content out of arguments and seeing what roles each family member adopts.
What is the key strength for Minuchin’s Structural Family Therapy? For Milan Systemic Family Therapy?
For Minuchin’s Structural Family Therapy –executive function.
For Milan Systemic Family Therapy –adaptability, not getting stuck in patterns.
What are the two types of change possible in Milan Systemic Family Therapy?
First-order change: symptomatic change – the child stops behaving badly.
Second-order: shift in the way the family relates. E.g. the father emotionally supports the mother – who’s overwhelmed – and she can support child more, who no longer needs to act out.
What is a ‘reflecting team’ in Systemic Family Therapy?
A team of people seeing a family, and more people behind a one-way mirror – look for patterns while person is doing the assessment. Then deliver assessment to the client. Later criticised as being very pathologising.
In what way was Minuchin and Palazzoli’s view of AN as a systemic family problem faulty?
Both saw it as a product of problems in families, i.e. families create anorexia through their family structure. BUT anorexia actually causes some of the symptoms they thought caused it, such as overenmeshment.
What is Strategic Family Therapy –and how does it contradict Freud?
Strategic family therapy –developed by Jay Haley and Cloe Madanes. They decided they were most interested in what maintained problems rather than what caused problems. Detachment from the past. Contrast: Freud obsessed with aetiology.
What are two feminist critiques of 1970s family therapy?
Minuchin’s idea of subsystems very hetero. It doesn’t include gay parents, single parents, etc.
Palazzoli thought all participants play an equal role in the family pattern. But what if father is beating the mother? Is that equally mother’s fault?
How did Norwegian therapist Tom Andersen adapt the reflecting team? And how did this change the therapists’ assessment?
Once session was over, family would go behind the mirror and watch the therapists formulate assessment. This changes the nature of therapists’ conversation – more respectful, compassionate and empathic. Can’t be authority figures, can only speculate. Supposedly deals with the power imbalance.
What is De Shazer’s Solution-Focussed Family Therapy?
Instead of looking for problems during assessment, De Shazer focused on strengths – times when the client was doing well. Attempt to amplify these strengths. Look for the adult within, not the child within.
How would a narrative therapist, such as Michael White or David Epston, deal with a woman who can’t discipline her kids?
Narrative therapist would find times in her parenting life when she has been able to take control. And stories that contradict idea she is a terrible mother.
According to narrative therapy, we have all sorts of _____ inside us. The _________ ones are socially constructed, and some of the most _________ ones are hidden.
According to narrative therapy, we have all sorts of stories inside us. The dominant ones are socially constructed, and some of the most liberating ones are hidden.
