Chapter 11: Family Systems Flashcards
What is the basic unit for Family Systems?
The family as a unit.
What is reciprocal causality?
the individual has a feedback loop concerning issues arising in the environment, behaviorally, and established personal factors.
What is family structure?
How it organizes and maintains itself at a particular cross section in time
What is family process?
The way it evolves, adapts, or changes over time
What is Cybernetic Epistemology?
Looking at the family system as feedback loops
What is Circular causality?
reciprocal action occur within a relationship network by means of a network of interacting loops. Information about a systems output is fed back into its input to alter, correct, or govern the systems functioning.
What is family homeostasis
When family members try to maintain or regain a stable environment.
What is a Negative feedback loop
When a external behavior of another leads to a breaking point, and they walk away, restoring equilibrium.
What is a Positive Feedback Loop?
this leads to further dangerous, runaway proportions, however positive feedback, although temporarily destabilizing, may be beneficial where they can reassess a dysfunctional transactional pattern, reexamine there methods of engagement, and change the systems rules
What is a Subsystem?
Members of a group together carry out certain family functions or processes
What are the three key subsystems?
the Spousal, Parental, and siblings subsystems.
What can defective spousal systems create?
resulting in scapegoating of children, and children-co-oping them into alliances
What can be effective about the spousal system?
Provide security, and teach their children about commitment by presenting a positive model
Effective parental systems
child care, nurturance, guidance, limit settings, and discipline
Problems in parental systems
takes the form of inter generational conflicts with adolescence oftentimes underlying family disharmony and instability
Effective Sibling systems
help members learn to negotiate, cooperate, compete, and eventually attach to others
What are Boundaries?
Invisible lines that separate a system from a subsystem, or individual from outside surroundings
Boundaries in a family system can be restrictive
Permitting little contact among the members of different groups
Boundaries in a family system can be diffused
Overly blurred roles are interchangeable, and members are overly involved in each others lives
Whats most important to know about family boundaries
The clarity of the boundary between subsystems and its permeability are more important than the systems membership.
What are disengaged families?
in which members feel isolated from one another
What are enmeshed families?
are members that are intertwined in one another lives
What is an open system
When family boundaries to the environment are permeable
What is a closed system
when boundaries are not easily crossed, the family is insular, and not open to whats happening around it, suspicious of the outside world.
What is second order cybernetics?
Each family members perception of the presenting problem began to be acknowledged as important and valid because how each member constructs reality influences, and is influenced by a larger social context.
What is Object Realtions theory
ORT: emphasizes the search for satisfactory “objects” (persons) in our lives, beginning in infancy. (internalized objects from the past introject/impose themselves on current relationships
What is a gender/cultural-sensitive outlook?
Gender, cultural background, ethnicity membership, sexual preference, and social class are interactive and cannot be considered without the others.
What is important for a family therapist to pay attention to?
Differences in power, status, position within families, and in society in general
What is the pluralistic viewpoint for family therapy
Where the clinician recognizes that attitudes and behavior patterns are often deeply rooted in a family’s cultural background.
What are some cultural filters?
values, attitudes, customs, religious beliefs, and “normal” beliefs
What did Adlerian theory emphasize in regard to family therapy
An individual an his or her interpersonal relationships, and the importance of current circumstances and future goals rather than unresolved issues from childhood
What is the person-centered approach by Carl Rogers?
The clients “here-and-now issues” is growth-oriented, and is applicable to help families move in the direction toward self actualization
What are some existential psychotherapies
Emphasizing the individuals awareness and the here and now of the clients existence.
Behaviorists View of the family system?
behavior is governed by reinforced responses
