Family Therapies Flashcards
General Systems theory
- Basis of all family therapies
- Components best understood in their context
- Open (continuous input/output from environment) and closed systems
- Homeostasis - family’s tendency to achieve equilibrium or status quo
Cybernetics
Feedback loops
- Negative helps system maintain status quo
- Positive amplifies deviation/change
(promotes appropriate change in fam system)
Influence of systems theory and cybernetics
- Reciprocal causality
- Focus on here and now, relational, emphasize freedom of choice, reflect contextual, relativistic perspective.
Double-Blind communication
Bateson - conflicts negative injunction.
Communication/interaction Family therapy
Assumptions
- All behavior is communication, ppl always comm
- Report (content) and command (nonverbal) functions (problems when don’t match
- Communication either symmetrical (equality) or commplementary (inequality and max diffs)
Maladaptive behav
- Circular model of causality, communication patters, blaming and criticizing, mindreading, and overgeneralizing.
Goal
To alter problem interactions by pointing out or using paradoxical strategies.
Extended family systems therapy
Overview
- Includes extended fam
- Differentiation of self - separation of self from fam
- Emotional Triangle
- Family Projection process - Parental conflicts and emotional immaturity transmitted to children, leads to lower level of differentiation
Maladaptive Behavior
- REsults from multigenerational transmission process which lowers diff
Goals
- To inc differentiation
Techniques
- Begins with 2 and therapist in third member in therapeutic triangle
- Genogram
- Questionning, educative, cognitive and controlled
- Therapist coach
Structural Family Therapy
Overview
- All fams have implicit structure that determine how fam relates e.g., power hierarchies, family subsystems, and boundaries.
- 3 Chronic boundary problems or rigid triads
1. Detouring either overprotecting or scapegoating the child
2. Stable coalition btwn parent and child
3. Triangulation - each parent demands child’s coalition
Maladaptive behavior
- Family structure inflexible and does allow fam to adapt and mature to new situations
Therapy goals
- LT - to restructure the family and short term use of behavioral techniques
Techniques
- Joining, Evaluating family structure, and restructuring the family.
Strategic Family Therapy
Maladaptive behav: Role of communication to exert control
Goals: Altering family transactions and organization, esp hierarchies and generational boundaries
Techniques:
- Stages: social, problem, interaction, goal setting
- Therapist directive and makes paradoxical interventions (ordeals, positioning, reframing, and restraining, prescribing the symptom)
Milan Systemic Family Therapy
Maladaptive: interactions become fixed and not able to act creatively
Goal: Help members see their choices
Techniques: Use of therapy team
- hypothesizing, neutrality, paradox, and circular questions
Behavioral Family therapy
Based on priniciples of operant condition, social learning, and social exchange theroy
Maladaptive: learned and maintained by As and Cs
Goal: alter environment to change factors that are maintaining behavs
Techniques: 1. Observable behavs 2. ongoing assessment 3. increasing/decreasing target behaviors with use of contingent reinforcement 4. Focus on improving comm and problem-solving
Much more integration of Cognitive techniques.
Object Relations Family Therapy
Extension of OR theory
Maladaptive: results from intrapsychic and interpersonal factors. Primary source is projective identification (projecting old introjects onto another fam member)
Goal/techniques: resolve attachmest to family introjects
- interpreting transferences and resistances and other factors to foster insight.
- Recognizing multiple transferences.
