Interventions

Question 1

Joining:

Answer 1

Therapist’s first task; involves blending in with the family, adapting the family’s affect, style, and language

Question 2

Tracking:

Answer 2

The therapist pays close attention to family members and how they relate to one another during an enactment or spontaneous behavioral
sequence, noticing boundaries, coalitions, roles, rules, etc. (Observing interactions and commenting on them.)

Question 3

Mimesis:

Answer 3

The therapist tracks the family’s style of communication and uses it. (This is the only family therapy that emphasizes doing this)

Question 4

Unbalancing:

Answer 4

Supporting someone who is in a one-down position, thus changing hierarchical position. (Aligning with the person who has traditionally been in the weaker position.)

Question 5

Reframe:

Answer 5

Putting the presenting problem in a perspective that is both different from what the family brings and more workable. (reframe a problem to fit the functioning of the whole family system)

Question 6

Enactment:

Answer 6

The actualization of transactional patterns under the control of the therapist. It allows the therapist to observe how family members mutually regulate their behaviors, and determine the place of the problem behavior within the sequence of transactions.

Question 7

Boundary Making:

Answer 7

A special case of enactment, in which the therapist defines areas of interaction that he rules open to certain members but closed to others. Example: a son is asked to leave his chair (in between his parents) and go to another chair on the opposite side of the room so that he is not “caught in the middle”. (Enactments allow for boundary-making. Physically separate the individual based on boundaries.)