Lecture 8: Family and Other Perspectives Flashcards
Beyond the Individual…
Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917-2005)
- Ecological systems theory including:
1) microsystem
2) exosystem
3) macrosystem
Family Systems Model
- Family therapy developed in 1950s - evolved into multiple models since then
- Some key figures:
= Gregory Bateson -> Systems Theory and Cybernetics
= Salvador Minuchin -> Structural Family therapy
= Jay Hayley -> Strategic Family therapy
= Michael White -> Narrative Family therapy
Key principles of family therapy
- Moves away from individualistic focus of psychotherapy
- Problem is not inside a person - it is created in the interactions between people
- Focus is on the ‘whole system’
- Inter-connection - changes in any one part of system affects others
Problems arising from family life cycle changes
- Adjusting to the changing demands of family ‘life cycle’
- No such thing as a ‘dysfunctional family’, just one that ‘failed to readjust its structure at one of life’s turning points’
Life Cycle of Family (Carter & McGoldrick, 2005)
- Leaving home = separate from family of origin
= Time to be autonomous before joining another person - Joining families through marriage = commitment to a new couple
= Linking up two families - Families with young children = making space for children
= hold on to marital relationship
= Working together as a team - Families with adolescents stage = supporting autonomy of children
= open family boundaries, flexiblity - Launching children and moving on stage = parents must let their children go (take hold of their own lives)
= time of midlife crisis - Families in later life = retirement, declining health, illness, death
Contemporary Families (emerging adulthood)
Emerging adulthood = youth taking longer to end
- Changing employment patterns = increased demand for education, less certainty
- Shifting patterns in marriage
- Sexual freedom
- Ambivalence about adulthood
Contemporary Families (Older Adults)
- Growing number of older adults
- ‘Sandwich generation’ = people looking after parents and children
Contemporary Families (Maori families)
- Extended kinship
- Inter-generational support
- Peer kinship supports
Role/Function problems affecting families
- Problems in role stereotyping and constraints e.g. ‘the quiet one’
- Keep people in a role
Structural problems in families
Unhealthy alliance e.g. the parental child
- Problems in marital relationship
- Mother draws child into an alliance with her (breaking boundary between parent subsystem and child subsystem)
- Father displaced
- Child given inappropriate power in family system (breaking ‘normal’ hierarchy)
Interactional problems
Circular causality
- One person’s behaviour intensifies the other persons to create a viscous cycle
Family narratives
Stories about how families work that constrain and influence how people see things e.g. Mum is always nagging
- Stories are incomplete representations of reality
- We tend to leave aspects of reality out and shape stories in typical ways
- This becomes a dominant narrative
- The dominant narrative puts people in ‘boxes’
- The dominant narrative shapes how people behave
- The dominant narrative closes down alternative and more helpful stories
Some interventions
- Point out dysfunctional interactional patterns (observe)
- Confront and challenge ‘taken for granted’ modes of interacting e.g. letting the man speak
- Training in new skills e.g. communication
- Re-framing = paraphrase angry words into feedback, see the care
- Paradoxical interventions = telling them to do something makes them do the opposite
- Re-create family narratives e.g. externalising psychological problems
- Looking for unique outcomes = find non=dominant narratives that describe a different outcome
Strengths of family therapy model
- Families are a source of problems but also a source of support
- Particularly important in NZ - where importance of whanau makes family based interventions appropriate
- Contributed to effective therapy for psychoses, eating disorders, problems in childhood
Weaknesses of family therapy model
- Doesn’t take sufficient account of broader social environment
- Difficult to get families to work together (huge drop out rates)
- Less research on this than individual forms of therapy
- Much research limited to nuclear, heterosexual, white, western families
