Main Concepts Flashcards
- Triangles:
A triangle is a three-person relationship system. It is considered the building block or “molecule” of larger emotional systems because a triangle is the smallest stable relationship system.
Differentiation of Self:
Families and other social groups tremendously affect how people think, feel, and act, but individuals vary in their susceptibility to a
“group think” and groups vary in the amount of pressure they exert for conformity. These differences between individuals and between groups reflect differences in people’s levels of differentiation of self.
Nuclear Family Emotional System:
The concept of the nuclear family emotional system describes four basic relationship patterns that govern where problems develop in a family. People’s attitudes and beliefs about relationships play a role in the patterns, but the forces primarily driving them are part of the emotional system.
Marital conflict – As family tension increases and spouses get more anxious, each spouse externalizes his or her anxiety into the marital relationship. Each focuses on what is wrong with the other, tries to control the other, and resists the other’s efforts at control.
Dysfunction in a spouse – One spouse pressures the other to think and act in certain ways, and the other yields to the pressure. Both spouses accommodate to preserve harmony, but one does more of it. The interaction is comfortable for both people up to a point, but if family tension rises further, the subordinate spouse may yield so much self-control that his or her anxiety increases significantly. If other necessary factors are present, the anxiety fuels the development of psychiatric, medical, or social dysfunction.
Impairment of one or more children – The spouses focus their anxieties on one or more of their children. They worry excessively and usually have an idealized or negative view of the child. The more the parents focus on the child, the more the child focuses on them. He is more reactive than his siblings to his parents’ attitudes, needs, and expectations. The process undercuts the child’s differentiation from the family and makes him vulnerable to acting out or internalizing family tensions. The child’s anxiety can impair his school performance, social relationships, and even his health.
Emotional distance – This pattern is consistently associated with others. People distance themselves from each other to reduce the relationship intensity but risk becoming too isolated.
Family Projection Process:
The family projection process describes the
the primary way parents transmit their emotional problems to a child. The projection process can impair the functioning of one or more children and increase their vulnerability to clinical symptoms. (Passed down to each generation. How was conflict handled in the family?
Research shows that it is beneficial to see parents have a conflict and come to a healthy resolution as opposed to hiding it. Part of the projection process.)
Multigenerational Transmission Process:
The concept of the multigenerational transmission process describes how small differences in the
levels of differentiation between parents and their offspring lead over many generations to marked differences in differentiation among the members of a multigenerational family.
Emotional Cutoff:
The concept of emotional cutoff describes people
managing their unresolved emotional issues with parents, siblings, and other family members by reducing or totally cutting off emotional contact with them.
Genogram:
Extensive study of family history. Acts both as an assessment and treatment tool. (Multigenerational mapping. Family Map. Initially or in the middle phase constantly referring back to the family map. Mapping a problem is different.
Structural family therapy - construct genogram separate from the session. )
