Structural Family Therapy Flashcards
Boundaries
An abstract method of separating parts of a system from each other, such as children from parents or interpersonal boundaries between husband and wife, typically defined by personal rules and roles in a family.
Enactment
In SF, a facilitating intervention in which the family is asked to enact or play out its relationship patterns spontaneously during a therapeutic session, allowing the therapist to observe and then restructure future transactions.
Enmeshment
The manner in which family members organize themselves so that boundaries between members are blurred and members are overinvolved in each other’s lives, limiting individual autonomy.
Family mapping
An assessment technique used to graphically depict a family’s organizational structure and determine which subsystem is involved in dysfunctional transactions.
Homeostatic maintainer
Person or process that initiates to return the system to status quo when a new pattern is introduced into the system.
Joining
The therapeutic act of entering a family system, getting to know the family, and developing trust, thereby becoming part of the family system so that the strategic interventions can occur more naturally through the therapist’s comments and direction.
Reframing
A method of relabeling behavior with a new perspective, altering the context in which it is perceived, resulting in new responses to old behavior and thus a change in interactional patterns.
Subsystems
Organized, coexisting components consisting of family members within an overall system that have their own autonomous functions as well as a specified role in the operation of the family. There are three types of subsystem: parental, sibling, and spouse. Each subsystem has its own boundary and hierarchy.
Systems
The notion that the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts. When one part of the system is affected so is the rest because they are connected in their own isomorphic pattern.
Tracking
A therapeutic tactic associated with SF in which the therapist deliberately attends to the interactions, language, and values of the family in an attempt to understand the sequence of events as they occur interactionally in the family.
Triangulation
This dynamic occurs when one person involved in a conflict with another person invites a third person to a dialogue in an attempt to distract from the original conflict, thereby lessening the chance of resolution.
