Test 1 Flashcards
Bateson Studied what type of families
Those with a Schizophrenic member
Palo Alto Project Members
Gregory Bateson, Don Jackson, John Haley
Difference between Report and Command communication
Palo Alto Group
Report = content (such as family rules) Command = metacommunication
Double Bind
Palo Alto Group - Bateson
Two related but contradictory statements
Conflict between report and command functions in communication
Family Homeostatic Model
Palo Alto Group - Bateson & Cybernetics
Families maintain homeostasis through feedback mechanisms
Two main discoveries made by Bateson
Multiple levels of communication
Destructive patterns of relating are maintained by self-regulating interactions of the family group
Murray Bowen
Started his career as a psychiatrist who studied schizophrenia
Major early interests included mother-child symbiosis
Differentiation of Self
Bowen
Occurs when one can detriangualte one’s self
Resolve emotional conflict with family of origin
characterized by an ability to think and reflect as opposed to making automatic reactions
Roughly analogous to ego strength
Triangles
Bowen
Developed while working at NIMH with schizophrenics
People often bring in a third party to solve the problems within a dyad, as this diffuses emotional tension
People who get pulled into triangles are often less differentiated
Who was one of the first to try family therapy
Bowen in 1955
also one of the first to view families as the unit of dysfunction
Network Family Therapy
Bowen
Multiple families & Extended family in group therapy setting
Didn’t work as families would often battle for attention and talking time
Single Family Therapy
Bowen
Centered around a balance of togetherness and individuality
Forced family members to talk with one another so as to avoid being pulled into the family’s undifferentiated Ego Mass
Genograms
Bowen
used to highlight and examine relational disturbances and how they have traveled down through generations.
Family Projection Process
Bowen
The process by which parents transmit their lack of differentiation to their children
Multigenerational Transmission Process
Bowen
Family’s emotional process across multiple generations
Caused by a lack of differentiation from one’s family of origin or Fusion.
Lack of differentiation often causes emotional reactivity or emotional cut offs
This unhealthy lack of differentiation causes the individual to suffer from problems in the next family. Common problems include: emotional distancing, physical and emotional dysfunction, marital conflict, projection onto the children.
Sibling Position
Bowen
Theorized that children develop a personality in a fixed manner according to their sibling position
Emotional Cut Off
Bowen
Flight from unresolved family emotional attachment
used to manage intergenerational anxiety
usually more present with higher level of emotional fusion
Bowen - Normal Family Development
Individuals are well differentiated
low anxiety
Good emotional contact amongst family members
Family members can distinguish between thinking and feeling
Bowen - Family Pathology
Stress exceeds the family’s ability to cope with it
Emotional fusion is the core of family dysfunction
Bowen - Goals of Therapy
Decrease anxiety and increase differentiation
Provide insight into the family of origin
Examine both Process and Structure
Process = Emotional reactions
Structure = Relationships and Triangles
Modify the marital/executive dyad to influence the rest of the family
Bowen - Assessment
Genogram
Motivation and knowledge of family of origin are keys to success
Bowen - Therapy Techniques
Process Questions
Relationship experiments
Taking the I position (owning your feelings and behaviors)
Displacement stories
Circumplex Model
Cohesion = Emotional bonding that families have toward one another
Flexibility = Quality and expression of leadership and organization, role relationships, and relationship rules and negotiations.
Communication = Positive communication skills utilized in the couple or family system. This is a facilitating dimension that helps families alter their levels of cohesion and flexibility.
Circumplex Model - Balanced Scales
Cohesion & Flexibility
Circumplex Model - Unbalanced (problematic) scales
Disengaged, Enmeshed, Rigid, & Chaotic
Communications Therapy
One of the earliest and most influential models of family therapy
Gregory Bateson, Don Jackson, and John Haley
Communications theory = content and process
Family Rules
Command messages are patterned as rules
rules are essentially redundancies in behavior (e.g. descriptions of regularity not of regulation)
Sequential Interactions
Examine the behavioral sequence around the problem (may be predictable or spontaneous)
Therapist creates a new option for behavior sequences
1st & 2nd Order change
1st Order Change = Temporary or superficial changes within the system that do not alter the basic structure of the system
2nd Order Change = Change in the basic structure and functioning of a system.
Cybernetics
a model of how families operate… the study of feedback mechanisms in self-regulating systems… example: “study of machines that regulate themselves”…
feedback loops maintain homeostasis; Cybernetics focuses attention on family rules that govern family’s homeostatic range, negative feedback mechanisms that families use to enforce those rules, sequences of family interaction around a problem , DOESN’T explore hierarchy or structures.
Negative Feedback - Cybernetics
Mechanism that tells the family system that it is off track and changes must be made
Positive Feedback - Cybernetics
Used when negative feedback is ineffective
Information that reinforces the direction a system is taking
Family Homeostasis
Dysfunctional Families have a tendency to resist change
Homeostasis is the process by which a family system self-regulates and maintains its balance
Positive and negative feedback
Haley - Family Hierarchy
Strategic Family Therapy
The key to family health is clear boundaries and hierarchies
Generational hierarchy (e.g. Father should not be buddies with his son)
Strategic Family Therapy
John Haley, Milan, and MRI
Haley - Strategic Family Therapy
Haley’s model of strategic family therapy combine structural and strategic models
Emphasis on interviewing the whole family
Haley - Four Stages of Therapy
Social Stage: Initial session; involves getting to know one another and becoming comfortable with one another
Problem Stage: Asking each person his or her perspective on the problem, and examining what sort of structural issues the family may have (e.g. triangles)
Interaction Stage: Have family discuss their point of view with one another, and therapist can watch the interactions unfold.
Goal Setting Stage: Getting family to set goals that they can work on and achieve.
Haley - Functional View of Problem Maintenance
Every behavior has some form of interpersonal payoff
If there is a function to a person’s symptom then the system will continue to perpetuate the symptom
Haley - Normal Family development
Healthy boundaries and structure within the family system
What is normal for the individual family in their life cycle
Haley - Family Pathology
Pathology develops as a result of poor boundaries within a family and a weak family structure
Haley - Assessment
Examine family’s behavior around the problem
Examine family’s structural make up
Haley - Therapy
Joining
Use of directives (alternative behaviors)
Paradoxical directive
Milan - Strategic Family Therapy
Focused on the power games that occur within families
Emphasized the multigenerational process
Symptoms served the function of protecting family members
Milan - Normal Family Development
There is no one way to develop in a normal and healthy fashion
Milan - Family Pathology
Problems are generally the result of family members attempting to protect one another
These behaviors get out of hand and create problems within the family
Milan - Assessment
Hypothesis testing about the family
Milan - Therapy
Circular Questioning: questions are asked to highlight the differences between family members. Designed to help see the other family member’s perspective more easily. An adaptation of Bateson’s double description.
Positive Connotation: Reframing symptoms as having a protective function
MRI Group - Strategic Family Therapy
Don Jackson
Based on the principles of cybernetics: 1st and 2nd order changes, and feedback loops.
MRI Group - Normal Family Development
No one model of healthy family development
Focus is on eliminating the problems that families present with
MRI Group - Family Pathology
Problems are caused by poor solutions to the problem that either keep the status quo or lead to an escalation in feedback.
MRI Group - Assessment
Define problem in a tangible way
Identify what has lead up to the problem
MRI Group - Therapy
Discover what signs will indicate that the problem is getting better
Interrupt problem maintaining cycle
Structural Family Therapy
Salvador Minuchin
Structure: The way a family is organized into subsystems and how those subsystems interact with one another.
Subsystems: The interactions and relationships that exist within the component parts of the larger family system.
Boundaries: Invisible barriers that regulate the interactions amongst subsystems and individuals
Boundaries
Structural Family Therapy
Severe to protect the separateness of family members.
Flexible and rigid
Too rigid boundaries lead to disengagement (fosters autonomy, but limits emotional engagement)
Too flexible of boundaries leads to enmeshment (chaotic interconnectedness that leads to a loss of autonomy. The family can choose the identity of the family member this way)
Minuchin - Normal Family Development
Healthy families have flexibility to deal with stress, but structure to have clear and defined boundaries and roles.
Family has a structure that can handle stress
Minuchin - Pathological Families
Family structure is either to flexible or rigid
weak hierarchies
avoidance of conflict
cross-generational coalitions
Minuchin - Therapy
Structural changes that allow the family to solve it’s own problems
Create or strengthen the marital dyad
Create healthy boundaries
Minuchin - Assessment
Enactment
Spontaneous behavioral observation
Structural Mapping: assessment of the family hierarchy, boundaries, subsystems, and the interactions amongst these.
Minuchin - Therapeutic Techniques
Joining: the therapist joins the family system and accommodates to their way of behaving so as to gain leverage to restructure the system.
Enactments: May happen naturally, or the therapist may ask family members to enact a problem so that the therapist can watch and analyze the interaction. The therapist defines and recognizes the problem, then directs the enactment (e.g. “discuss that with him”), then the therapist guides the members to modify the enactment.
Modifying Interactions: Requires highlighting problematic exchanges and behaviors and coaching family members on how to adjust accordingly.
Shaping Competence: Highlighting and reinforcing positive behavior and strategies that are already in existence.
Boundary Making: Strengthening boundaries is accomplished by observing interactions and coaching members to alter their interactions.
Unbalancing: If there is triangulation against one member of the family, the therapist joins that member to balance out the conflict.
Minuchin - Restructuring
Active maneuvers that are designed to disrupt dysfunctional structural patterns and ways of relating
Joining, Enactment, Structural Mapping, Highlighting and modifying interactions, Boundary Making, Unbalancing, and Challenging unproductive assumptions are all interventions that work to re-structure a family system.
Schizophrenogenic
Early research on schizophrenic families found the mothers to often be domineering women. Thus it was theorized that their behavior led to schizophrenia in their children.
This has long since been rejected
Early Research on Schizophrenia
Research on Schizophrenic families was key in the development of family therapy (see Bateson)
Familial influences on schizophrenia had been theorized as early as Freud
Gregory Bateson and the Palo Alto Group
General Systems Theory
Ludwig Von Bertalanffy
Every system is a subsystem in a larger subsystem
A system is more than the sum of its’ parts
Open systems continually interact with their environment gaining energy and resources
Equifinality - General Systems Theory
Living organisms are not like machines as they are able to reach a final goal
Homeostasis
Psuedohostilty - Psychoanalytic Family Therapy
A fear of intimacy and closeness generates persistent bickering and pseudo hostility
obscures alignments and splits
also blurs intimacy and affection; distorts communication and impairs rational thinking about relationships
Pseudomutuality - Psychoanalytic Family Therapy
A facade of togetherness
No room for separate identities or divergent self-interests
Cannot tolerate deeper more honest relationships
caused by a shared fear and avoidance of familial conflict
Experiential Family Therapy
Virginia Satir and Carl Whitaker
The root cause of family problems is emotional suppression
The goal of family therapy is to uncover the suppressed emotions
EFT - Normal Family Development
People are healthy and self-actualizing on their own and thus families are as well
Healthy families encourage emotional expression
Social pressure is what hinders this
EFT - Family Pathology
Denial of impulses and Emotions
Family Myth: distorted beliefs about the past that shape a family’s values and beliefs
Mystification: Distorting an experience by denying it or relabeling it
EFT - Conditions for change
Therapists are alternately warm and provocative to create change
Existential Encounter: being genuine as a therapist in the room
EFT - Therapeutic Techniques
Expressive techniques (art, role playing, drawings, etc…)
Family Sculpting: one family member arranges the others in a tableau (a graphic means of portraying each person’s perceptions of the family and his or her place in it)
EFT - Modern additions
Emotion focused couples therapy: Uncovers hurt beneath defensive expressions of anger and withdrawal. Helps couples understand how this plays out in their relationship. Attachment theory perspective
Internal Family Systems: Family members often project internal conflict on to the external canvas of the family
