Unit 12: Family Systems Theory Flashcards
Identify the common themes or characteristics of the family systems approaches. How are these core constructs similar to or different from the individual theories explored in earlier chapters?
Family systems perspective holds that individuals are best understood through assessing the interactions between and among family members. The development and behaviour of one family member is inextricably interconnected with others in the family. Symptoms are often viewed as an expression of a set of habits and patterns within a family. It is revolutionary to conclude that the identified clients problem might be a symptom of how the system functions, not just a symptom of the individuals maladjustment, history, and psychosocial development.
Perspective is grounded on the assumptions that clients problematic behaviour may:
1) serve a function or purpose for the family
2) be unintentionally maintained by family processes
3) be a function of the family’s inability to operate productively, especially during developmental transitions
4) be a symptom of dysfunctional patterns handed down across generations
One central principle agreed-upon by family therapy practitioners regardless of particular approach, is that the client is connected to living systems. Attempts to change are best facilitated by working with and considering the family or relationship as a whole.
Similarities and differences from individual theories:
Both therapists are interested in current living situation and life experiences.
While the individual therapist may focus on obtaining an accurate diagnosis, perhaps using DSM, the systemic therapist explores the system for family process and rules, perhaps using a genogram.
Individual therapist focusses on causes, purposes, and cognitive, emotional, and behavioural processes; the systemic therapist may invite members of the family into therapy such as mother, sister, and focusses on the family relationships.
Individual therapist is concerned with clients individual experiences and perspectives; systemic therapist is concerned with transgenerational meanings, rules, cultural, and gender perspectives within the system, and even the community and larger systems affecting the family.
Individual therapist intervenes in ways designed to help client cope; systemic therapist intervenes in ways designed to help change clients context.
Systemic therapists do not deny the importance of the individual and the family system, but they believe an individual’s systemic affiliations and interactions may have more power in the persons life than a single therapist could ever hope to have.
The believe that problems manifested in one’s current family will not significantly change until relationship patterns in one’s family of origin are understood and directly challenged. Approach operates on the premise that a predictable pattern of interpersonal relationships connects the functioning of family members across generations.
Multigenerational family therapy
Developer is Murray Bowen
A process in which triads result in a two-against-one experience
Triangulation
In multigenerational family therapy, this involves both the psychological separation of intellect and emotion and independence of the self from others. In this process, individuals acquire a sense of self-identity which enables them to accept personal responsibility for their thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and actions
Differentiation of the self
The family systems approach where the central idea is that an individuals symptoms are best understood from the vantage point of interactional patterns within a family and that structural changes must occur in a family before an individual symptoms can be reduced or eliminated.
Structural-strategic family therapy
What are the goals of structural-strategic family therapy
1) reduce symptoms of disfunction
2) Bring about structural change within the system by modifying the families transactional rules and developing more appropriate boundaries
Both models seek to re-organize dysfunctional or problematic structures in the families; boundary setting, unbalancing, reframing, ordeals, and enactments all became part of the family therapeutic process. Neither approach deals much with exploration or interpretation of the past, and instead therapist joins with the family, to block stereotype interactional patterns, to re-organize family hierarchies or subsystems, and to facilitate the development of more flexible or useful transactions.
What are some differences between the structural and strategic models
Differ somewhat in how each of view family problems:
Minuchin (structural) sees individual and family difficulties as symptomatic, whereas Haley (strategic) sees them as “real“ problems that need real answers.
Both models are directive in nature and both expect therapists to have a certain level of expertise to bring to the family therapy process.
In strategic family therapy, considerable emphasis is given to power, control, and hierarchies in families and in the therapy sessions
What are the eight lenses in family systems therapy?
Internal family systems, teleological, sequences or tracking patterns of interaction, organization, developmental, multicultural, gender, process
In family systems therapy describe the lens: individuals internal family systems
Views the individual as an organismic system, complete with structure, organization, and subsystems. An individual is made up of many parts, or dimensions, to his or her personality
In family systems therapy describe the lens: teleological lens
Refers to the study of final causes, goals, endpoints, and purposes. Enables the family therapist to develop an understanding of what motivates individual behavior, The systemic purposes of symptoms, the goals of triangulation, and the uses of pattern interactions and routines.
Both individuals and families-as-a-whole act purposively. Purposeful actions promote growth and development when they are characterized by reasonable risk, courage, confidence, self-esteem, energy, optimism, hope, and sequences of experience that open even wider possibilities for experience. Alternatively, actions and interactions characterized by retreat, fear, and protection tend to constrain growth and development
Putting what is known into a new, more useful perspective.
Reframing
Family therapists often reframe difficult behaviours by noting the motivation or personal intentions behind the behaviour
In family systems therapy describe the lens: sequences/tracking patterns of interaction
Understand that family life is ordered, and family members tend to interact in sequences that, over time, are repeated in multiple forms. Referred to as embedded sequences
Adaptive sequences require leadership that is balanced, fair, and cooperative. Maladaptive sequences occur when rules are rigid and inflexible, when parts are polarized, and when change is resisted.
In family systems therapy describe the lens: The organization lens
Understands that individuals and families have some organizing process that holds everything together and provides a sense of unity. Organization is manifest in family rules, routines, rituals, and expected roles.
Collaboration is found in mutual or egalitarian relationships between couples, and the function of leadership in the family is to organize the system in clear, useful ways. For each of the parts to grow and develop as well as contribute to the family as a whole, there must be room for involved members in the decision making processes; reasonable access to family resources; and appropriate responsibility for self and the system as a whole.
Balanced family leadership requires the ability to be firm, but friendly, and to set developmentally appropriate limits while remaining fair, flexible, and encouraging
In family systems therapy describe the lens: The developmental lens
The family life cycle focusses on six significant transition:
1) A single, young adult leaves home to live a more or less independent life
2) individuals marry or become a couple to build a life together
3) The couple has children and start a family
4) The children become adolescents
5) The parents launch their children into the world and prepare to live a life without children
6) The family reaches its later years where children may have to care for parents as well as their own children, and the parents prepare for the end of their lives
In family systems therapy describe the lens: The multicultural lens
Understands that discrimination and oppression shape experiences and symptoms, and these factors are found in all cultures. The dominant culture organized around two immediate goals, both related to power: it reinforces itself and its values and; minimizes the power and influence of alternative positions and the people who hold them
A multi cultural lens challenges dominant culture and introduces diversity and complexity into our understanding of the human condition. Reframes dominant culture as simply one of many. Seeks not tolerance but an appreciation and valuing of diversity
