Family Systems Therapy

Chap 14 Wednesday, April 7, 2021 11:13 AM Family Systems Therapy • • • • • A family systems perspective holds that individuals are best understood through assessing the interactions between and among family members. Symptoms are often viewed as an expression of a set of habits and patterns within a family. This perspective is grounded on the assumptions that a client’s problematic behavior 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; or (4) be a symptom of dysfunctional patterns handed down across generations. Attempts at change are best facilitated by working with and considering the family or set of relationships as a whole. Family therapy perspectives call for a conceptual shift from evaluating individuals to focusing on system dynamics, or how individuals within a system react to one another. Differences between Systemic and Individual Approaches • • Page 405 Systemic therapists do not deny the importance of the individual in the family system, but they believe an individual’s systemic affiliations and interactions have more power in the person’s life than a single therapist could ever hope to have. Development of Family Systems • Alfred Adler and Rudolf Dreikurs and their associates were the first known practitioners of family therapy, often using a model now called open-forum family counseling. Structural-Strategic Family Therapy • • • The goals of structural family therapy include (1) reducing symptoms of dysfunction and (2) bringing about structural change within the system by modifying the family’s transactional rules and establishing more appropriate boundaries. By the late 1970s, structural-strategic approaches were the most used models in family systems therapy. In the last decade, feminism, multiculturalism, and postmodern social constructionism have all entered the family therapy field. These models are more collaborative, treating clients—individuals, couples, or families—as experts in their own lives. Multilayered Process of Family Therapy • • Families are multilayered systems that both affect and are affected by the larger systems in which they are embedded. We describe four general movements, each with different tasks: forming a relationship, conducting an assessment, hypothesizing and sharing meaning, and facilitating change. Forming a Relationship • • We believe a multilayered approach to family therapy is best supported by a collaborative therapist–client relationship in which mutual respect, caring, empathy, and a genuine interest in others is primary. Whether it is called joining, engagement, or simple care and concern, it is the therapist’s responsibility to meet each person with openness and warmth. Conducting an Assessment • • More formal assessment procedures, such as genograms, enable the family structure and stories to be presented in a clearer, more orderly manner. Family members are often the best people to choose a focus. F il titi i l l ti l ti i • Family practitioners may use circular or relational questioning to get at the systemic issues presented in the family story that will provide meaning for the therapist and the family. In the assessment process, it is helpful to inquire about family perspectives on issues inherent in each of these layers. Hypothesizing and Sharing Meaning • • • • • • • Family counselors, like individual therapists, cannot avoid influencing the family and its members. Feminists and social constructionists are, perhaps, the most expressive of their concerns about the misuse of power in therapy. At the strategic-structural end of the continuum, therapists were more likely to claim a certain expertise in systems work that allowed them to make direct interventions in the enactment of “needed” changes in the family. It is important for families to be invited into respectful, essentially collaborative dialogues in therapeutic work. Sharing hypotheses almost immediately invites and invokes feedback from various family members. And it is this feedback that enables the therapist and the family to develop a good fit with each other, which in turn tends to cement a working relationship. Dreikurs would use a passionate interest and curiosity to ask questions and gather together the subjective perspectives of family members. The value of this way of presenting hypotheses is that it invites families and family members to consider and to engage without giving up their right to discard anything that does not fit. Facilitating Change • • • Facilitating change is what happens when family therapy is viewed as a joint or collaborative process. Techniques are more important to models that see the therapist-as-expert and in charge of making change happen. In general, the internal parts of family members function best when they are balanced (not polarized) and when the individual experiences personal parts as resources. Knowing the goals and purposes for our behaviors, feelings, and inter-actions tends to give us choices about their use and inter-actions tends to give us choices about their use. Multicultural • Many ethnic and cultural groups place great value on the extended family. • They see each family as a unique culture whose particular characteristics must be understood. Like larger cultural systems, families have a unique language that governs behavior, communication, and even how to feel about and experience life. • Because family life is where the roles of women can be most limited, a consideration of gender issues in families is an essential framework for family therapy. Shortcomings • This model advocates for the individual versus the collective. • Many non-Western cultures would not embrace a theory that valued individuality above loyalty to family in any form. • Therapists must find ways to enter the family’s world and honor the traditions that support the family. • A possible shortcoming of the practice of family therapy involves practitioners who assume Western models of family are universal.