Family Systems Weekend 1

1. Theory and Practice of
Counseling and Psychotherapy
Family System Therapy
Christine Moran

2. The Family Systems Perspective
• Individuals – are best understood through assessing
the interactions within an entire family
• Symptoms – are viewed as an expression of a
dysfunction within a family
• Problematic behaviors –
– Serve a purpose for the family
– Are a function of the family’s inability to operate
productively
– Are symptomatic patterns handed down across
generations
• A family – is an inter-actional unit and a change in
one member effects all members

3. Adlerian Family Therapy
• Alfred Adler
• Adlerians use an educational model to counsel
families
• Emphasis is on family atmosphere, birth order, and
family constellation
• Therapists function as collaborators who seek to join
the family
• Understand the purposes of underlying children’s
misbehavior

4. Adlerian Family Therapy Goals
• Unlock mistaken goals and interactional patterns
• Engage parents in a learning experience and a
collaborative assessment
• Emphasis is on the family’s motivational patterns
(e.g., a desire to belong)
• Main aim is to initiate a reorientation of the
family

5. Multigenerational Family Therapy
• Murray Bowen
• The application of rational thinking to emotionally
saturated systems
– A well-articulated theory is considered to be essential
• With the proper knowledge the individual can change
– Change occurs only with other family members
• Triangulation
– A pattern of interaction with two-against-one experience
– A third party is recruited to reduce anxiety and stabilise a
couples’ relationship

6. Multigenerational Family Therapy
• Make the most use of genograms
• Differentiation of the self
– A psychological separation from others
– Involve (1) psychological separation of intellect and
emotions and (2) of independence of the self from others.
– The greater one’s differentiation, the better one’s ability to
keep from being drawn into dysfunctional patterns with
other family members.

7. Multigenerational Family Therapy
Goals
• To change the individuals within the context of
the system
• To end generation-to-generation transmission
of problems by resolving emotional
attachments
• To lessen anxiety and relieve symptoms
• To increase the individual member’s level
of differentiation

8. Human Validation Process Model
Virginia Satir
• Open communications
– Individuals are allowed to honestly report their
perceptions
• Enhancement of self-esteem
– Family decisions are based on individual needs
• Encouragement of growth
– Differences are acknowledged and seen as
opportunities for growth
• Transform extreme rules into useful and
functional rules
– Families have many spoken and unspoken rules

9. Human Validation Process Model
• Enhancement and validation of self-esteem
• Family rules
• Congruence and openness in communications
• Sculpting
• Nurturing triads
• Family mapping and chronologies

10. Experiential Family Therapy
Goals (Carl Whitaker)
• Application of existential therapy to family systems
• Help individuals achieve more intimacy by increasing their
awareness of their inner potential and opening channels
for family interaction
• An interactive process between a therapist and a family
• Encourage members to be themselves by freely expressing
what they are thinking and feeling
• Techniques grow out of the therapist’s intuitive and
spontaneous reactions (Therapist use of self) to the
present situation in therapy

11. Experiential Family Therapy
• A freewheeling, intuitive, sometimes outrageous
approach
aiming to:
– Unmask pretense, create new meaning, and liberate family
members to be themselves
• Techniques are secondary to the therapeutic
relationship
• Pragmatic and theoretical
• Interventions create turmoil and intensify what is
going on here and now in the family

12. Experiential Family Therapy Goals
• Facilitate individual autonomy and a sense of
belonging in the family
• Help individuals achieve more intimacy by increasing
their awareness and their experiencing
• Encourage members to be themselves by freely
expressing what they are thinking and feeling
• Support spontaneity, creativity, the ability to play,
and the willingness to be “crazy”

13. Structural Family Therapy
• Salvador Minuchin
• Focus is on family interactions to understand the
structure, or organisation of the family
• Symptoms: are a by-product of structural failings
• Structural changes must occur in a family before an
individual’s symptoms can be reduced
•

14. Structural Family Therapy Goals
• Reduce symptoms of dysfunction
• Bring about structural change by:
– Modifying the family’s transactional rules
– Developing more appropriate boundaries
– Creation of an effective hierarchical structure
• It is assumed that faulty family structures have:
– Boundaries that are rigid or diffuse
– Subsystems that have inappropriate tasks and
functions

15. Strategic Family Therapy
• Jay Haley
• Focuses on solving problems in the present
• Presenting problems are accepted as “real” and not a
symptom of system dysfunction
• Therapy is brief, process-focused, and solution-oriented
• The therapist designs strategies for change
• Change results when the family follows the
therapist’s directions & change transactions

16. Strategic Family Therapy
• Focuses on solving problems in the present
• Presenting problems are accepted as “real” and not a
symptom of system dysfunction
• Therapy is brief, process-focused, and solution-oriented
• The therapist designs strategies for change
• Change results when the family follows the
therapist’s directions and change transactions

17. Strategic Family Therapy
Goals
• Resolve presenting problems by focusing on
behavioral sequences
• Get people to behave differently
• Shift the family organisation so that the presenting
problem is no longer functional
• Move the family toward the appropriate stage of
family development
– Problems often arise during the transition from one
developmental stage to the next

18. Social Constructionism
• The client, not the therapist, is the expert
• Dialogue is used to elicit perspective,
resources, and unique client experiences
• Questions empower family members to speak,
and to express their diverse positions
• The therapist supplies optimism and the
process

19. Social Constructionism Therapy Goals
• Generate new meaning in the lives of family
members
• Co-develop, with families, solutions that are unique
to the situation
• Enhance awareness of the impact of various aspects
of the dominant culture on the family
• Help families develop alternative ways of being,
acting, knowing, and living

20. Family therapy as a whole
• Basic assumption
– An individual’s problematic behavior grows out of the
interactional unit of the family, community, and societal
systems
• Focus of family therapy
– Short term, solution-focused, action-oriented, and here-and-
now interaction.
– Focus on how current family relationships contribute to
the development and maintenance of symptoms.

21. Family therapy as a whole
• Role of goals and values
– Specific goals are determined by family and
therapist
– Global goal is to reduce family’s distress
• How family change
– Cognitive, emotional, or behavioral changes
– Change needs to happen in relationships, not just
within the individual

22. Family therapy as a whole
• Techniques of family therapy
– Techniques are tools for achieving therapeutic
goals
– Personal characteristics (respect, empathy,
sensitivity) are even more important
– Always consider what is in the best interests of the
family.

23. From a multicultural perspective
• Contributions
– Many ethnic and cultural groups place great value
on the extended family
– Approach each family as unique culture
• Limitations
– Few limitations for multicultural counseling

24. Summary and Evaluation
• Contributions
– Inclusion of all parts of the system rather than being limited
to the “identified patient”
– Rather than blaming either “identified patient” or the
family, the entire family has an opportunity (1) to examine
the multiple perspectives and interactional patterns that
characterise the unit and (2) participate in finding solutions.
• Limitations
– lose sight of the individual by focusing on the broader
system