Structural Family Therapy Paper

The movie Ordinary People is a movie which looks at a family struck by tragedy, It shows how an upper middle-class family handles life when tragedy strikes unexpectedly, and family order is turned into chaos. The movie in essence sheds light into a family, due to a tragedy, has turned into separate individuals living in the same house, who lack of communicating their grief effectively. The movie was shown through a realistic lens, without over dramatization; looked into misplaced guilt at every level. The inability of the family to work through the tragedies lead them to a place where they each felt a breakdown within each other as well as the family dynamic.

Structural family therapy is associated with the work of Salvador Minuchin and is an evidence based therapy influenced by brief strategic and eco-systemic structural family therapy (Gerhart, 2014). Structural family therapists are active in the counseling sessions and will want to have all of the members of the family participate in the counseling sessions. The therapist is then able to map family structures in order to resolve relation problems between family members. The therapist will then make assessments and set goals to restructure the family interactions while focusing on family strengths.

Family is something that plays a tremendous role in our life. Even though the structure of families has changed over the years, it is important to acknowledge that there many families out there whether they are traditional families, nuclear family, stepfamilies or others which tend to have different types of problems in their families. Therefore, many families attempt to go to family therapy in order for them to obtain help in solving the different types of issues they might have at home. As stated in the book Family Therapy by Michael P. Nichols (2013), “The power of family therapy derives from bringing parents and children together to transform their interaction… What keeps people stuck in their inability to see their own participation in the problems that plague them. With eyes fixed firmly on what recalcitrant others are doing, it’s hard for most people to see the patterns that bind them together. The family therapist’s job is to give them a wake-up call” (2013).

Salvador Minuchin, born and raised in Argentina, is known as the founder of structural family therapy (Colapinto, 1982). Before creating what would be known as his most lasting contribution, Minuchin spent years paving his way to his success. Traveling back and forth from Israel to the United States, Minuchin finally settled down in the year 1954 where he began training in psychoanalysis at the William Alanson White Institute in the United States (Nichols, 2014). Following the White Institute, Minuchin began working at the Wiltwyck School, which consisted of delinquent boys from unsystematic, multi-problem, underprivileged families (Colapinto, 1982). At the time Minuchin began working there, therapists had found that certain clinical populations were not responding to traditional psychotherapy (Lappin, 1988). In fact, the population of delinquent children, like those that Minuchin was working with at Wiltwyck, resisted even more so than other populations to this traditional psychotherapy (Lappin, 1988). This was due to the fact that the traditional psychotherapeutic techniques used, were developed for middle-class patients who were verbally articulate (Colapinto, 1982). It was then when Minuchin realized that a new model of change was needed, particularly one that worked with unprivileged, delinquent boys (Lappin, 1988).

Structural Family Therapy (SFT) is an approach used in family therapy settings. In every family there are both strengths and weaknesses in how the family functions, this type of therapy focuses on the ability of families to move forward any dysfunctional issues they can encounter. In every family there has to be structure, a way of doing things, who is in charge and yet still be able to adapt to change when it is necessary or problems begin to occur, in order to repair and alter issues of dysfunction and reposition family boundaries, many therapists who use the structural family approach have the belief that the problems the family is experiencing “emerge in families when their boundaries (that define structures) are not clear and when

Structural family therapy focuses on encouraging proactive healthy change within the family, with an emphasis on structure, subsystems, and boundaries. Family Structure is invisible set of rules that organize the ways family members relate to each other. Structure resists change. The therapist will essentially be a change agent to facilitate this reorganization (Minuchin,

Family therapy is a form of psychotherapy employed to assist members of a family in improving communication systems, conflict resolution, and to help the family to deal with certain problems that manifest in the behavior of members. In most cases, deviance in a family member is an indication of underlying family dysfunctions. This paper looks the counselling procedure that can be applied to help the Kline family solve their problems. It answers certain questions including those of the expected challenges during therapy and ways of dealing with the challenges.

Salvador Minuchin viewed joining a paramount precursor to familial change (Miuchin & Fishman, 1981). Given that the therapist is going to be in a position of shifting transactions between family members through the process of challenging current dynamics, the therapist needs to “earn his right to lead” (Miuchin & Fishman, 1981, p. 29). In structural family therapy model, “joining is letting the family know that the therapist understands them and is working with and for them” (Miuchin & Fishman, 1981, pp. 31-32). I am starting with joining because I believe this will the most important initial therapeutic intervention with the Maxson, as a young white female therapist given the amount of discrimination faced by family members, which is especially vocalized by Troy (Washington, Back, & Rudin, 2016). In joining, I must also pay attention to my own values regarding family role and respect the position of individual family members prior to shifting how parental decisions are made (Melito, 2003). I would first seek to understand the particular perspective and experience of each family member. It will also be during this part of treatment that I would start testing the hypotheses formulated upon initial contacts with the family (Minuchin, 1981).

A common issue to be brought up during the sessions will be Frank’s abandonment along with his alcohol and drug use, inability to care for others, and all-around selfishness. Frank will experience blame from Fiona and the rest of the family. Fiona’s newfound guardianship of her siblings, and role confusion will be identified and obvious during the counseling sessions. Debbie’s pregnancy will also be brought into the session often, as it was what brought the family to counseling. Debbie will present as silent and unwilling to come to a solution. A common theme of the sessions and counseling may be lack of trust in Frank by Fiona and Debbie. Depending on the result of Debbie’s pregnancy decisions, there may be continuing arguments, disapproval, and triangulation occurring in the subsequent sessions.

In the Structural Family Therapy model, therapy is not focused solely on the individual, but upon the person within the family system (Colapinto, 1982; Minuchin, 1974). The major idea behind viewing the family in this way is that “an individual’s symptoms are best understood when examined in the context of the family interactional patterns,” (Gladding, 1998, p. 210). In SFT, there are two basic assumptions: 1) families possess the skills to solve their own problems; and 2) family members usually are acting with good intentions, and as such, no

The evolution of Structural Family Therapy started from an epiphany back in the early 1960’s. The focus was on the Wiltwyck School for Boys, where Salvador Minuchin was employed. Minuchin suggested to his staff that they start involving families within the therapy sessions in hopes for reconnection. Minuchin then assembled a team of therapists and researchers and set out to transform the institutional setting of a correctional facility for young delinquents into a family-oriented treatment program. Families of the Slums (Minuchin, 1967) recounts the experience, which started at the opposite end of the traditional psychodynamic approach –with a sociological analysis of the impact of social context on poor families. The typical Wiltwyck client was the “urban, minority group member who is experiencing discrimination, fear, crowdedness, poverty and street-living,” and his family tended to be under organized. Because the style of interaction in these families was more concrete and action-oriented than abstract and verbal, the team adopted and developed an alternative communication approach which encompassed “more doing than talking” techniques such as, “enactments”, role playing, home-based modalities of treatment, and other nontraditional forms.

The purpose of this paper is to prepare an annotated bibliography on family therapy with emphasis on ethnicity and sociocultural influences on the problems of communication. This research includes twelve resources on authors with the following annotations: Delineation of the main focus or purpose of each author 's work; Background and credibility of each author; Intended audience for the work; Any unique feature of the work; Theoretical understandings; Family therapy strategies or techniques; and a Conclusion or observations presented in the work.

(2) Generational - Places importance of "differentiation, relationships between generations and triangulation (Bowen, 1978) with the function of the therapist being that of a teacher or a coach;

A “contemporary therapist” is a therapist that is open to the different sexual orientations. This type of therapist would not and does not have a problem work with lesbians, gays, bisexuals, or transsexuals (LGBT). I never really thought of being called a “contemporary therapist” but I guess this is what I would be considered. I defiantly would not mind working with LGBT’s and any sexual orientation.

Systemic therapy was based on Minuchin’s Structural Therapy model (1968) followed by Bateson's cybernetic model (1972) The first order cybernetic model considerd that problems within a family system should be focused on by strategically solving problems, meeting family goals and help change a person's dysfunctional behaviour. D Shazer (1985). These concepts in Systemic therapy were known as the major paradigms and were taught by therapists such as Minuchin in Milan until the information-processing systems were introduced. They were characterized by the therapist's observation of the system from the external social world. Minuchin S & Fisherman,HC (1981)