Transcript Bowen’s Strategy of Family Counseling

Setting the Stage for Family
Counseling/Therapy
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Psychoanalysis: Freud’s acknowledged the role of family
relationships in personality development (after World War II)
General Systems Theory: Biologist Bertalanffy and his study of
components of a self-regulating total system in continuous
change seeking a steady state. (1940s)
Schizophrenic Studies: Bateson’s work on double bind
interactions (1950s)
Child Guidance Centers: brought parents into treatment (began
in 1930’s); Nathan Ackerman--grandfather of family therapy
Group Therapy: used small group processes for therapy (after
World War II)
Family therapists emerged in the 1950s and 60s
Bowen’s Strategy of Family
Counseling
Differentiation of Self
 Triangles
 Nuclear family emotional system
 Family projection process
 Emotional cut off
 Multigenerational transmission process
 Sibling position
 Societal regression
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Bowen’s Theory provides a framework for
understanding how emotional ties within
families of origin influence the lives of
individuals in ways they often fail to
appreciate.
Family Emotional Systems Theory
(Murray Bowen’s Theory)
Bowen’s theory and approach is generally
appropriate when the focus will be on the
quality of nuclear or extended family
interpersonal processes and on the desire
for one or more family members to
become more differentiated. Level III
families often need help with issues
related to boundaries, enmenshment, and
emotional distance.
Differentiation of Self
Extent to which a person is able to
distinguish between the intellectual
process and the feeling process
 Striving for balance, achieving selfdefinition but not losing spontaneous
emotional expression
 Fusion is when there is no balance
between thoughts and feelings
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Emotion
Reason
Triangles
Basic building block in a family’s
emotional system
 When a moderate anxiety level is
reached between two family members,
one of the family members may bring in
a vulnerable third person.
 Triangles dilute anxiety
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Nuclear Family Emotional
System
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Four relationship patterns that foster
problem development. System anxiety
can be passed to other generations.
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Marital conflict
Problematic emotional functioning
Functional impairment
Emotional fusion
Family Projection Process
Projection is when one person attributes
to someone else his or her
unacceptable thoughts and feelings.
 Parental projection is a major source of
transmitted family anxiety.
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Emotional Cutoff
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A person’s attempt to emotionally
distance him or herself from certain
members of the family or from the entire
family. Emotional cutoff is the result of a
person’s inability to directly resolve
issues of fusion, which in turn prevents
him or her from forming a unique
identity or satisfying relationships with
others.
Multigenerational
Transmission Process
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Severe dysfunction in a family is the
result of the operation of the family’s
emotional system over several
generations.
 Genogram: major tool for assessment of
families. Visual representation of a family’s
composition, structure, member
characteristics, and relationships.
 Family Mapping: depicts structures and
patterns of family systems
Bowen’s Family Intervention
Techniques
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Reduction of anxiety and relief from symptoms
An increase in each participant’s level of differentiation in order
to improve adaptiveness.
Meeting with two adults (I.e., parents) is of utmost importance.
Calm questioning and focusing on one’s role in the family
problems is critical.
Counselor takes on role of “coach.” She/he asks questions and
makes suggestions that the family members discuss and enact
with each other.
Counselor may ask family members to talk to him/her to
minimize interpersonal tensions.
Genogram is used to gain insight.
Detriangulation
Increase insight
Structural Family Interventions
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Salvador Minuchin presented the structural approach
to working with inner city, poor families (with troubled
youth).
Interest in how the components of the system
interact, how balance or homeostasis is achieved,
how family feedback mechanisms operate, how
dysfuntional communication patterns develop, and
family transactional patterns.
Most effective with families with level 1 and 2 needs,
single mothers, families overwhelmed by life’s
circumstances.
Structural Therapists Look
For….
Boundaries: What defines who is in or
out of a family relationship or the focal
issue?
 Alignment: Who is with or against the
other in the transactions generating the
problem?
 Power: What is the relative influence of
the participants in the interactions that
create the problem?
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Structural
Interventions/Techniques
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Joining: the process of “coupling” that occurs
between the counselor and the family, leading to the
development of the therapeutic system. This is done
by tracking (counselor following the content of the
family facts), mimesis (counselor becomes like the
family in the manner or content of communications),
confirmation (using a feeling word to reflect an
expressed or unexpressed feeling of a family
member), and accommodation (counselor makes
personal adjustments in order to achieve a
therapeutic alliance).
Structural
Interventions/Techniques (cont.)
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Reframing: changing a perception by explaining a situation from
a different context. The meaning of a situation changes not the
facts.
Enactment: families bringing problematic behavioral sequences
into the counseling session
Working with spontaneous interaction: counselors point out the
dynamics and sequencing of behaviors observed in session.
Focus is on process not content.
Restructuring: changing the structure of the family. Example: if
a father dominates to the point of children feeling intimidated,
the counselor may ask the rest of the family to uniformly refuse
what the father requests, (the family behaving differently).
Human Validation Process Approach
(Virginia Satir)
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“Grandmother” of family counseling
Offered the first training program in family therapy in
1955 at the Illinois State Psychiatric Institute
Coined the term “conjoint family therapy” to describe
her type of family therapy.
Satir’s approach is mainly concerned with the family
as a balanced system. To Satir, the rules that govern
a family system are related to how the parent/s go
about achieving and maintaining their own selfesteem; these rules, in turn, shape the context within
which the children grow and develop their own sense
of self-esteem.
Satir’s Communication Styles
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Satir contended that the way the family
communicates reflects the feelings of self-worth of its
members. Dysfunctional communication (indirect,
inappropriate, unclarified, inaccurate) characterizes a
dysfunctional family system.
 Placater: acts weak, tentative, self-effacing, always agrees,
apologizes, tries to please.
 Blamer: dominates, invariably finds fault with others, and
self-righteously accuses
 Super-Reasonable: rigid stance, remains detached, calm,
cool, maintaining intellectual control while not becoming
emotionally involved
 Irrelevant: distracts others and seems unable to relate to
anything going on
 Congruent: real, genuinely expressive, responsible for
sending straight (not double binding) messages.
Famous Inspirational Quotes
by Virginia Satir
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“Feelings of worth can flourish only in
an atmosphere where individual
differences are appreciated, mistakes
are tolerated, communication is open,
and rules are flexible--the kind of
atmosphere that is found in a nurturing
family.”
Strategic Family Counseling
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Jay Haley coined the term “strategic therapy” to
describe the work of Milton Erickson.
Strategic family counseling is short term treatment,
about 10 sessions. Sometimes strategic family
counseling is called brief family counseling.
Erickson believed in the following:
 Accepting and emphasizing the positive
 Using indirect and ambiguously worded directives
 Encouraging or directing routine behaviors so that
resistance is shown through change and through
normal and continuous actions.
Strategic Family Counseling
Dimensions
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Family rules: the overt and covert rules families use to govern
themselves, such as “you must only speak when spoken to.”
Family homeostasis: the tendency of the family to remain in its
same pattern of functioning unless challenged to do otherwise.
Quid pro quo: the responsiveness of family members to treat
others in the same way they are treated, that is, something for
something
Redundancy principle: the fact that a family interacts within a
limited range of repetitive behavioral sequences
Punctuation: the idea that people in a transaction believe that
what they say is caused by what others say
Symmetrical relationships and complementary relationships: the
fact that relationships within a family are both among equals
(symmetrical) and unequals (complementary)
Circular Causality: events in a family are interconnected
Strategic Interventions/Techniques
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Reframing: different interpretation is given to a family situation or
behavior
Directive: instruction from a family counselor for a family to behave
differently. This is the basic tool of the approach. Directives may
include nonverbal messages (e.g., silence, voice tone, posture), direct
and indirect suggestions (e.g., “go fast”, “you may want to talk slowly”)
and assigned behaviors (e.g., when you think you won’t sleep, force
yourself to stay up all night.).
Paradox: Gives permission to family to do something they are already
doing and is intended to lower or eliminate resistance to change.
 Restraining: counselor tells family that they are incapable of doing
anything other than what they are doing.
 Prescribing: family members are instructed to enact a troublesome
behavior in front of the therapist.
 Redefining: attributing positive connotations to symptomatic or
troublesome actions.
Multicultural Issues in Family
Work
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Seven major factors that distinguish
ethnic minorities from mainstream
middle class white American families
 Ethnic minority experiences with racism and
oppression
 The impact of external systems on minority
cultures
 Biculturalism
 Ethnic differences in minority status
 Ethnicity and language
 Ethnicity and social class
 Ethnicity as a narrative identity