In: Psychology
I am 1 of a three person group that are doing a power point presentation. My part is to describe the phase of a structural family therapy. What is the main topic I can use along with 4 or 5 subtopics that I may discuss in my presentation. This is a Family, couples amd marriage class psychology?
Structural Family Therapy emphasis on the structural change as the main goal of therapy and on the therapist as an active agent in the process of restructuring the family. There are many invisible rules that govern the family functioning, to maintain the relationships, disrupt dysfunctional relationships, causing it to stabilize into healthy patterns.
There are certain family rules which makes this subsystem functions, which include coalitions, boundaries and power hierarchies between subsystems. a healthy family are comprised of parent- children boundaries that are both clear, allowing parents to interact, and there should be someone dominating with some authority who are in the high hierarchy level. A family should restructure some transactional rules, so that the interactional reality of the family becomes more flexible.. Once the constricting set of rules is outgrown, dysfunctional behaviour starts, lose support from the family, then the problems arises, where a therapist comes to the end.
The structure of the family is where the members are related to one another, there are boundareies established among themselves. Generally diffuse boundarires exist between a couple, when they have their own independent life and profession, they view themselves as independent. they have established rigid boundaries for themselves.
Another problem that we see in the structural family therapy is when the problems are maintained by a dysfunctional family when a family or one of its family members encounters external pressure.
According to To family psychology there are three overlapping phases in the process of structural family therapy. the therapist joins the family in the position of leadership, maps their underlying structure, and intervenes to to transform this structure.
There are many steps the structural family therapist uses. In the first step the therapist joins and accommodates the family means the therapist attempts to disarm defences by building an alliance of understanding each member of the family. In the second step he provoked the family members to talk among themselves to produce enactments. In the third step the therapist tries to understand the interrelationship of the family members . fourth step: the technique of intensity which is facilitated by using affect repeated intervention or prolonged pressure is used. The fifth step distinguishes boundary making or or the boundaries between members of the family for or outside world sixth step consist of unbalancing, the therapist aims to change the relationship within the subsystem. Finally in the seventh step the therapist challenges and produces assumptions that support structural problems.