Question

Select either Bowen, Strategic or Structural Family Therapy to apply to the following case:

Bill and Jan come to see you for marital counseling. They are a young couple in their mid-20s and have been married for two years. No children are involved in the relationship. She states that the problem is Bill's excessive amount of time spent playing video games online with his friends. He states that the problem is her constant nagging. Jan is a nurse employed at a local hospital; Bill is an employee at a gaming store. Both of them have undergraduate degrees and lots of student-loan debt. Her family-of-origin is a two-parent intact marriage, middle socioeconomic class family with two other siblings. She is the oldest, and she grew up in the suburbs. She describes her parents' marriage as good but with some moderate conflict. He came from a broken home. His parents divorced when he was thirteen, after a string of dad's infidelities. His mother struggled with alcoholism. Bill has a younger sister who is a drug addict and was raped by one of her mom's boyfriends.

Address the following concerns:

1. Using one of the three approaches, apply the concepts of the approach to explain what is occurring in the family. Why does the problem exist?

2. Select one technique from the approach to apply to this couple. Give a rationale for using your selected technique.

Answer 1

Family Therapy is not a single theory solution for new family therapists.Family therapy is a branch of psychotherapy that is meant to help initiate change and nurture development in intimate relationships between family members and couples.

1.Structural Therapy-It is a theory developed by Salvador Minuchin.It is based on five principles which includes -interactions between people rather than their individual psyches,Matrix of identity based on personal interactions with family.Family structure based on social interaction and Well-functioning based on how family responds and develops according to family needs.Therapist role is to help family outgrow constraining growth patterns and develop a stronger entity.

2.Strategic Therapy-It is a theory that has evolved from a combined number of variety of psychotherapy practices.Therapy includes a brief social stage ,problem stage,interactional stage ,the goal setting stage and task setting stage.

3.Bowen Family system theory was proposed by Murrey Bowen .This theory focuses on helping the clients get insight about their problems than on taking action to solve these problems.

In the case,Bill and Jane is suffering from the interpersonal relationship in which they are blaming each other for having disturbed relationship. According to the Strategic Approach there relationship might be affected from Social Stage,Jane come from the middle class family but was having some of the conflicts with her parents.Bill has very poor social background.His parents got divorced when he was at the age of thirteen ,His mother struggled with alcoholism.He has younger sister who is drug addicted and was being raped by his mother's boyfriend. Problem and interactional stage involves that Bill is being involved in the video games online with his friends and Jane constantly nags him.One technique wil be goal setting-the goal or the objective of family counselling must be predecided aa what they are expecting from the treatment. The goal must be set and the family counselling sessions must be scheduled to lower down the interpesonal conflict.