Family Therapy

Marriage and Family Therapists, known as MFTs, work with families. They attempt to classify families as systems by delineating how family members interact, relate, transact, and organize themselves around one another and work to change individual parts of the system, deconstruct the malfunction within the system and bring about individuation. Individuation is the process of helping the child who is least enmeshed in the system to both make changes within him or herself and then bring change within the system. The individuated member of the family is the healthiest in the family, who can step out of the family drama construction and help bring about changes within the family.

The individual may present as the identified patient but the therapist sees the dysfunction not as an individual problem but as systemic; finding the problem within the family dynamic. Families organize as much around dysfunction as they do around functioning within the norms of society.

Key Concepts

  1. Homeostasis. Maintenance of a system’s status quo condition primarily during times of change or disruption, that is if one family member improves it upsets the homeostasis of the family and the problem surfaces somewhere else in the family.
  2. System. An organized whole (family), combination of interacting components with identifiable boundaries that form a unitary or complex whole maintained by mutual interaction rather than isolated events.
  3. Boundary. Every system has a structural limitation; some systems are rigid and some are permeable. The more permeable the system the more open and flexible the system interacts within the family unit and with its environments.
  4. Closed system. A family system with rigid and impermeable boundaries. a closed system that does not interact with its environment and is seen as being resistant to change.
  5. Open system. Is permeable and capable of interacting within the family and its environments, being adaptable and receptive to change, accepting input and being influenced from both outside interests and within the family system to restructure and rebuild the family.
  6. Identified patient. The I.P. is seen as the symptom-bearer of the family, the first to be sent to therapy or in treatment and whose symptoms help to maintain the families homeostasis. The I.P. is the focus of all problems, allowing the rest of the family to remain in denial.
  7. Emotional Triangle when a two-person system, husband-wife or parent-child are having conflict (stress or anxiety) they recruit another person into the system to diffuse the problem without resolving the conflict.
  8. Sibling Position a child’s functional relationship within the family is related to his/her birth order.
  9. Family Projection Process a process upon which parents project their immaturity and lack of differentiation to their children.
  10. Multigenerational Transmission Process. The transmission of family emotional processes (maturity) through multiple generations due to individuals usually marry others with similar emotional maturity.
  11. Society Emotional Processes. Emotional factors in a society affect the functioning of families.
  12. Fusion. The inability of an individual to adequately distinguish their thoughts from their feelings, often engaging in relationships where their thoughts and feeling are not significantly differing to others.
  13. Differentiation of Self and Others. Opposite of fusion, ability to separate one’s thinking from one’s feelings.
  14. Interpersonal differentiation. Ability to separate one’s intellectual and emotional functioning from the functioning of others and one’s family members.
  15. Coalition. Alignment of certain family members against a third member.
  16. Reframing. Changing an original meaning of an event or situation by placing it in a new context in which a new meaning is plausible. There are other meaningful terms that your therapist will help you to understand.

Goal

Family systems therapists understand the complex structures governing how individuals behave within the family, making it possible to reframe thought patterns and change how family members behave toward each other. The goal is to establish a healthier relationship within the family so that each member can be seen as who they are rather than in their role as performers constructed within the family system. The benefits for the clients using family therapists are how the therapist integrates other psychological models and integrative theories. The client should be aware of the work and influences of the following family therapy theorists: Murray Bowen, Virginia Satir, Salvatore Minuchin, and Martin Kirschenbaum.

Indicators for Family Therapy:

  1. Marital discord and conflict
  2. A desire to understand the causes of marital conflict
  3. A desire for reconciliation
  4. A desire to prevent a family crisis from escalating
  5. When a child or adolescent is the identified patient
  6. Sexual and sexual identity problems within the family
  7. Eating disorders, substance abuse, violent behavior, conduct disorders, sibling conflicts, etc.

Family therapist can work with couples and individuals separately to understand family dynamics without blame or guilt, allowing them to function as individuated family members.