Family therapy

Mental Health Department

 In brief…
• Family therapy:
– Focus on altered interactions among family
members
– Improving the family functioning as a unit of
individual members

Reduce distress between/within family

members
 Basic theory of family
• Family system theory:
– Family units  maintain the homeostasis of
interaction
– To light the hidden patterns (often) and
facilitate individuals to understand the
purpose
– A marital relationship  strongly influence its
homeostasis system
 Indications for family therapy

• Marriage conflict
• Family in transitional stage
• Individual therapy that need others’
involvement
• Unfinished individual therapy
 Goals in family therapy
• To decrease internal conflict and anxiety within
interpersonal relationship
• To enhance the perception and fulfillment by
family members of one another’s emotional
needs
• To promote appropriate role relationship
between the sexes and generations
• To strengthen individual’s capacity
• To strengthen family function when face
destructive forces
• To influence family identity and values  toward
health and growth
 Techniques in family therapy

• Initial consultation
• Interview technique
• Frequency and length of treatment
 Communication Approach
Virginia Satir

• Offered description of conjoint family

therapy
• Emphasized growth enhancing
techniques to evoke feeling and clarify
family communications patterns
– (dance, massage, sensory awareness,
group encounter techniques).
 Contextual Family Therapy
Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy

• Effective family therapy must attend to

family context especially to those dynamic
and ethical connections – past, present,
future – that bind families together
 The Structural Approach
Salvador Minuchin
• The individual’s symptoms are best understood
as rooted in the context of family transaction
patterns.
– The family’s hierarchical organization
– The wholeness of the family system
– The interdependent functioning of its subsystems
• The family boundaries are too diffuse to allow for
individual autonomy.
 Strategic Approach
Jay Haley
• The therapist devices a strategy for
solving the client’s present problems
• Goals are clearly set
• Therapy is carefully planned to achieve
these goals
 Family Systems Theory
Multigenerational
Murray Bowen

• Conceptualizes the family as an emotional

unit, a network of interlocking
relationships, best understood when
analyzed within a multi generational or
historic framework
• Genograms.
 Technique modifications

• Family group therapy

• Social Network therapy
• Reframing
 When Therapy Helps

• When clients have enough sense of self

• When clients have enough distress to motivate
them to change
• When therapists are warm and empathetic
• When client and therapist establish a good
rapport
• Hostile, negative clients are less likely to benefit
 When Therapy Harms
• Bias on the therapist’s part because of gender,
religion, or race
• Coercion by the therapist to accept his/her
advice
• Coercion by the therapist to have sexual
intimacy.
 Treatment termination

• When family members:

– Can complete transaction, check, ask
– Can interpret hostility
– Can see how others see them
– Can see how they see themselves
– Can disagree
– Can make choices
– Can learn through practice
– Can give clear messages
(Virginia Satir, 1967)
Thank you