The world of the Counselor An introduction to the counseling profession 5e chapter 6

Chapter 6: Family CounselingChapter 7: Group Work Chapter 8: Consultation and Supervision... Couples and Family Counseling...  Soon, people developed own theories Satir: Human validati

Chapter 6: Family Counseling

Chapter 7: Group Work

Chapter 8: Consultation and Supervision

Couples and Family Counseling

 1800s: Charity Organization Societies and “Friendly Visitors” worked with poor family

 Led to “social casework” –first time people were viewed

systemically

 Also, around same time, Alfred Adler began to see families and believed education could help alleviate problems in children

 Until 1940s, families were generally not seen together due

to pressure placed on therapist from the developing

“individual approaches” to counseling

A number of approaches developed around the 1950s:

 Psychodyanmic: Ackerman; Boszormeyi-Nagy

 Multigenerational: Bowen

 Palo Alto: Bateson hired Haley, Weakland, Jackson, & Fry

 Looked at communication in systems

 Double-bind theory

 Applied principles of systems and cyberneticsOut of Palo Alto came MRI

 Soon, people developed own theories

 Satir: Human validation process model

 Haley and Madanes: Strategic therapy

 Whitaker: Experiential approach

 Minuchin: Structural family therapy

 1966: within MRI: Brief Family Therapy Center

 Eventually led to solution-focused family therapy

 1970s: Milan Group

 Over 50 states have marriage and family licensure

 Two main associations: AAMT and IAMFC (a division of

 Twelve Assumptions Held by Most Family

Counselors (see pp 192-193)

 Cybernetics

 Control mechanism in systems

 Regulatory process

 Used to avoid disequilibrium in systems

 Acts like thermostat

 See Box 6.1, p 195

Boundaries and Information Flow in Family Systems

 Healthy system has semi-permeable boundaries

 Unhealthy: rigid or diffuse boundaries

 (See Box 6.2, p 196)

 American culture allows for much variability in boundaries

 However, as Box 6.2 shows, too much rigidity or permeability leads to dysfunction

 Rules and Hierarchy

 Universal rules

 Idiosyncratic rules

 Rules can be overt or covert

 Rules often related to hierarchical structure

 Communication theory

 Watzlawick and others researched communication theory

 See 10 communication tenets, p 197

All couples bring unfinished business to relationship

 Unfinished business can lead to discontent as couples blame each other for their projected problems

 Family members will sometimes focus on one member

(rather than own problems)

 This takes focus off of self or relationship

 Families will often bring in the “scapegoat” or IP and state

they “have” the problem

 Stress

 Stressful contact of one member with extrafamilial forces

(e.g., difficulty at work)

 Stressful contact of the whole family with extrafamilial

forces (e.g., a natural disaster such as a hurricane)

 Stress at transitional or developmental points in the family (e.g., puberty, midlife crises, retirement, aging)

 Idiosyncratic (situational) stress (e.g., unexpected illness)

 See Box 6.3

Believes that systems theory and cybernetics places too much emphasis on causal factors

 Social constructionists believe that couples and families

“co-construct” their understanding of who they are

 Construction of self occurs through ongoing dialogue and

nonverbal interactions among people and broader culture

 Change, therefore occurs through conversation with counselor

 Together, counselor and clients co-construct a new

meaning- Virginia Satir

 Humanist, one of the major theorists of 20th century

 Primary survival triad

 Four universal communication patterns: placater, blamer,

computer, distracter

 Congruent, respectful, and caring parents yield healthy

children

 Two well-known techniques

 Complete a family life facto chronology

 Arose out of Palo Alto Group and work of Milton Erickson

 Theorists: Jay Haley, Cloé Madanes, Milan group

 Focused on changing communication sequences

 No focus on feelings (except to help people feel better)

 Concerned with how power is dispersed in families

 Focuses mostly on presenting problem

 Haley's Stages: social, problem, interaction, goal-setting

 Some techniques

 Telling client what to do when (when client will do it)

• Ways of relating passed down

• Loyalties, Ledger of indebtedness and entitlements

 Murray Bowen

• Differentiation of self

• Nuclear family emotional system

• Undifferentiated ego mass (we pick people of same psychological health –see Box 6.5, p 209)

 Whitaker

 Says he has no theory, but see basic tenets (p 209)

 I-Thou relationship

 Become genuine through interactions in therapy

 See quotes top and middle of page 210

Robin Skynner and Nathan Ackerman

 Emphasis: How parents assist children through

developmental stages

 Problems in each parent reflected through unconscious

 Couple explores how behaviors related to their own

childhood

 Unfinished, unconscious problems become projected on

family

 Focused on symptom relief

 Highly structured

 Focus on behaviors and cognitions

 Operant conditioning

 Classical conditioning

 Social learning (modeling)

 Changing negative automatic thoughts

 Integrates how problems get infused in family through the

system

Michael White and David Epston

 Goal: To recreate how family comes to understand itself

 Based on postmodernism, social constructivism, and

narrative reasoning

 Deconstruct past narrative and construct new ones

 General guidelines, see p 213

 Insoo Kim Bert and Steve de Shazer

 A pragmatic and future-oriented approach

 Based on social constructionism and post-modernism

 Assumes that clients can change quickly

 Focuses on solutions and use of problem free language

 See underlying assumptions, p 214

Points to consider when working with couples and families

from nondominant groups—see p 215

 Why are professional associations not being inclusive?

 American Association of Marriage and Family Counselors

 International Association of Marriage and Family

Counselors

 Withholding treatment in order to see “whole” family

 Informed for “whole” family

 Confidentiality –can you assure it?

 Multiple (Dual) relationships—seeing a member individually

and in the family?

 Individual or family counseling—which is better?

 Professional Associations: AAMFT, IAMFC

 Accreditation: CACREP; COAMFTE

 Credentialing: LMFT; NCA

Understanding Our Client’s Family, Understanding Our

Family

 To understand others, we need to understand self

 We need to examine how our family affected us and how

the impact of our families can affect the people with whom

we work