Background/History
Who developed structural family therapy theory?
Salvador Minuchin
Psychological isolation caused from overly inflexible boundaries
What Is: Disengagement
Forcing the family to engage in behavior patterns associated with the presenting problems.
What Is: Enactment?
Lack of appropriate reconfiguration and evolving conflict in the parental relationship are mechanisms that produce it.
What is inadequate family structure?
What was Minuchin's primary focus when developing Structural Family Therapy Theory?
What Is: Reorganizing the family structure to help parents gain better authority.
The organization of how families function and interact.
What Is: family structure?
Subtle mimicking of the family's affective and communication style.
What Is: Mimesis?
What is: Reframing?
A therapeutic technique in which the therapist helps the family look at a situation/relationship/person from a different perspective.
It signals a structural deficit, deflects intrasubsystem conflict onto a scapegoat, and delays normal developmental maturation.
What is a symptom?
What are the three constructs of Structural Family Therapy?
What Are: Structure, Subsystems and Boundaries?
Family functioning based off generational boundaries and parental control and authority.
What Is: Hierarchical Structure?
Using simple verbal and nonverbal behaviors that convey that the therapist is engaged and listening.
What Is: Tracking?
To remove symptoms that the family is experiencing by changing faulty family structures and dysfunctions.
The goal is to change relationships within a subsystem in order to realign the relationships between subsystems?
What Is: Unbalancing?
When the therapist draws a diagram that helps the family identify boundaries, styles, and structure.
What Is: Family Mapping?
Becoming part of the family system by using the family's thinking patterns, symbols, and organizational structure.
What Is: Accommodating?
One who represents the system. Aberrant behavior from this individual reflects inadequate family structure.
Who is the identified patient (IP)?
The school where the principles of Structural Family Therapy were developed in the early 1960s.
What Is: the Wiltwyck School for Boys?
Occurs when alliances form between certain family members, usually against a third family member.
What Is: Coalition?
Therapist acts to increase family comfort by using family's behaviors, language, and communication style.
What Is: Joining?
Something that occurs when the therapist uses in-session techniques to alter the way the family interacts.
What is change?