General Systems and First Order Cybernetics
From this perspective, our realities are constructed by the environments we live in, reality can be deconstructed into the values and assumptions held by the groups of people we belong to, and language is the defining framework for our experiences.
What is social constructionism?
A therapist's perspective about the family says as much about themselves as it does the family.
What is wholeness and self-reference?
A therapist can use this moment-to-moment in session and between sessions.
What is the IST blueprint?
This planning metaframework includes the strategies of Identifying and labeling thoughts, feelings, and narratives; Interrupting and challenging thoughts, feelings, and narratives; Facilitating acceptance and forgiveness; and emotion regulation techniques.
What is the meaning/emotions metaframework?
Maintain more of a "self" with others
What is an ingredient of self-differentiation?
Unconditional positive regard from therapist, client belief in therapy and readiness to change, the therapeutic alliance (parts of the alliance include self- therapist, other-group, and within-system).
What are common factors?
Changes in a family system that are natural and often unintended and unnoticed.
What is nonpurposeful drift?
Which aspect of the Blueprint?
A therapist decides to use structural family therapy techniques to understand the boundaries between the parents and teens.
What is planning?
This hypothesizing metaframework deals mostly with the constructs of boundaries and leadership.
What is the organization metaframework?
Two teenagers argue frequently and it annoys their single parent because both teenagers come to them complaining about the argument. However, after a recent argument the teenager's give each other the silent treatment and do not talk for days. During that time, one of the teenagers confides in their parent and the parent feels closer to this teenager. Then the other teenager feels isolated. This isolation is an example of this.
What is emotional distance?
"Our family is Mom and two sisters that communicate with each other" is an example of this systems concept.
What is a boundary?
An ongoing process of recognizable interactions by which the family creates rules.
What is autopoeisis?
In the fifth session, a therapist guesses that there is a problem with how a family is organized and that established interactions between the parents and teens are at odds with the development of the teen as well as the family.
What is hypothesizing?
A therapist identifies themselves from a low socioeconomic status, from an Islamic religious tradition, and educated parents.
What are contexts of membership? (culture metaframework)
When stressed, a father becomes very quiet and isolates. When stressed, a son becomes very quiet and isolates.
What is the family projection process?
According to Priest (2022), family systems has these 2 overarching hypotheses.
A generated reality created as a function of interactions.
What are consensual domains?
Which aspect of the IST blueprint?
The therapist learns from the family that the parents do struggle to understand their teens and the teens share that they feel like they are treated like "babies."
What is feedback?
These are the 7 hypothesizing metaframeworks.
What are organization, development, culture, mind, biology, spirituality, and gender?
The four steps of Minuchin structural therapy
What is 1) open up the presenting complaint, 2) highlight problem-maintaining interactions, 3) structurally focused exploration of the past, 4) explore alternative ways of relating
A kid throws a tantrum → the family deems it unacceptable → parents say child will lose TV privileges if it doesn’t stop → child stops.
What is a positive feedback loop?
The family’s set of stories
What is a family's interpretive system?
The "web of human experience" asks two fundamental questions.
1) WHAT are the factors governing the system’s functioning? (relates to hypothesizing metaframeworks)
2) WHERE in the mult-level system are they located [person, dyad, family, community, public, civilization]?
A therapist used an imbalance technique (i.e., Structural Family Therapy) from the action planning metaframework to address the organizational constraint in a family case. Specifically, the therapist wanted to over align with the teenager to help the parents see their role in the family. However, one parent erupts and is frustrated with the therapist because they feel like the therapist doesn't understand them and should be "fixing" their teenager. The therapist then moves to the meaning/emotion framework and implements strategies to understand the parents perspective of therapy and their family. This is an example of THIS guideline.
Most human actions are only half of an interaction, and rigid complementary roles renders relationships inflexible.
What are the implications of Minuchin's principle of complementarity?