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CHAPTER 10 The Structural Model Structural Family Theory 197….
CHAPTER 10 The Structural Model
Structural Family Theory
197. Structuralists contend that a change in the family organization must occur before a symptom in a family member can be relieved. Has such a situation occurred in your family? Who manifested what symptom and what family restructuring helped alleviate the problem?
198. Each family system is made up of a number of interdependent subsystems. Were the key sub-groupings in your family according to age, sex, outlook, or common interest? Explain.
199. Describe the tasks that your family assigned to each of the independent subsystems. How well or poorly do these assignments work in your family? Explain.
200. Minuchin believed that families go through their life cycles seeking to maintain a delicate balance between stability and change. How open to change is your family? Identify the benefits and liabilities that characterize the way your family remains stable or makes change.
201. Are there any conflicts between subsystems in your family that are particularly damaging or destructive to overall family functioning (e.g., older people dismiss what younger people have to say; females believe men are insensitive)? Identity and explain the conflict.
202. Under stress, does your family become more enmeshed or more disengaged? Describe and explain the behavioral consequences for each member of your family and for the family as a whole.
203. Structuralists contend that all well-functioning families should be organized in a hierarchical manner, with the parents exercising more power than the children, the older children given more responsibilities than their younger siblings. How was you’re your family of origin organized? What were the consequences of the power arrangements when you were growing up?
204. Some feminists take exception to Minuchin’s insistence that a well functioning family requires hierarchies, arguing that this view runs the risk of maintaining sexual stereotypes. How was your family organized? Was there a rigid or flexible organization? Did it promote sexual stereotyping? What were the consequences of any sexual stereotyping?
205. Do you consider the boundaries in your family of origin to have been clearly defined, rigid and inflexible, or diffuse? What were the consequences on family transaction patterns as a result of such boundaries?
206. The sibling subsystem offers the first experience of being part of a peer group and learning to support, cooperate, and protect (along with compete, fight with, and negotiate differences). How well or poorly did you and your siblings help each other to develop skills in interacting with later peers? If you are an only child, how do you imagine the absence of siblings affected your ability to successfully interact with peers?
Structural Family Therapy
207. Structuralists use family mapping to depict a family’s structure at a cross-section of time. Using Minuchin’s symbols described in the text, draw a map of your family at a particular critical time in its existence, paying special attention to the clarity of boundaries, to coalitions, and to ways of dealing with conflict. 208. Structuralist therapists offer the family leadership, direction, and encouragement to examine and discard rigid structures that are no longer functional and to make adaptive changes in structure as family circumstances and family developmental stages change. Identify a rigid aspect of your family functioning. Knowing your family as you do, explain how that rigidity contributes to family dysfunction. Articulate goals for change. Imagine on behalf of your family what a more functional structure would look like, and indicate the kind of encouragement you feel your family would likely respond to in trying to make positive change.
209. Reframing the meaning of certain behavior can provide a fresh perspective and make that behavior more understandable and acceptable. Reframe the following:
a. Mother pokes into my private matters too much.
b. Father frightens the family when he drinks too much.
c. Sister is selfish and only thinks of herself.
d. Brother gets away with murder because he’s the youngest child.
210. How does the reframing in the previous question change your feelings about the troublesome behavior?
211. Structuralist therapists often induce a crisis by introducing anxiety into the family system. They actively encourage family members to interact with each other, often through enactments. The therapist seeks to maintain a therapeutic experience of intense affect and pressure. How compatible are these structuralist goals?
