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CHAPTER 4 Interlocking Systems: The Individual, the Family, and…
CHAPTER 4
Interlocking Systems: The Individual, the Family, and the Community
Family Systems and Rules
75. Did your family ever move from one community into another with very different social, economic, and cultural characteristic? If so, identify and describe an enduring change in your family experience that resulted from the move.
76. All families have certain unspoken rules, such as: no discussion of sex; deny mother’s drinking; never raise your voice; if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. What were some of the rules in your family of origin?
77. What rules did your family of origin have about the position of children both at home and in the community? Did these rules have more to do with custom or tradition or were they based on characteristics of your specific family?
78. Think of an important rule within your family of origin that applied to you (for example, girls are to behave passively) Did this rule and the behaviors associated with it cause you any difficulties as you matured and started to form your own relationships (for example, a girl striving to behave passively frustrates a husband who would appreciate a more assertive woman)? Identify and describe any conflicts and analyze how (or if) you overcame the conflicts.
79. A “marital quid pro quo,” in which one partner in a relationship gives something to the other in exchange for something else, is present in all couple relationships. Can you recount some of the marital quid pro quo experiences your parents established? What about the rules in your current relationships?
80. According to Jackson, family members interact in repetitive behavioral sequences (the redundancy principle). Can you describe some significant, recurring patterns in your family of origin? Looking back, can you see how these recurring patterns limited your family in terms of the options it had at its disposal to address issues and problems? Identify and describe a recurring behavioral pattern and the limits it imposed on your family.
81. Scapegoats within a family go under many guises. Do you recognize any of these in your family?
___ idiot ___ mascot ___ wise guy ___ fool ___ clown ___ saint
___ malingerer ___ black sheep ___ villain
___ imposter ___ sad sack ___ erratic genius
Describe the behavior of one of the persons so labeled. What were the consequences for that individual later in life?
Maintaining Family Homeostasis
82. Homeostasis refers to the family’s self-regulating efforts to maintain stability and resist change. Identify and describe one instance from your family life when a return to stability and resisting change was a benefit and one instance when a successful return to stability maintained or introduced a serious problem.
83. Crises occur in all families. Some are resolved relatively quickly, others linger. Describe two such situations in your family – one in which homeostasis was restored quickly, another in which resolution was more difficult.
Feedback, Information and Control
84. How do you signal for attention with someone you care about? Verbally? Nonverbally? Is this tactic different or the same one you used as a child?
85. Recall your adolescence. How did positive and negative feedback experiences throughout your adolescence support or impede or your development?
86. Trace the feedback loops that occurred after a misunderstanding between two members of your family. Was the subsequent exchange of information used to attenuate or escalate the problem?
87. According to the text, family stability is actually rooted in change. Identify and describe a time when your family, called upon to cope with change, found it difficult to do so, creating instability and introducing a new set of problems.
Subsystems, Suprasystems, and Boundaries
88. Identify and describe the important subsystems of your family. Were they organized primarily by generation, gender, alliance against another family member or faction, or by a similar dimension?
89. Identify the different subsystems you belonged to within your family of origin. Describe how your needs, expectations, and behaviors with one subsystem conflicted with those of the other subsystems. How were you affected?
90. How permeable was the parental boundary when you were growing up? What effect did the relative openness or closeness of your family boundaries have on your development?
Open and Closed Systems
91. How would you assess the degree of openness of your family or origin? Were the boundaries open to neighbors? Distant relatives? Were your friends welcome or kept at a distance?
92. Sometimes a family will attempt to close a system when they perceive danger in the environment. Under what set of circumstances does your family close its borders? Does stress in the family prompt them to close down or reach out for help?
Families and Larger Systems
93. What macrosystems were significant in the life of your family (church, social agencies, health care programs, etc.)? Discuss.
94. Do you recall a time when the school intervened in your family system? Briefly describe the experience and evaluate the effects of the intervention.
95. Depict your family graphically by creating an ecomap. Include the systems with which your family had contact (schools, medical services, churches, community centers, etc.).
CHAPTER 5
Origins and Growth of Family Therapy
Studies of Schizophrenia and the Family
96. Is there someone in your family who has been diagnosed as being schizophrenic or otherwise seriously mentally ill? Describe the reaction to the illness by various family members, and how their reactions affect family functioning.
97. Were any of the following patterns recognizable in your family of origin? Circle one and discuss its consequences for the other family members.
Marital Skew Marital Schism Emotional Divorce
98. The term “emotional divorce,” coined by Gregory Bateson, describes the emotional distance or vacillations between overcloseness and overdistance that parents of schizophrenic children often feel as a result of this stressful mental health situation. What examples, if any, are you aware of in your family history?
99. Double-bind messages occur with varying frequencies in everyday life. Can you give an example of such a transaction from home, school, or work where you were double bound? What did you do? What was the accompanying affect? What would have happened had you tried to interrupt the sequence?
100. Analyze some problematic behavior of yours (e.g., nailbiting, smoking, overeating, swearing) from an intrapsychic and then a family relationship perspective. What has changed? Where is the locus of pathology?
101. Describe a family you know, saw on television, or read about in a book in which the members appear loving and understanding, but on closer observation are actually separate, distant, and unconnected. What happens to a child in such a family?
Individual vs. Group Therapy
102. What are your personal attitudes toward group or individual therapy? Which would be better for you? Why?
103. Consider dealing with a problem in your own life from the perspective of psychodrama. Imagine a scenario that reflects your problem. Who would be the “players”? How do you imagine you would feel each time you switched roles and became another character from your problem- scenario?
104. How would you feel about being observed through a one-way mirror as you interact with your family members? Would some members pose or try to be on their best behavior? Would others tend to dominate or control the session? What would your behavior be at first?
Self-Examination
105. If you were a family therapist, which would you be, a conductor or a reactor? Why?
106. How would you feel participating with your family in network therapy in which you would work with friends, neighbors, and employers? How likely is it that you and your family members would agree to this type of family therapy? What might keep you from network therapy? What do you image the benefits might be?
Professionalization, Multiculturalism, and a New Epistemology
107. How comfortable do you imagine you would be working as a medical family therapist having to work with medical personnel in treating families? Can you imagine any difficulties? Identify and describe them. How would it feel to work with patients with serious medical conditions? What support do you imagine you might need to work with these clients?
108. Recount a cherished “truth” about your family that you believed as a child until a family member, friend, teacher, or book author later challenged you to consider whether it was an illusion. What was the impact of the new “truth” on your thoughts, feelings and behaviors?
109. How do you feel about the notion advanced by postmodernists that there is no ultimate truth about anything? How comfortable are you with the constructivist or postmodern idea that every treatment is unique and that no matter what you learn in class, you can not apply learned theories and techniques in the same way from client to client? Identify any negative and positive reactions you have to this view.
110. Has a new person entering your family (a clergyman, a daughter-in law, a foster child, a visiting relative) helped its members re-evaluate their belief system? If so, how?
111. Reflecting teams sometimes sit in the consultation room while family therapy is taking place, and sometimes observe the therapy behind a one way mirror. How do you imagine you would feel as the therapist who is being observed by the reflecting team as you work with a family? Knowing yourself, what problems might arise from the knowledge that your work is being examined in this way? Do you feel any benefits? If so, what are they?
112. In your opinion, which is preferable in helping families change: changing their structure or their language and belief system? Defend your position.
113. The Core Competency movement is concerned to help practitioners achieve positive outcomes. How might you reconcile professional expectations for demonstrably positive outcomes with the field’s growing interest in postmodern assumptions that there are no ultimate truths? How would you imagine the positive outcomes could fairly be determined and assessed if there are no final truths?
114. Each of us is more than a member of a single group, but rather is influenced by membership in various groups (religious, racial, ethnic, political, gender identification). List, in order of importance, the groups with which you identify yourself.
