Chapter 1: The History of Marriage and Family Therapy (Study Guide) – Flashcards

1) Extension of psychological treatment to full range of emotional problems, including work with families 2) Intro. of general systems theory (parts make up a whole) 3) Inv. of family's role in schizophrenia 4) Dev. of child guidance and marital counseling fields 5) Inc. interest in clinical techs. such as group therapy

-1st to believe treating children might be the best way to prevent development of mental problems -Helped ppl dev. a study of life for which they have concern for their fellow humans so that success would depend on concern for others rather than superiority (social interest)

-founded family counseling centers that extended Adler's approach -found real problem was not child's symptoms, but tension in the fam.

Marriage Council of Philadelphia, helped found the American Association for Marriage Counselors in 1941, renamed the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy in 1979

Either collaboratively (each partner seen by own TI) or concurrently (one TI worked with both spouses at different times). Don Jackson intro. the term conjoint therapy in 1959 to describe marital therapy in which the spouses were seen together.

adv. the idea that the whole of group was greater than the sum of it's individual members. Working in groups bigger changes than working with ind. (group therapy)

encounter groups, T-Groups. Participant observation to study small group dynamics. (elaborated on later with one-way mirrors, etc.)

Australian psychiatrist that created psychodrama (under group therapy)

The distinction of content vs. process

-Developed General Systems Theory (GST) in 1940's -parts of the system are interrelated and that the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts -GST allows for multiple valid analyses of problems

-Thought of as the father of family therapy, among the first to work with whole families -1958, he wrote The Psychodynamics of Family Life ad predicted that working with and studying the whole family would provide psychiatry with a deeper understanding of the influence of biological and interpersonal influences on personal development -dysfunctional families were rigid in nature and unable to adapt to changing situations. He saw the role of the therapist as a catalyst to force families to face difficult issues.

-Multiple family therapy groups and called his approach family group therapy -Felt that if therapist could stimulate open discussions, the family could solve it's own problems. -Believed that groups go through stages just like family. child centered, parent centered, family centered. TI's role is facilitator encouraging participating of all members and improving family communication

Bateson (and his wife Meade), Weakland, Fry, Jackson, Haley, M. Erikson, and Satir

The study of how systems are controlled and how feedback loops work

-Bateson lead the paper, Haley, Weakland, and Jackson were involved. -Suggested that the symptoms of schizophrenia were to keep the family in equilibrium. Schizophrenic symptoms stemmed from a double bind (contradictory commands with no escape).

-Developed a brief therapy in which he used directives (tasks) to get families to change their behaviors. -Directives were often therapeutic paradoxes, maneuvers designed to get patients to take a stand in relationship to the therapist, instead of obfuscating their actions in psychiatric denial. -later bridged strategic and structural models -he was direct and confrontation -action is more important than understanding

-Founder of structural model -posits hypothetical structures which both influence how families operate and make them resistant to change -family boundaries -two family types- enmeshed and diffused

Added the dimension of feelings or affect to her work; warmth/acceptance

-Believed that ppl could make rapid and dramatic changes if they could be induced to try something new, a welcome contrast from analysis and mechanistic view of cybernetics -many of the paradoxical techs. came directly from his ability to maneuver the situation to use people's resistance to his advantage -His therapy was don't to- not with-families

-influential article: Notes on the Development of Treatment of Schizophrenia by Psychiatric Psychotherapy -Originated the now discredited term schizophrenogenic mother

-development of schizophrenia: the more destructive influence was that of the father -five patterns of pathological fathering -two specific deficiencies in the marital relationship- marital schism and marital skew- that contributed to the development of dysfunction in children

-Focused primarily on how pathological thinking is transmitted in families -did research at NIMH -pseudomutuality -pseudohostility -rubber fence boundary -families are seemingly yielding, but in fact nearly impenetrable to info. from the outside. The boundaries also bind them together in their resistance to separation. At the same time, the rules governing such boundaries are in constant flux.

-Studied schizophrenic patients at their families -emotional divorce -He was interested in the interrelated processes by which a sense of identity is transferred across generations and by which individuals separate from their families. He concluded that schizophrenia took 3 generations to develop. -Differentiation of self, which refers to autonomy from one's family, differentiate between one's thoughts and feelings. -undifferentiated ego mass -triangulation -began seeing couples in groups -he believed that the most important quality of successful therapy was the differentiation of the therapist

-Symbolic-experiential family therapy -Whittaker's work became more experiential and provocative in the 60's with his claim that he had no model. He was one of the first to encourage the use of co-therapists, which enabled him to access and use his own craziness as a therapist.

-psychoanalytically trained -frequent use of co-therapy. -Dad was a judge, and this caused concepts of justice and fairness to influence his modality, contextual therapy. -Important contributions: multigenerational ethical accountability and relational ethics -Internal moral accounting: ledger of accountability and ledger of indebtedness -the TI must exemplify ethical accountability. Core of treatment is concept of multidirectional partiality.

developed an integrative model of family therapy

Founded Milan Systemic Therapy

-Founded neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) -studies the hypnotic communication patterns of M. Erikson and Satir. -NLP practitioners strive to understand the hidden effects of language, the meaning of non-verbal behavior, and the utilization of communication and trance to create change.

-Primary techs associated with the early Milan model were rituals and positive connotations. Milan Group split in the early 80's -Palazzoli and Prata: stategic model -Boscolo and Cecchin: collaborative

Goldner, Penn, Walters, Silverstein

-postmodernists advocate for neutrality while feminists stress the need to abandon neutrality and counteract entrenched gender-based power structures. -post-modernists believe in universal experience. feminists believe that gender is a fundamental, irreducible category of human experience.

founded narrative therapy

-Solution-Focused. -solutions develop out of amplifying a pattern or behavior that already works well. -They strongly assert a reality is created through language, and they use clts or fam's meaning system rather than imposing a theory-driven definition of normal onto a client system.

-Collaborative language systems -they do not diagnose, give directions, or make hypotheses. instead, they convey an attitude of not knowing, work with clients to co create stories in which the problem solver discovers new possibilities until the problem dissolves.

Ackerman's phrase for provoking people to open up and say what's really on their mind. Ackerman consistently urged therapists to become emotionally engaged with families and to use confrontation to transform dormant conflicts into open discussion.

a dysfunctional marriage in which each partner is centered on him/herself, undermines the other, and makes frequent threats of divorce

From Lidz, a dysfunctional marriage in which one partner is dominant and the other submissive. The couple presents the situation as "normal," leading to a distortion of reality by family members in order to maintain the marriage.

Wynne's term to describe the use of chronic conflict to create a somewhat superficial alienation of family members, thereby masking an individual member's need for intimacy and affection.

From Wynne, a collusive family maneuver for the purpose of maintaining homeostasis, in which family members present a falsely harmonious picture, masking dysfunction.

a mechanism for change in which a message or request is given and the recipient's new behavior is rewarded. Distinguished from a double bind in which the nature of the message insures that no response will be rewarded. A double bind is a simple bind that is continually imposed and then continually lifted.

From Hoffman, a mild or severe threat to the continuity of the relationship and the system, a possible precondition to morphogenesis.

The Saturated Family.

Social worker moved into family therapy. pushed the value of considering the family cycle in therapy. She also increased the recognition of factors like the historical documentation of family problems, including extended family. Strong voice on women's issues and worked to change the rigid roles for women.

Focused on the relationships of an individual as the key to understanding an individual's mental illness. Developed interactional theory and conjoint family therapy. Interactional theory emphasizes a person's present interactions or relationships over biological, chemical, genetic, or historic causes. Conjoint family therapy addresses the joint therapy of two individuals or a group who are interconnected. This view would emphasize therapy for a family or couple as a single effort, not an individual effort. His approach to therapy was to problem solve from a practical angle while paying especially close attention to how family members communicated. Jackson also offered the idea of family rules, a belief that families operate under a set of unspoken and unwritten rules of which they may be unaware. The therapist can help the dysfunctional family take a closer look at these rules and change them as needed.

psychoanalysis, but focus on observations that could be verified. Can understand mental state by analyzing relationships.