Contextual Family Therapy – Flashcards

Developed the Contextual approach to family therapy and individual psychotherapy. It is a comprehensive model which integrates individual psychological, interpersonal, existential, systemic, and intergenerational dimensions of individual and family life and development. Introduced ethical responsibility and accountability to therapy.Founded Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute

A theory and therapeutic model developed by Boszormenyi-Nagy based on the ethical dimension of family relationships. The family maintains invisible, intergenerational loyalties, which members hold in their personal ledgers. Problems in relationships are thought to result either from an attempt to maintain or change the balance sheet of what members owe to one another. Developed by Nagy, based on the ethical dimension of family relationships. Problems originate either from an attempt to maintain or change the balance sheet of what members owe to one another

amount of merit a person has based on trustworthiness

Values and ethics are transmitted across generations Dimensions: (All are intertwined and drive people's behaviors and relationships) o Facts o Psychological o Relational o Ethical Trustworthiness of a relationship (relational ethics): when relationships are not trustworthy, debts and entitlements that must be paid back pile up; unbalanced ledger gets balanced in ways that are destructive to individuals and relationships and posterity (e.g., revolving slate, destructive entitlement)

A collective grouping of accounts.

We behave in ways that we have been programmed to behave

From Nagy's contextual family therapy, the development of symptomatic behaviors in the pursuit of self-justifying and harmful means to satisfy the perception of what is due as a result of deficient caring and responsibility in parenting. For example, a child who was forced into the role of "adult" by his/her parents may feel entitled to engage in irresponsible, adolescent behavior as an adult, The right that a person feels they have to act in destructive ways toward themselves or others as a result of a real or perceived injustice he has experienced

The generational perpetuation of destructive entitlement where one generation damages the next innocent generation. The process is reinforced by earned destructive entitlement and is the chief factor in familly and marital dysfunction.

having conideration for future or succeeding generations

Cognitive: Awareness of legacies, debts and entitlements Behavioral: Very action oriented— actions must change