Strategic Family Systems – Jay Haley – Flashcards

Symptoms serve a function in the homeostasis of the family system. Symptoms represent a power struggle in the relationship. One cannot not communicate and all communications are multilayered. Difficulties occur when stressors converge and overwhelm the family's coping mechanisms. Families fight to maintain homeostasis of a system so therapist must trick families into changing.

Consistent with the concept of circular casualty, questions are asked that frame the presenting problem in relational terms. For example, a family comes to treatment because the child doesn't do his homework. Rather than question the child about "his problem", the therapist asks, "when you don't do your homework, who notices? or "when Mom is noticing you not doing your homework, how does she respond?" or "What happens with mom and dad when you don't do your homework?" Circular questioning also involves other members in a discussion about their ideas and reactions to the problem and how they are affected by the problem.

Complementary relationships are those in which the members are different in ways that fit together, if one is logical, thee other is emotional; if one tends toward emotional distance, the other will tend toward emotional closeness; in one is weak, the other is strong.

Change occurs not as a result of insight or awareness, but by the process of carrying out thee therapist's directives. Directives can be "straight" or compliance-based, giving the family a simple assignment to carry out; or indirect or defiance-based, that is, paradoxical.

Therapy focuses on communication interactions that perpetuate problems. G

Communication defines the nature of the relationship between family members, and all relationships are characterized by a struggle for power to determine who defines the relationship. Communication takes to levels: The surface or content level which is the plain meaning of the words that are spoken. Ant the meta-communication level in which behavior that qualifies, comments upon, or contradicts the content (verbal) level. Metacommunication includes such things as tone of voice, speech pace and volume, to whom the words are spoken, physical gestures, and eye contact.

Strategic and communications therapist limit their therapeutic task to eliminating problems presented to them, without taking a position about how families should behave or should be structured. When the presenting problem is resolved, therapy has been successfully completed.

Symptoms are used to gain power when these i a perception that there is no other way for needs to be met. As a result, the therapist is less interested in the internal experience of individuals and will instead focus on the family's communication patterns.

Positive connotations reframe the symptomatic behavior so that its purpose is understood as a communication. When symptoms are seen as a striving by the symptomatic person to meet his or her needs (positive connotation) in the only way he or she is able, it exposes the family's rules and how in this instance, those rules are not serving the needs of the system

Short term

Establish that the therapist is in charge and that therapeutic directives must be carried out if the family is to benefit. Use of circular questioning to discover what the problem is and what the family has done to try to resolve it. Reframe the presenting problem in a way that it can be resolved. Reframe the identified patients symptoms as systemic; provide positive connotation for the symptoms.

Therapy is concluded when the presenting problem is resolved.

Interventions shift the family organization so the presenting problems no longer serve a function.

Goals are NOT collaborative; set by therapist to manipulate change.

Resolution of the presenting problem Produce second order change, change the homeostasis of the family systems. Help the family adapt to the life-cycle

By the family carrying out the therapist's directives

Teach communication rules: always speak in first person singular, acknowledge opinion and value judgments, speak to and not about one another. Make explicit the implicit rules. Manipulate interactions through directives and paradoxical directives. Comment on family members attempts to control one another and the therapist. Assign tasks: have the wife say "no" to her husband about one minor issue once during the week.

A punishment, requiring a man who has temper tantrums to get up at 2 am when he loses his temper and wash the floor or scrub the toilet.

Ex. tell a depressed teen to continue to be depressed so his competitive bother can feel superior.

Ex. Telling a young couple whose parents do everything for them to act helpless and dependent.

Ex. Tell an angry teen his gather's punishment is the only way the fathers know how to show love.

Ex. take a more extreme view of the problem than the family has

Resulting from systemic problem of discrepant communication. Symptoms are a communication and like all communication, symptoms are a bid for power and control. Symptoms are maintained through family interactions (information feedback loops).

Therapist is in charge of the family; change occurs by carrying out the therapist's directives.

Present and future. The focus is not on what causes problems, but what maintains them.

Entire family preferred

Partner strengths and weaknesses fit or mesh well in carrying out marital and family tasks; they are problematic when the disparities become extreme and unbalanced.

Second order change is a change of the system so that the symptom no longer serves a purpose. Family system therapy is interested in eliminating the symptom by changing the system, believing that when that happens, the symptom will disappear.

Based on equality and similarity between partners. Symmetrical relationships can be problematic if they become competitive, creating "escalating symmetry."

Once the presenting problem is resolved, therapy is over.