Family Emotional Systems Theory

Kayla and I presented on October 5th, our theory was family emotional systems theory. We focused on the movie Cheaper by the Dozen and in particular, how one of their sons, Mark, was affected by their functioning as a family. This family had twelve children, which made our case unique but also interesting to focus on. Our major concept from the family emotional system theory that we focused on was differentiation of self. We believed that this concept fit best with Marks situation in his family, but it also fit his family as a whole.
Kayla and I worked on this project multiple times and we spent a generous amount of time discovering the best familial situation to explore, as also took a decent amount of time finding the best concept from

Kayla and I believed Mark showed low self-differentiation but when discussing the topic with the class, they believed he was self-differentiated because he was independent. In addition, from the class critiques and discussions I learned that Mark might not have been the best representation of this concept because he is young and he has not developed enough to be highly differentiated. Furthermore, when the class assessed Mark and his family, they had many different ideas that differed from our assessment. For example, they believed him moving to a new school was precipitating and we thought it was a predisposing factor. After this presentation, I understand that we may have done our assessment different because the sections of the four P’s do intersect but also because we are all still learning. The class also brought different explanations for the different intervention methods and why they would be helpful. Kayla and I thought detriangulation would work best but also working with the individuals in the family would help as well, many members of the class stressed the idea of a genogram to intervene. Therefore, I learned about the family emotional systems theory as well as how to apply it to a scenario. The feedback and discussion from the class also helped m have a better understanding of the concept being