A genogram analysis indicates that Christy Darty Melton was born March 31, 1977 to Wayne Darty and Gwen West. The parents married their senior year in 1976, and Christy was born in 1977. Parent’s social environment played a significant role in their marriage, as well as the child. The paternal third generation family structure included Wayne’s parents Kermit and Janie, as well as three siblings Ray, Larry, and Debra. After marrying Wayne and Gwen lived within the same household of his parents. Physical, emotional, and psychological difficulties identified within the paternal line included infidelity and alcoholism. Family violence and substance abuse (alcohol) appear to be especially salient behavioral characteristics, in that of Kermit. For example, (1) Kermit Darty physically, psychologically, and emotionally …show more content…
Emotional and psychological difficulties within the maternal line included insufficient interaction, depression, and family conflict. For example, (1) Gwen abandoned her parental rights and the grandparents assumed parenting roles. (2) Gwen’s siblings showed disengagement from the family, as another child entered the household. (3) Betty and Bill manifested severe depression and stress adjusting to the role as primary caregivers. Structural family therapy is an approach to understanding the nature of the family, the presenting problem, and the process of change. Significant concepts include family structure, family subsystems, and boundaries (Bitter, 2014). Each subsystem has a suitable duty, when one subsystem imposes with another this results in structural complications. Evidence suggest that structural family therapist is most effective when they make active efforts to understand family members’ motives for acting as they do and then challenging them to change their role in dysfunctional structures (Hammond and Nichols,
Experiential Family Therapy is a therapy that encourages patients to address subconscious issues through actions, and role playing. It is a treatment that is used for a group of people in order to determine the source of problem in the family (Gurman and Kniskern, 2014). Experiential Family Therapy has its strengths and weaknesses. One of the strengths of this therapy is that, it focuses on the present and patients are able to express their emotions on what is happening to them presently. The client will have time to share everything about his/her life experiences one on one without any fears. As a result, it helps the client in the healing process because, he/she is able to express their feelings freely and come out of the problem. Therefore, in this type of therapy, the clients are deeply involved in solving their issues. It helps clients to scrutinize their individual connections and to initiate a self-discovery through therapy, on how their relationships influence their current behaviors (Gurman and Kniskern, 2014). By examining their personal relationships through experiential family therapy, family members are able to
Szapocznik, J., Schwartz, S. J., Muir, J. A., & Brown, C. H. (2012). Brief strategic family therapy. Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice, 1(2), 134–145.
The family has influence on how the dependent which in this case is the adolescent behaves, thinks, feels, etc. The effectiveness of the therapy relies on the effort of the family to work together. Usually, the family comes into therapy blaming the dependent for his or her actions and fail to realize that the home environment is contributing to it. This can lead to the dependent feeling worthless and creating more problems in the family. Family therapy changes the family dynamic by creating rules and boundaries in the house. The therapist creates interventions for the family during therapy to work on these issues (Szapocznik,
Napier provides a crucial exploration of the therapy of a family struggling with battles for the structure of their family and battles to define and grow their relationships with one another. Napier and Whitaker seamlessly and purposely work with each family member, educating and
Fred, Wilma, and Rose present an interesting perspective when looking at their family through a Structural Family Systems Theory. When trying to work with the family a social worker will utilize Functional Family Therapy in order to understand their structure and maybe ameliorate some of the family’s problems. Using Rose and her family as the clients it will be able explain what interventions we can use when we learn the constructs of the theory.
Taylor and Lou Ann demonstrate a symbiotic relationship between the roles and characteristics in a family. Edna Poppy and Virgie Mae replaces the missing physical and emotional traits in a stable household. The examples tie into the fact that not all families in this book match “the norms” and expectations, but are equally valued, blood or
Structural Family Therapy offers a framework that provides order and meaning within the family connections (Nichols, 2013). Divorce for a family is considered a significant transition for all parties involved. When counseling a family going through divorce the structural family therapist’s job is to build an alliance with the family and obtain information about the structure. The structure of the family consists of the roles, interactions, organization, and hierarchy. Family therapy yields the belief that changing the organization of the family leads to change in the individual members. The structural family therapist often will try to become part of the family to gain a perspective of their issues as whole so not to place the focus on one individual. Joining is an empathetic approach in helping families explain and break down their individual stories without uncomfortable challenge or unnecessary confrontation (Nichols, 2013). It is important to note that family dysfunction that often leads to divorce is not attributed to one individual, but the entire family system. In structural family therapy, part of dealing with the issue of divorce in the family is to focus on the interactions between all the family members both positive and negative. Through these interactions the therapist can discover where the conflicts arise, which will in turn help the therapist understand how these negative interaction affect the family. Family therapy in these cases allows for repair of long-standing interactional patterns in which divorce is just one of a series of ongoing transactions that are disruptive to the child’s development (Kaplan, 1977, p.75). The structural family therapist often has the family play out these family interactions via enactments so that he can get a firsthand look at maladaptive patterns, roles, and
Families.” University of Delaware – Human Development and Family Studies. N.p., 2008. 1-36. Web. 13 Dec. 2013.
Duty, G. (2010, December 10). Family Systems Therapy. Lecture presented at Principles of Counseling Class Notes, Bethany.
Structural Family therapy focus is to reform the family so that there are limits between parents and progenies, while the parents are reassuring of each other and their children. In achieving this the therapist has observed firsthand
The thought of completing a genogram on my family was interesting because the majority of my family lives in Liberia. I have an aunt that lives here but we have an estranged relationship and we don’t communicate. The person I could have told me everything about my paternal family was my grandmother. However, my grandmother passed away in 2000 from high blood pressure. My grandparents had six children and the youngest daughter became my source for the information I needed. Doing this genogram has been very difficult for me because I learned that maternal grandparents are deceased and my aunts and uncle are also deceased. My mother is the only living family member that I know of. I never got the opportunity to have a relationship with my mother’s side of the family.
Nichols, M. P. (2010). Family therapy concepts and methods (9 ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Structured Family Therapy (SFT) refers the mere undesignated rules that structure how a family interacts with one another (Walsh, 2010). The family unit is composed of systems or parts, and the parts must be unified to compile a whole unit to create homeostasis (Broderick, 1993). SFT therapy is warranted when dysfunction enters the family unit, and creates a deficiency of adaption by the individual which disrupts the family structure (Boyle, 2000). The family structure is composed of major components such as: subsystems, executive authority, boundaries, rules, roles, alliances, triangles, flexibility, and communication (Walsh,
After completing my family genogram, I was able to notice the history of a couple of patterns of fusion in particular. One of the relational patterns that stood out was emotional abuse which for the sake of this assignment I have only traced it back three generations, starting with my paternal grandfather Marciano, who endured the aftermath of the WWII and who conceived out of wedlock (COW) from Spanish and Mestizo parents and who married a woman Fidelina, of Chinese and Indian origin, born in El Salvador like him. Based on anecdotal accounts, Marciano was particularly emotionally abusive towards Rosa, my mother, who is also the first born of the couple and COW. Marciano had very high standards of beauty and intellect, which often triggered name calling, insults, and other forms of humiliation aimed towards my mother, causing her to feel belittled and resent his treatment towards her.
In our society families are the foundation of all human relationships. Therefore learning to maintain and develop healthy families are the goals of family therapist. Counselors can use the Structural Family Therapy approach in counseling hurting families. The pioneer of structural family therapy is Salvador Minuchin (Hammond & Nichols, 2014).