Family Therapy Executive Summary

The initial intake when conducting family therapy is key in gathering information to assist the family in the therapeutic process. The therapist must be skilled in active listening, observing communication patterns, and understanding nonverbal communication. As we learned in our reading, families come in with patterns of behaviors developed to manage family problems (Metcalf, 2011). Therefore, our job is to identify the concerns of all the family members. In the first 15 minute we should observe how the family interact by watching for communication patterns and matching behaviors. In Cinderella's story the therapist was able to observe how the father and stepmother interacted, while also noticing the anger the step-sisters had for cinderella's base on the way they sat in therapy. According to Metcalf (2011)

According to Metcalf (2011) cybernetic is a valuable tool for the therapist and assist in helping the family to achieve change. We also are capable of observing metacommunication during the session which teaches us how the system operates. Our book defines metacommunication as a covert message and often is not noticed because it is attached to the message. I believe the initial intake will also be influenced by the model we use. Therefore, if we were using Bowen’s theory we would look for triangles between the children, and the parents. The intake process is vital to the formation of counseling relationship, our initial session will be the foundation we construct our therapeutic relationship and the questions along with the information we are able to get from this initial session are vital to the family healing (Sutton, 2013). As indicated in the discussion question the family consisted of two teenaged children. I would look for ways to in cooperate them into the process. The initial session card game could be helpful in breaking the