facilitators summary

THE SUMMARY OF OUR GROUP

THE REFERRAL PROCESS

Referral is the process by which a client enters family
therapy. The context of referral is an interactional process in which,
generally, someone decides that a problem exists and someone initiates the idea
that therapy is a possible resource and should be sought. Important questions
to ask are:

Who first thought there was a problem?

Whose idea was it for you to seek therapy?

When you began to think about seeking help, who or what gave
you the thought that therapy might help?

       It is important to explore and understand the step-by step
sequences of interaction that led the client to schedule an appointment or
inquire by phone. At the very least, the family therapist obtains information
about who has taken the initiative.

      The family therapist’s goal is to clarify the relationship
between the family and the parties who have defined the problem.

THE JOINING PROCESS

         First used by Minuchin (1974) as he developed structural family therapy, joining is
probably the most universal—or the most borrowed—of family therapy terms. Joining a
family is more an attitude than a technique, and it is the umbrella under which
all therapeutic transactions occur. Joining is letting the family know that the
therapist understands them and is working with and for them. Only under this
protector can the family have the security to explore alternatives, try the
unusual, and change. Joining is the glue that holds the therapeutic system
together.

The following exemplify how each school of thought in family therapy can also contribute to
the therapist’s ability to join with family members:
            Theories regarding the importance of ethnicity.

·        Theories
regarding development

·        Intergenerational
theories

·        Structural
and strategic theories

·        Contextual
theory

·        Ericksonian
and social construction

THE THERAPEUTIC CONTRACT

Ø  Levels of communication

Ø  Intentions
Deciding whom to include in sessions is often difficult for the beginning family therapist. While some pioneers were noted for their insistence on seeing the entire family, others were noted for
seeing individuals. With such apparent diversity, the following questions may
helpful to the reader:

v  Who is defining the problem?

v  Is the client living with significant
others in the household or dependent on others in significant ways?

v  Does the client explicitly name others
as a legal, psychological, financial, or relational part of the presenting
problem?

v  Has the person definitely decided on a
divorce?

v  Are the significant others who appear
to have ongoing knowledge of the day-to-day occurrence of the problem?

v  If others were involved in sessions,
would the person seeking help become more or less alienated in the process?

Ø  Goals

Although similar to expectations, goals concern the actual problem that becomes defined and mutually understood as the focus of the therapeutic process. In early years of therapy, setting
goals was a continual struggle. Clients came in asking for help with a child’s behavior or their own predefined mental illness, but family therapists, an anxious to convert their client-families to systemic thinking, were quick to persuade families to think of their child’s behavior as a family problem or their mental illness as a marital problem.

DATA GATHERING

Content versus Process

The Milan team’s model balances attention to content and process. Their approach is based
on the Batesonian concept that information regarding or comparisons within the
family can bring about change in family life. Some questions were designed as
interventions to bring forth information (content) regarding the systematic functioning
(process) of family members that was a new or different from the family’s
normal way of viewing the problem.

Past, Present, Future
    
 Among the many decisions as a family therapist must take in conducting a session is whether to focus on the past, present, or future. Fleuridas, Nelson, and Rosenthal (1986) suggest that within each of these categories the therapist may examine “(a) differences or changes within the family between relationships, between beliefs or behaviors of family members, or between their family and
other families; (b) agreements or disagreements between members; and (c) explanations
of why relationships and interactions proceed as they do and the intended or perceived
meanings of certain behaviors”

BY: LOUBELLE JACINTO 

       HAZEL ANN LACERNA