How to Coach Yourself and Others Coaching Families

Salvador Minuchin’s Structural Family Therapy From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia And http://www.allpsychologycareers.com/topics/family-systems-therapy.html AllPsychologyCareers.com - © 2008-2013 AllPsychologyCareers.com. All Rights Reserved. This site is for informational purposes and is not a substitute for professional help. Structural Family Therapy (SFT) is a method of psychotherapy developed by Salvador Minuchin which addresses problems in functioning within a family. Structural Family Therapists strive to enter, or "join", the family system in therapy in order to understand the invisible rules which govern its functioning, map the relationships between family members or between subsets of the family, and ultimately disrupt dysfunctional relationships within the family, causing it to stabilize into healthier patterns. Minuchin contends that pathology rests not in the individual, but within the family system. SFT utilizes, not only a unique systems terminology, but also a means of depicting key family parameters diagrammatically. Its focus is on the structure of the family, including its various substructures. In this regard, Minuchin is a follower of systems and communication theory, since his structures are defined by transactions among interrelated systems within the family. He subscribes to the systems notions of wholeness and equifinality, both of which are critical to his notion of change. An essential trait of SFT is that the therapist actually enters, or "joins", with the family system as a catalyst for positive change. Joining with a family is a goal of the therapist early on in his or her therapeutic relationship with the family. Contents     1 Family Rules 2 Therapeutic Goals and Techniques 3 See also 4 References Family Rules Consider the human body’s complexity and how a change in one physiological component alters and impacts so many other parts. The interrelation and interdependence of parts are integrally related so that the body’s ability to function at all depends on an intricate web of connectedness. Now consider a family, perhaps a mother, father, and child (or children), and think of them as one human body – an organism, or a whole. One component of the family, or one individual, simply cannot be separated or understood in isolation. One individual affects all others; everyone’s deeply embedded emotional and behavioral processes seamlessly wired together. Family systems professionals and therapists describe the family as a complex and interconnected system. Maladaptive behaviors are connected, and therefore likely to affect and create “dis-ease” in other areas – if not a

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