How to Coach Yourself and Others Coaching Families | Page 141

Reaction to change:
Healthy families
Healthy families accommodate to changed circumstances
Both enmeshed and disengaged families express fear of change through conflict avoidance.
- Disengaged families accomplish this by avoiding contact
- Enmeshed families squabble, or deny their personal differences.
One special case where structural change is inherently part of family difficulty is in the formation of
“blended families”. Remarriage of divorcee or widower parents is both the introduction of an external
stressor and the restructuring of the family.
Example: rigid boundary forming between stepparent and biological parent/child (enmeshed) subsystem
Disengaged families
Disengaged families increase the rigidity of structures that are no longer functional
In disengaged families, preoccupation with other matters rather than current, pressing needs is
commonplace - Lack of awareness due to preoccupation
Enmeshed families
In enmeshed families, boundaries are diffuse and members become overly dependent on one
another
Example – intrusive parents hindering the development of their own children
Excessive involvement in minor conflicts, not allowing their young to solve their own problems.
It is difficult to categorize a subsystem as either disengaged or enmeshed, as the two concepts can be
reciprocal. One person in a relationship can be disengaged and the other enmeshed, as can happen in a
spousal subsystem.
“enmeshed mother/disengaged father syndrome,” a concept facing criticism
As with boundaries, hierarchies can be either be too rigid or too weak
Lack of control or guidance, excessive power struggles and other deficits in family stability are possible
Salvador Minuchin’s Style
Salvador Minuchin’s Structural Family Therapy is a directive therapy, change-oriented through changing
the family structure (transaction-governing rules of a family). A symptom services and is rooted in
dysfunctional transactions, structure (boundaries).
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Salvador Minuchin’s style was to get the family to talk briefly until he identified a central theme of
concern and the leading and supporting roles in the theme.
Next he examined boundaries or family rules that define the participants, the areas of responsibility,
the decision making and privacy rules.
The idea is to change the immediate context of the family situation and thereby change the family
members’ positions.
His approach was both active and directive. He would shift the family focus from the identified
client to the therapist to allow the identified client to rejoin the family.

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