How to Coach Yourself and Others Coaching Families | Page 135
Assumptions of family systems
A Juvenile Justice Bulletin published by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention, summarized the main aspects of family systems therapy as follows:
A family is a system composed of interdependent and interrelated parts.
The behavior of one family member is only understood by examining the context (i.e., family) in
which it occurs.
Interventions must be implemented at the family level and must take into account the complex
relationships within the family system.
Includes all types of families :
During the 1950s and 1960s, family systems therapy began with a focus on the traditional family unit, but
has expanded to include therapy for all types of familial relationships, including gay and lesbian couples and
families, extended families related through divorce and re-marriage, and other family units that don’t
necessarily include a biological mother and father.
Whatever the composition of individual members, a group that calls itself a family, and lives like a family,
can be treated by family systems therapists.
In SFT, family rules are defined as an invisible set of functional demands that persistently organizes the
interaction of the family. Important rules for a therapist to study include coalitions, boundaries, and power
hierarchies between subsystems.
According to Minuchin, a family is functional or dysfunctional based upon its ability to adapt to various
stressors (extra-familial, idiosyncratic, developmental), which, in turn, rests upon the clarity and
appropriateness of its subsystem boundaries. Boundaries are characterized along a continuum from
enmeshment through semi-diffuse permeability to rigidity. Additionally, family subsystems are
characterized by a hierarchy of power, typically with the parental subsystem "on top" vis-à-vis the offspring
subsystem.
In healthy families, parent-children boundaries are both clear and semi-diffuse, allowing the parents to
interact together with some degree of authority in negotiating between themselves the methods and goals of
parenting. From the children’s side, the parents are not enmeshed with the children, allowing for the degree
of autonomous sibling and peer interactions that produce socialization, yet not so disengaged, rigid, or aloof,
ignoring childhood needs for support, nurturance, and guidance. Dysfunctional families exhibit mixed
subsystems (i.e., coalitions) and improper power hierarchies, as in the example of an older child being
brought in to the parental subsystem to replace a physically or emotionally absent spouse.
135