How to Coach Yourself and Others Coaching Families | Page 192
Structure of Family Therapy
Outline by Patty Salehpur
A. Assumptions
1. Family are individuals who effect each other in powerful but unpredicatable ways
2. The consistent repetitive organized and predictable patterns of family behavior are important
3. The emotional boundaries and coalitions are important
B. Salvador Minuchin
1. Always concerned with social issues
2. Developed a theory of family structure and guidelines to organize therapeutic techniques
3. 1970 headed Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic where family therapists have been trained in
structural family therapy ever since
4. Born in Argentina , served in the Israel army as a physician, in the USA trained in child
psychiatry and psychoanalysis with Nathan Ackerman, worked in Israel with displaced children,
also worked in the USA with Don Jackson with middle class families.
5. Fist generation of family structural therapists: Braulio Montalvo, Jay Haley, Bernie Rosman,
Harry Aponte, Carter Umbarger, Marianne Fishman, Cloe Madanes, and Stephen Greenstein.
C. Theoretical formulations - three essential constructs
1. Structure — the organized pattern in which family members interact, predictable sequences of
family interaction, patterns of interaction. Structure involves a series of covert rules. There are
universal and idiosyncratic constraints. Families may not be able to tell you the family structure, but
they will show it to you in their interactions.
2. Subsystems — Families are differentiated into subsystems of members who join together to
perform various functions. Each person is a member of one or more subsystems in the family. Some
groupings are obvious and based on such factors as generation, gender, age or common interests.
Other coalitions may be subtle. Every member may play many roles in various subgroups.
3. Boundaries are invisible barriers that regulate the amount and nature of contact with members.
They range from rigid to diffuse, clear to unclear, disengaged to enmeshed
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