How to Coach Yourself and Others Coaching Families | Page 240

they are in complete agreement. There exists a pretense of lack of conflict in the midst of much
difficulty with accompanying fear and/or incapacity to come close. Pseudomutuality may break up
via the paramour).
g. Compromise.
h. Scapegoating.
i. Healing, or an escape to health (healing is often seen in conjunction with scapegoating).
3. What are the pathogenic features used to deal with conflicts?
D. Affect, Mood and Family Processes.
1. What are the affects (feelings and emotions conveyed by means of facial expressions) and moods of
the families?
2. How do the families carry out affect and mood?
E. Family Systems and Subsystems.
1. Marital Relationships
a. The positives and negatives of the couples' sexual and emotional life.
b. The perception of each other and of each other's role (this is also known as delineation, or the
perception that a person has of his mate as seen through the behavior that both exchange and how
each fits into the frame of the other's future needs).
c. The stability of the marital relationships.
d. The ways in which each spouse is separate and autonomous from each other, her/his family of
origin, and others in the group.
e. The role of adaptation of each partner.
2. Parenting Relationships
a. How the parents cope with their children's social maturation outside the home and in the MFT
group.
b. Are there clear lines structurally between the parenting and marital relationships?
c. Is there functional parental authority?
d. At what developmental stages are the children?
3. Sibling Relationships
a. The way the siblings organize themselves to educate the parents.
b. The support they give each other in the process of each sibling's maturation or striving for
independence.
4. Extended Family Relationships
a. Have the parents successfully left home?
b. Are grandparents actively involved in the parenting of the children?
c. How involved are other extended family members?

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