How to Coach Yourself and Others Coaching Families | Page 297
E. Development of behavior disorders
1. Where non - psychoanalytic family therapist look at problems in interactions between people while
psychoanalytic therapists look at problems in the actual people in the
family
2. Symptoms come from attempting to cope with unconscious conflicts and the Anxiety that signals the
emergence of repressed impulses"
3. Some problems can occur with parents not accepting children’s separation
4. Kohut - mirroring and idealization - when these needs aren’t met from parents, go on to be showy and
seek admiration
5. Fixation and regression in families - after marriage, people can go back to behaviors seen when they
were younger
6. Nnagy - symptoms occur when trust breaks down in relationships - individuals feel the effects
7. Kernberg - blurred boundaries occur when connections are formed with family members
F. Goals of therapy
1. " . . . Free family members of unconscious restrictions so that they’ll be able to interact with one
another as whole, healthy persons on the basis of current realities rather than Unconscious images of the
past."
2. Therapy focuses on supporting defenses and helping communication instead of analysis of defenses
and finding repressed needs and impulses
G. Conditions for behavior change
1. Insight is necessary - in family therapy expand that insight knowing that psychological life goes
beyond conscious experiences. Want family members to understand and accept repressed parts of
personalities. Need to work through those things.
2. Important for the therapist to establish a sense of security
H. Techniques
1. Four basic techniques - listening, empathy, interpretation, and keep analytic neutrality
2. Don’t focus on reassuring or advise or confronting, silence is important. If they do intervene it’s to
provide empathic understanding to help member of the family open up. Analysts also clarify things that
appear to be hidden or need clarification
3. Mostly used with couples.
4. Therapists focus on the feelings associated with problems, not the causality to begin questioning
about what’s at the root of the problem
5. Explore in four areas with couples: internal experience, history of the experience, how partner can
trigger the experience, and how the context of session and therapist’s input might contribute to the
situation
6. "Family dynamics are more than the additive sum of individual dynamics" (p. 228)
7. Therapist has to have a hypothesis
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