Family Therapy Structures and Steps

Structural Family Therapy Step 1:

Presenting Problem: Symptom as a reflection of family structure; how can the problem be reframed?

Structural Family Therapy Step 2:

Family Structure: Subsystems, Boundaries, Coalitions/Alignments

Structural Family Therapy Step 3:

Family Developmental Stage/Hierarchy: Life cycle stage, hierarchy

Structural Family Therapy Step 4:

Treatment Goals: Restructuring the family, empowering the parental subsystem, strengthening boundaries

Structural Family Therapy Step 5:

Therapist Role/Interventions: Enactments, joining, reframing, boundary making, unbalancing, additional interventions

Intergenerational Family Therapy Step 1:

Presenting Problem: Member perspectives, relational patterns, family history analysis

Intergenerational Family Therapy Step 2:

Key Emotional Components: Emotional triangles, emotional cutoff, nuclear family emotional system (marital conflict, emotional distance, dysfunction in child or spouse), family projection process, multigenerational transmission process, societal emotional process

Intergenerational Family Therapy Step 3:

Differentiation: Differentiation of self, sibling position

Intergenerational Family Therapy Step 4:

Treatment Goals: Increase differentiation/Balance autonomy and connectedness, reduce emotional reactivity, understand multigenerational transmission

Intergenerational Family Therapy Step 5:

Therapist Role/Interventions: Genogram analysis, detriangulation, promoting differentiation of self, coaching the client/family, additional interventions

Satir Family Therapy Step 1:

Presenting Problem: External stressors, family history

Satir Family Therapy Step 2:

Family Communication and Interconnectedness: Roles and communication patterns, communication styles, family rules and beliefs, family scapegoating

Satir Family Therapy Step 3:

Treatment Goals: Positive view of people/potential for growth, enhancing self esteem, multigenerational patterns

Satir Family Therapy Step 4:

Therapist Role/Interventions: Family sculpting, family reconstruction, the self mandala/parts play, temperature reading, metaphors and storytelling, additional interventions

Strategic Family Therapy Step 1:

Presenting Problem: defined in concrete behavioral terms

Strategic Family Therapy Step 2:

Family Sequences of Behavior/Power Dynamics: Circular interactions, symptoms as communication, family hierarchy

Strategic Family Therapy Step 3:

Treatment Goals: Change the family system

Strategic Family Therapy Step 4:

Therapist Role/Interventions: Paradoxical interventions, reframing, directives/hierarchy realignment