PSYC251 LECTURE 6
Exam Preparation
Exams always include questions from this topic.
Today's Agenda
Family relationships
Marriage and relationship difficulties
Families
Family Dynamics
Definition: A family is more than just separate people; it works like a connected system. When one person changes, everyone else in the family changes too.
Survival of Families: Families do well when members feel close emotionally and work together.
Development of Patterns in Families
Families create regular ways of interacting over time, such as:
Emotional expression: How do family members show anger? Do they show it openly or keep it inside?
Affection and emotional allowance: How much affection are family members allowed or expected to show each other?
Decision-making processes: Who gets to have a say in decisions, and who just goes along with them?
Unspoken Rules and Norms
These regular family ways of acting become “unspoken rules.”
Family members might think these behaviors are normal or standard.
Different families have different ways of working, and these ways affect everyone, especially children, even if the family's dynamics are not openly talked about.
Healthy vs. Dysfunctional Families
Healthy Families: Don't have to be perfect. What makes a family healthy is the quality of their relationships and how well they adapt to changes.
Dysfunctional Families: Have a lot of conflict, bad behavior, neglect, and abuse. Members might get used to these unhealthy behaviors.
The Myth of the Ideal Family
Traditional Views: The idea of a perfect family—whole, traditional, and without problems—is just a myth.
Family Functioning: For a family to work well, it means it achieves its goals and helps all members grow and be well, instead of just fitting a certain structure.
Real-life Example: Amy's Situation
Background: Amy is a 14-year-old who was sent to a school counselor,
She lives with her mom's mother; her brothers live with their dad's parents.
Her parents often travel and gamble, which affects how the family works.
Amy's mood changes depending on whether her parents have money, showing how unstable her home life is.
Family Dynamics: She feels happy when things are good but confused and sad when her family acts inconsistently and has unclear expectations.
Desire for Change: Amy wants more consistent interactions and clearer communication from her parents.
Dysfunctional Family Characteristics
Inconsistent Parenting: Makes children confused, for example, parents who are too soft often let children misbehave freely.
Under-functioning Parents: Parents who can't give proper guidance and structure.
Over-functioning Parents: May control children's choices, stopping them from becoming independent.
Abusive Behavior: Parents might have problems like gambling, domestic violence, or drug/alcohol abuse, making the home unstable.
Understanding Family Dynamics
Families with divorced parents are not automatically dysfunctional; avoid calling them “broken.”
Family functioning can be temporarily messed up by stress, but healthy families usually get back to normal after a crisis.
Dysfunction doesn't mean there's no love in the family; many adult problems come from childhood and how the family worked.
Systems Theory Perspective
Example: Mindy's Behavior: Mindy throws a tantrum when taken to play school. This behavior should be understood within the family's dynamics, not seen as just her individual problem.
Systemic Focus: Looks at what individuals do as signs of bigger family problems, focusing on the family's structure and how they interact.
Core Concepts in Family Systems Theory
Whole vs. Parts: A family is seen as more than just the total of its individual members; its important qualities come from how they relate to each other.
Interrelatedness: Behavior is understood within the context of relationships, not just on its own.
Circular Causality: Family members' actions both cause and are caused by each other's actions, creating a linked system instead of a simple cause-and-effect chain.
Equilibrium (Homeostasis): Families try to keep things balanced, struggling with enmeshment (being too involved) and disengagement (being too detached).
Boundaries and Subsystems: Clear mini-groups (like siblings, or parents and children) interact within the family, keeping stability through unspoken rules.
Boundary Types
Healthy Boundaries: Clear and flexible, allowing people to be themselves and still feel connected.
Rigid Boundaries: Show detached families where members don't interact much or deeply.
Diffuse Boundaries: Show enmeshed families where individuals are too involved in each other’s lives.
The Identified Patient Concept
The identified patient (IP) is the family member who shows problems, which are often signs of bigger family dysfunction. This person is often blamed for the family's issues.
Scapegoating Dynamics
Scapegoating: When blame is put on one person to distract from bigger family problems, which often means the real conflicts are not solved.
Family Therapy Approaches
Family Systems Theory focuses on understanding how family members relate and aims to treat the family's interactions and communication.
Therapeutic Techniques: Involves gathering information, looking at all the different parts of the family system, and testing ideas about behaviors through structured therapy sessions.
Applying Bowen's Systemic Approach
Counterbalancing Forces: Looks at finding a balance between being an individual and being part of a group, while managing worry within relationships.
Emotional Triangles: Three-person dynamics that can either help manage worry or make existing problems worse. They offer a way to cope without fixing the root issues.
Differentiation of Self: This is about balancing emotional and logical responses, which helps in having clearer relationships.
Stress Management in Dyads
Withdraw-Pursuer Roles: One partner pulls away emotionally, while the other tries hard to get closer. This often leads to an imbalance where one person does less and the other takes on too much responsibility.
Resolution Goals: Therapy aims to help partners solve conflicts directly and understand each other's emotions better.
Emotional Cutoff and Its Implications
If someone has low differentiation (meaning they struggle to balance emotions and logic), they might use emotional cutoffs. This means avoiding contact to escape worry, which greatly affects family relationships.
Importance of Understanding Family Systems
Using a systems approach in therapy helps recognize patterns that keep unhealthy family systems going. It stresses that these patterns are ways families adapt to stress.
Anxious systems are common everywhere, including workplaces, so we need to understand them beyond just looking at what individuals do.
Marriage and Relationship Counseling
Empathy and Gender Dynamics: Research (Gottman, 1997) shows both men and women are equally good at identifying emotions, though culture affects how they show them.
Gottman’s Four Horsemen: Identifies harmful ways of communicating, including:
Criticism: Attacking someone's personality instead of focusing on what they did. The solution is to talk about specific actions, not general traits.
Defensiveness: Reacting to what feels like an attack. This encourages showing you understand the other person’s point of view.
Stonewalling: Shutting down or avoiding talking. This promotes calming yourself down first, then re-engaging in the conversation.
Contempt: Acting like you're better than someone else and showing disrespect. This highlights how important respect is in interactions.
Imago Dialogue Steps
Process: Uses structured conversations to help partners address past emotional hurts from childhood, promoting understanding and empathy.
Includes mirroring (repeating what the other says), validating their feelings, expressing emotions, and summarizing to improve communication and solve problems.
Risks of Forgiveness and Reconciliation
Key Components of Apology: Good apologies require admitting the harm caused, showing regret, and promising to change behavior.
Conclusion
These ideas show important ways family systems work and how they affect mental health and individual growth. They emphasize how crucial it is to understand how family members interact for therapy and support.