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Chapter 3 - Diagnosing Family System Problems
The BSFT approach to assessing and diagnosing family system problems
differs drastically from that used by other kinds of psychotherapies.
Unlike other psychotherapies that assess and diagnose by focusing
on content, such as talking about a family's history, BSFT assesses
and diagnoses by identifying the current family process. BSFT focuses
on the nature and characteristics of the interactions that occur in the
family and either help or hinder the family's attempts to get rid of the
adolescent's problem behaviors.
The following six elements of the family's interactions are examined
in detail:
- Organization
- Resonance
- Developmental stages
- Life context
- Identified patient
- Conflict resolution
Organization
As repetitive patterns of interaction in a family occur over time, they
give the family a specific form, or "organization." Three aspects of this
organization are examined below: leadership, subsystem organization,
and communication flow.
Leadership
Leadership is defined as the distribution of authority and responsibility
within the family. In functional two-parent families, leadership is in the
hands of the parents. In modern societies, both parents usually share
authority and decisionmaking. Frequently, in one-parent families, the
parent shares some of the leadership with an older child. The latter
situation has the potential for creating problems. In the case of a single
parent living within an extended family framework, leadership may be shared with an uncle, aunt, or grandparent. In assessing whether leadership is adaptive, BSFT counselors look at hierarchy, behavior control, and guidance.
Counselors look at the hierarchy, or the way a family is ranked, to see
who is in charge of leading the family and who holds the family's
positions of authority. BSFT assumes that the leadership should be with
the parent figures, with supporting roles assigned to older family
members. Some leadership responsibilities can be delegated to older
children, as long as those responsibilities are not overly burdensome,
are age-appropriate, and are delegated by parent figures rather than
usurped by the children. BSFT counselors look at behavior control in
the family to see who, if anyone, keeps order and doles out discipline
in the family. Effective behavior control typically means that the
parents are in charge and the children are acting in accordance with
parental rules. Guidance refers to the teaching and mentoring functions
in the family. BSFT assesses whether these roles are filled by
appropriate family members and whether the youngsters' needs for
guidance are being met.
Subsystem Organization
Families have both formal subsystems (e.g., spouses, siblings, grandparents,
etc.) and informal subsystems (e.g., the older women, the people who manage the money, the people who do the housekeeping, the people who play chess). Important subsystems must have a certain degree of privacy and independence. BSFT looks at issues such as the adequacy or appropriateness of the subsystems in a family. It also assesses the nature of the relationships that give rise to these subsystems
and especially looks at subsystem membership, triangulation, and communication flow, which are discussed below.
Subsystem Membership
BSFT identifies the family's subsystems, which are small groups
within the family that are composed of family members with shared
characteristics, such as age, gender, role, interests, or abilities. BSFT
counselors pay particular attention to the appropriateness of each
subsystem's membership and to the boundaries between subsystems.
For example, parent figures should form a subsystem, while siblings
of similar ages should also form a subsystem, and each of these
subsystems should be separate from the others.
Subsystems that cross generations (e.g., between a parent and one
child) cause trouble because such relationships blur hierarchical lines
and undermine a parent's ability to control behavior. Relationships in
which one parent figure and a child unite against another parent figure
are called "coalitions." Coalitions are destructive to family functioning
and are very frequently seen in families of drug-abusing adolescents.
In these cases, the adolescent has gained so much power through this
relationship that he or she dares to constantly challenge authority and
gets away with it. The adolescent has this power to be rebellious,
disobedient, and out of control by having gained the support of one parent who, to disqualify the other parent, enables the adolescent's inappropriate behavior.
Triangulation
Sometimes when two parental authority figures have a disagreement,
rather than resolving the disagreement between themselves, they
involve a third, less powerful person to diffuse the conflict. This
process is called "triangulation." Invariably this triangulated third party,
usually a child or an adolescent, experiences stress and develops
symptoms of this stress, such as behavior problems. Triangles always
spell trouble because they prevent the resolution of a conflict
between two authority figures. The triangulated child typically
receives the brunt of much of his or her parents' unhappiness and
begins to develop behavior problems that should be understood as a
call for help.
Communication Flow
The final category of organization looks at the nature of communication.
In functional families, communication flow is characterized by directness
and specificity. Good communication flow is the ability of two
family members to directly and specifically tell each other what they
want to say. For example, a declaration such as, "I don't like it when
you yell at me," is a sign of good communication because it is
specific and direct. Indirect communications are problematic. Take, for
example, a father who says to his son, "You tell your mother that she
better get here right away," or the mother who tells the father, "You
better do something about Johnny because he won't listen to me." In
these two examples, the communication is conducted through a third
person. Nonspecific communications are also troublesome, as in the
case of the father who tells his son, "You are always in trouble." The
communication would be more constructive if the father would
explain very clearly what the problem is. For example: "I get angry
when you come home late."
Resonance
"Resonance" defines the emotional and psychological accessibility or
distance between family members. A 6-year-old son who hangs onto
his mother's skirt at his birthday party may be said to be overly close
to her. A mother who cries when her daughter hurts is emotionally
very close. A father who does not care that his son is in trouble with
the law may be described as psychologically and emotionally distant.
One of the key concepts related to resonance is boundaries. An interpersonal
boundary, just as the words imply, is a way of denoting
where one person or group of people ends and where the next one
begins. People set their own boundaries when they let others know
which behaviors entering their personal space they will allow and
which ones they will not allow. In families, resonance refers to the
psychological and emotional closeness or distance between any two family members. This psychological and emotional distance is established
and maintained by the boundaries that exist between family
members. In particular, the boundaries between two family members
determine how much affect, or emotion, can get through from one
person to the other. If the boundaries between two people are very
permeable, then a lot gets through, and there is high resonance--
great psychological and emotional closeness--between them. One's
happiness becomes the other's happiness. If the boundaries between
two people are overly rigid, then each person may not even know what
the other is feeling.
Enmeshment and Disengagement
The firmness and clarity of boundaries reflect the degree of differentiation within a family system. At one extreme, boundaries can be
extremely impermeable. If this is the case, the emotional and psychological
distance between family members is too large, and these
family members are said to be "disengaged" from each other. At
the other extreme, boundaries can be far too permeable or almost
nonexistent. When boundaries are that permeable, the emotional
and psychological closeness between people is too great, and these
family members are said to be "enmeshed." Each of these extremes
is problematic and becomes a target for intervention.
Interactions that are either enmeshed or disengaged can cause problems.
When these interactions cause problems, they need to be
altered to establish a better balance between the closeness and
distance that exists between different family members. For each
family, there is an ideal balance between closeness and distance that
allows cooperation and separation.
Resonance and Culture
Resonance needs to be assessed in the context of culture. This is
important because some cultures encourage family members to be very
close with each other, while other cultures encourage greater distance.
One important aspect of culture involves the racial or ethnic groups
with which families identify themselves. For example, Hispanics are
more likely than white Americans to be close and, thus, appear more
enmeshed (have higher resonance) (e.g., Woehrer 1989). Similarly, an
Asian father may be quite distant or disengaged from the women in
his family, which is considered natural in his culture (Sue 1998).
However, whether the culture dictates the distance between family
members, it is important for counselors to question if a particular way
of interacting is causing problems for the family. In other words, even
if an interaction is typical of a culture, if it is causing symptoms, then
it may need to be changed. This type of situation must be handled
with great knowledge and sensitivity to demonstrate respect for the
culture and to allow family members to risk making a change that is
foreign to their culture.
Enmeshment (high resonance) and Disengagement (low resonance)
Sometimes "enmeshment" (excessive closeness) and "disengagement" (excessive distance) can occur at the same time within a single family. This happens frequently in families of drug-abusing youths, when one parent is sometimes very protective and is closely allied with the youth (i.e., enabling), while the other parent may be somewhat disinterested and distant.
BSFT counselors look for certain behaviors in a family that are telltale
signs of either enmeshment or disengagement. Obviously, some of
these behaviors may happen in any family. However, when a large
number of these behaviors occur or when some occur in an extreme
form, they are likely to reflect problems in the family's patterns of
interaction. Easily observable symptoms of enmeshment include one
person answering for another, one person finishing another's statements,
and people interrupting each other. Observable symptoms of disengagement
include one family member who wants to be separated from another or a family member who rarely speaks or is spoken about.
Developmental Stages
Individuals go through a series of developmental stages, ranging from
infancy to old age. Certain conditions, roles, and responsibilities
typically occur at each stage. Families also go through a series of
developmental stages. For family members to continue to function
adaptively at each developmental stage, they need to behave in ways
that are appropriate for the family's developmental level.
Each time a developmental transition is reached, the family is confronted
by a new set of circumstances. As the family attempts to
adapt to the new circumstances, it experiences stress. Failure to
adapt, to make the transition, to give up behaviors that were used
successfully at a previous developmental stage, and to establish new
behaviors that are adaptive to the new stage will cause some family
members to develop new behavior problems. Perhaps one of the
most stressful developmental changes occurs when children reach
adolescence. This is the stage at which a large number of families are
not able to adapt to developmental changes (e.g., from direct guidance
to leadership and negotiation). Parents must be able to continue to
be involved and monitor their adolescent's life, but now they must
do it from a distinctly different perspective that allows their daughter
or son to gain autonomy.
At each developmental stage, certain roles and tasks are expected of
different family members. One way to determine whether the family
has successfully overcome the various developmental challenges that
it has confronted is to assess the appropriateness of the roles and
tasks that have been assigned to each family member, considering the
age and position of each person within the family. When a family's
developmental stage is analyzed, four major sets of tasks and roles must be assessed: (1) Parenting tasks and roles are concerned with the
parent figures' ability to act as parents at a level consistent with the
age of the children; (2) Marital tasks and roles assess how well
spouses cooperate and share parenting functions; (3) Sibling tasks and
roles assess whether the children and adolescents are behaving in an
age-appropriate fashion; and (4) Extended family's tasks and roles
target the support for and intrusion into parenting functions from, for
example, grandparents, aunts, and uncles, if extended family members
are part of the household or share in parenting responsibilities.
Developmental transitions may be stressful. They are likely to cause
family shake-ups because families may continue to approach new
situations in old ways, thus making it possible for conflict to develop.
Most often, families come to the attention of counselors precisely at
these times. Of all of these developmental milestones, reaching
adolescence appears to be one of the most risky and critical stages in
which drug abuse can occur in most ethnic groups (Steinberg 1991;
Vega and Gil 1999). Although the adolescent is the family member
who is most likely to behave in problematic ways, often other members
of the family, such as parents, also exhibit signs of troublesome or
maladaptive behaviors and feelings (Silverberg 1996).
Assessing Appropriate Developmental Functioning
Careful judgments are needed to determine what is developmentally appropriate and/or inappropriate for each family member. It is particularly difficult to make these judgments when assessing the tasks and roles of children and extended family members. In every instance, the BSFT counselor should take into account the family's cultural heritage when making these judgments. For example, it is
useful to know that some traditional African-American and Hispanic families tend to protect their children longer than non-Hispanic whites do (White 1994). Thus, it would not be unusual for children to have a longer period of dependence among traditional Hispanic groups than among non-Hispanic white families. Similarly, it would not be unusual for the African-American caretaker of a 12-year-old
to continue to behave in an authoritarian manner without the child
rebelling or considering it odd. In fact, researchers have suggested
that African-American inner city youths experience an authoritarian
command as caring, while a child from another cultural group might
experience it as rejecting (Mason et al. 1994). However, as suggested
earlier, as an adolescent in the United States grows older, his or
her parent, who may be from any culture and in any setting, may
have to moderate his or her level of control and increase his or her
authoritative parenting, or the youth may rebel.
Common Problems in Assessing Appropriateness of Developmental Stage
It is often difficult for parents to determine what is developmentally appropriate for children of different ages; for example, how much or how little responsibility should a child 6, 10, or 16 years old have in a household? In families of drug-abusing and conduct-disordered adolescents, parents and their children often have a difficult time determining what is developmentally appropriate for a child's age.
One of the main problems family members encounter is how to
determine the degree of supervision and autonomy that children
should have at each age level. This is a highly complex and conflictive
area, even for the best of parents, because as children grow older,
they experience considerable pressure from their peers to demonstrate
increasing independence. It is also complex because many parents
are not aware of what might be the norm in today's society.
Therefore, they may allow too little or too much autonomy, based
either on their own comfort or discomfort level, their own experience,
and/or their culture. Moreover, children's peer groups may vary
considerably in the level of autonomy they expect from parents. In
working with the notion of "developmental appropriateness," a BSFT
counselor needs to examine issues such as roles and functions, rights
and responsibilities, limits and consequences, as they are applied
to the adolescents in the family. Examples of these standards are
available from adolescent development research (Steinberg 1998).
Life Context
While the dimensions of family functioning discussed up to now are
all within the family, life context refers to what happens in the family's
relationship to its social context. The life context of the family
includes the extended family, the community, the work situation,
adolescent peers, schools, courts, and other groups that may have an
impact on the family, either as stressors or as support systems.
Antisocial Peers
A careful analysis of the life context is useful in many situations
involving the treatment of substance abuse. For example, a youngster
who uses drugs may be involved with a deviant or antisocial peer
group. These friendships affect the youth and family in an adverse
way and will certainly need to be modified to successfully eliminate
the youth's drug use. Parents need help to identify less acceptable
and more acceptable adolescent peers so that they can encourage
their teens to associate with more desirable peers and discourage
them from associating with less desirable peers.
Parent Support Systems and Social Resources
Parenting is a difficult task. Parents often lack adequate support systems for parenting. Parents need support from friends, extended family
members, and other parents (Henricson and Roker 2000). The availability
of support systems needs to be assessed, particularly in the
case of single-parent families. The availability of social resources
needs to be assessed, both in terms of what is already being used or
what could potentially be used.
Juvenile Justice System
Increasingly, probation officers and the courts have become critical
players in the families of drug-abusing adolescents. It is the BSFT
counselor's job to assess how juvenile justice representatives such as
probation officers interact with the family to determine whether they are supporting or undermining the family. One way to assess the probation
officer's role, for example, is to invite him or her to participate
in a family therapy session.
Identified Patient
The "identified patient" is the family member who has been branded
by the family as the problem. The family blames this person, usually
the drug-abusing adolescent, for much of its troubles. However, as
discussed earlier, the BSFT view of the family is that the symptom is only
that: a symptom of the family's problems. The more that family members
insist that their entire problem is embodied in a single person,
the more difficult it will be for them to accept that it is the entire family
that needs to change. On the other hand, the family that recognizes
that several of its members may have problems is far healthier and
more flexible and will have a relatively easier time of making changes
through BSFT. The BSFT counselor believes that the problem is in the
family's repetitive (habitual, rigid) patterns of interaction. Thus, the
counselor not only will try to change the person who exhibits the
problem but also to change the way all members of the family behave
with each other.
The other aspect to understanding a family's identified patient is that
usually families with problematic behaviors identify only one aspect
of the identified patient as the source of all the pain and worry. For
example, families of drug-abusing youths tend to focus only on the
drug use and possibly on accompanying school and legal troubles
that are directly and overtly related to the drug abuse. These families
usually overlook the fact that the youngster may have other symptoms
or problems, such as depression, attention deficit disorder, and
learning deficits.
Conflict Resolution
While solving differences of opinion is always challenging, it is much
more challenging when it is done in the context of a conflictive relationship
that is high in negativity. The following are five different
ways in which families can approach or manage conflicts. Some are
adaptive and some are not. In the case of drug-abusing adolescents,
with few exceptions, the first four tend to be ineffective, whereas the
fifth tends to be effective in most situations:
- Denial
- Avoidance
- Diffusion
- Conflict emergence without resolution
- Conflict emergence with resolution
Denial
"Denial" refers to a situation in which conflict is not allowed to emerge.
Sometimes this is done by adopting the attitude that everything is all
right. At other times, conflict is denied by arranging situations to
avoid confrontation or establishing unwritten rules with which no
one dares to disagree outwardly, regardless of how they feel. The
classic denial case is the one in which the family says: "We have no
problems."
Avoidance
"Avoidance" refers to a situation in which conflict begins to emerge
but is stopped, covered up, or inhibited in some way that prevents it
from emerging. Examples of avoidance include postponing ("Let's
not have a fight now."), humor ("You're so cute when you're mad."),
minimizing ("That's not really important."), and inhibiting ("Let's not
argue; you know what can happen.").
Diffusion
"Diffusion" refers to situations in which conflict begins to emerge,
but discussion about the conflict is diverted in another direction.
This diversion prevents conflict resolution by distracting the family's
attention away from the original conflict. This change of subject is
often framed as a personal attack against the person who raised the
original issue. For example, a mother says to her husband, "I don't
like it when you get home late," but the husband changes the topic
by responding: "What kind of mother are you anyway, letting your
son stay home from school today when he is not even sick!"
Conflict Emergence Without Resolution
"Conflict emergence" without resolution occurs when different opinions are clearly expressed, but no final solution is accepted. Everyone
knows exactly where everyone else stands, but little is done to reach
a negotiated agreement. Sometimes this occurs because the family,
while willing to discuss the problem, simply does not know how to
negotiate a compromise.
Conflict Emergence With Resolution
Emergence of the conflict and its resolution is generally considered to be the best outcome. Separate accounts and opinions regarding a
particular conflict are clearly expressed and confronted. Then, the
family is able to negotiate a solution that is acceptable to all family
members involved.
A Caveat
In some cases, conflicts need to be postponed for more appropriate
times. For example, if a family member is very angry, tired, or sick,
it may be reasonable to table the conflict until he or she is ready
to have a meaningful discussion. However, in such instances, it is
critical that the family set a specific time to address the conflict.
Indefinitely postponing conflict resolution is a sign of avoidance. A
postponement for a definite amount of time is adaptive.
In other instances, a person may decide that the issue at hand is not
worth having an argument about. For example, one person may want
to stay home while his or her partner wants to go dancing. Either
partner may opt to compromise by agreeing to the other's preference.
So long as partners take turns compromising, this is adaptive and
balanced. However, if the same person is always the one to give in,
this may reflect the use of denial by one partner to avoid conflict with
the other.
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Therapy Manuals for Drug Abuse: Manual 5
Contents
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