Structural Versus Strategic Family Therapies

Family Therapy
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Family Therapy Working with families is a multifaceted form of intervention that involves education, counseling, treatment, and coping skills. Interventions exist for depression, drug use, marriage, pregnancy (in women), child and adolescent-related issues. Over the years, different theories have been developed, each with its premise technique, rationale, and ideas guiding the therapist. This thesis focuses on the two “schools” of family therapy; structural and strategic family therapy. The structural school represented by Minuchin (1974;1978) assumed that the core of a family is centered on functional expectations that establish the individual interactions and household homeostasis (Fraser, 1982). Apart from the interworking of a family, the therapist is also encouraged to review external social influences responsible for the dysfunctional behaviors. Another area of focus for structural family therapy is the subsystems that intertwine with the primary systems and hierarchal processes identified as potential negative influences. This perspective recognizes that ‘man is not isolated' and that family members feed each other within the family system (Stafford, 2017). This idea holds in large societies as people often become who they are based on their interactions with and the environment. Strategic family therapy involves a planned, practical, and problem-focused course of action to address dysfunctional behaviors in a family structure. The fundamental approaches include issuing directives and assessing ordeals and therapeutic paradoxes during the therapy sessions (Stafford, 2017). A therapeutic paradox is a tactic that can be used to engage the family members. It requires them to evaluate unfavorable interactions, forcing them to redirect the same efforts into different forms of interactions and behaviors. Directives are precise and are given to the family members to facilitate a behavior change. On the other hand, Ordeals are behavioral prescriptions that direct family members to adopt destructive behaviors in the event of maladaptive interactions (Jiménez, Hidalgo, Baena, León, & Lorence, 2019). In my practicum, I have come across the case of Mr. Robert, who is struggling with alcohol addiction. He has two adolescent children, one boy, Jack, and a girl Hellen who have started to show rebellious tendenci...