Roles, Rigidity, Repair, and Renovation in Relationships and Therapy
Published by Ronald Mah at Smashwords
Copyright 2013 Ronald Mah
Ronald Mah's website- www.ronaldmah.com
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
****
Abstract:
Structural theory and therapy principles are applicable not merely with the family, but also applicable to the couple and other relationships, as well as for individual intrapsychic issues among various personas, the ego, id, and superego, or conflicting motivations, drives, needs, feelings versus thoughts, and so forth. Structurally oriented therapy seeks to change organizational patterns of problematic communication and potentially or actively neglectful, harmful, or abusive behaviors. The therapist is guided to take an authoritative position to alter the structure of relationships for the individual, couple, or family. More passive therapeutic approaches are revealed as counter-indicative when the individual for him or herself, or the parents form ineffective executive dyads. The therapist facilitates structural change including lessening or eliminating emotionally and psychologically harmful symptoms. The therapist works to make clients become aware of behavior, situations, roles, and how choices are made. The individual may take, be given, or be compelled to roles and responsibilities that create inherent dysfunction. Rigid and enmeshed extremes in any area can indicate dysfunctional coalitions between and among relationship, couple, or family members.
The therapist is directed to specific client compositions that indicate structural problems and are well served by structural therapeutic principles: blended families, step-parents, families in transition, culturally different couples including same sex couples, and so forth. Also certain client issues benefit from structural assessment and strategies: abuse of any type, substance abuse, and addictions. The therapist will learn important relationships and distinctions between equality and equity-based partnerships including culturally-based models that challenge mutually reciprocal intimates. Structural issues from various influences, including rigid versus over-diffuse boundaries may require repair. The therapist is directed to facilitate reparative processes for addressing problematic or broken dynamics, including poor communication and abusive or neglectful behavior. Therapy is guided to accentuate the good and effective, further facilitating healthy recovery and growth. Ineffective or harmful structure and boundaries are minimized and if possible, eliminated. The therapist is prompted to recognize how sometimes, the relationship structure or boundaries may be inherently corrupt if earlier models were never that healthy. Since sometimes old boundaries had never led to mutually healthy reciprocal nurturance and support in the past or the present, beyond repair the system requires therapeutic attention for a major overhaul or complete renovation to achieve functionality.
****
Linked Table of Contents
Abstract
Introduction: FUNCTIONALITY
Chapter 1: ROLES, HIERARCHY, & RE-STRUCTURING
Chapter 2: MATCH AND CHANGE
Chapter 3: EQUITY & INEQUITY
Chapter 4: COMPOSITION
Chapter 5: ABUSE, SUBSTANCE ABUSE, & ADDICTION
Chapter 6: JOIN THE SYSTEM
Chapter 7: ASSESS AND CHALLENGE
Chapter 8: REFRAME AND CHALLENGE
Chapter 9: AUTHORITY & POWER INDICATORS
Chapter 10: EQUITY & ALLOCATION CONSENSUS
Chapter 11: POWER & BENEFIT & ROMANCE
Chapter 12: ROCK OF RESENTMENT
Chapter 13: INEFFECTIVE CONFLICT RESOLUTION
Chapter 14: POORLY DEFINED ROLES - HELP
Chapter 15: POOR COMMUNICATION
Chapter 16: RIGID OR ENMESHED BOUNDARIES
Chapter 17: INAPPROPRIATE COALITIONS
Chapter 18: AUTHORITARIAN & PERMISSIVE FAMILIES
CONCLUSION: THERAPIST AS TEMPORARY EXECUTIVE SUBSYSTEM
Bibliography
Books by Ronald Mah
Biographic Information
****
**Author's Note: Other than public figures or people identified in the media, all other persons in this book are either composites of individuals the author has worked with and/or have been given different names and had their personal identifying information altered to protect and respect their confidentiality.
INTRODUCTION: FUNCTIONALITY
Thelma, the teenage daughter gets pulled into the parents' conflicts. The seven-year-old brother Hank is responsible to feed and bathe the four-year-old and three-year-old siblings. When mom Penny does not get the emotional intimacy she wants from her husband, she becomes closer with her teenage daughter. When dad Dermot feels sexually shut out from his mate, he would never sexually molest his children, but will get heavily involved and invested in their sports and activities creating a separate parallel world for himself and them. After their older children leave for college, Penny becomes first emotionally intimate with someone from work, and then has an affair. And Chipper the dog does not think he is the omega in the household. Chipper thinks he is the beta and sometimes, the alpha in the house! Sometimes, he is the confidant for Penny, the companion for Dermot or one of the kids when they are feeling lonely. Structural theory principles offer guidance to couples and families… and to human-canine relationships! Lachman in his article Out of the Doghouse …And Onto The Couch
(Psychology Today May/June 2000) recommended a structural therapy approach to dealing with people and dog hierarchy and relationships. The human and dog relationship involves some of the same principles of a couple or family relationship. Structural theory proposes that when a family has a logical consistent structure with appropriate roles for each member (a dog is a dog is a dog!), appropriately permeable boundaries, healthy alignments within the family, and clear open communication channels, then the family will tend to be healthy. Lachman basically asserts that the principles apply to mixed species families! Chipper is a dog first and last. Perhaps Chipper is a part of the family, but not the same as the humans in the family. The adults or parents are the leaders. The children are the other human members and are more privileged than the canine member. Human children… canine children, OK?
While structural theory is most often applied to the family with children, its principles are also applicable to the two-person family or the subsystem of the couple, or to an individual in some hierarchal system including those outside of the family. In addition, the individual may have intrapsychic issues among various personas, the ego, id, and superego, or conflicting motivations, drives, needs, feelings versus thoughts, and so forth where structural perspectives can be useful. The term structure refers to the organizational characteristics of the family at any point in time, the family subsystems, and the overt and covert rules that are said to influence interpersonal choices and behaviors in the family
(Vetere, 2001, page 133-34). Therapy based on structural principles seeks to change organizational patterns. Patterns that are targeted are problematic communication and styles of communication, and potentially or actively neglectful, harmful, or abusive behaviors. As the structure of the relationships alter, various individuals in the family shift their positions. Subsequently, everyone's experience changes as well. With such changes arrives the possibility of lessening or eliminating emotionally and psychologically harmful symptoms. The therapist works to make system- that is, relationship, couple, or family members become aware of behavior, situations, individual roles, and how choices are made to facilitate change. …the central creative thesis of structural family therapy is embodied within the paradigm shift of the relational therapies, that distress can be understood not only in the context of the relationships within which it arises and is maintained, but also in seeing the potential for relationships to be the cause of distress
(Vetere, 2001, page 133).
Chipper is a dog and does not and should not have the roles, privileges, and responsibilities of human members of the family. That is obvious although problematic for some pet owners. Spoiling the dog is an owner's prerogative, but sacrificing or harming human members of the family to do so is indicative of issues. It may not be that big a deal that the dog sleeps in the bed, but when it is invited onto the bed by Penny when she is mad at Dermot and then growls and snaps at the him… that is a bit of a problem! The ordinary dog-in-the bed challenges can be left to Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer (MPH Entertainment, Inc. on the National Geographic Station 203-2102)! However, the therapist often finds the individual in a system- primarily in a couple or a family may take, be given, or be compelled to roles and responsibilities that create inherent dysfunction for everyone involved. Therapy often involves identifying such structural issues in roles, including rigid versus over-diffuse boundaries and other problems that require repair. Academic, social, or work systems often have similar issues. The therapist may be involved with a couple or a family where systemic patterns have proven unhealthy or unproductive for one or more members. Or, may work with an individual who is dissatisfied if not disturbed or oppressed in some system or systems (Penny or Dermot in individual therapy): a relationship (the two of them in couple therapy), the family, the classroom, workplace, social group, community, and so forth. . Sometimes, beyond repair the system requires therapeutic attention for a major overhaul or complete renovation to achieve functionality.
link to Table of Contents
****
Chapter 1: ROLES, HIERARCHY, & RE-STRUCTURING
Each family or system has its own set of relational skills and patterns of behavior patterns shared by its members. These skills and patterns are determined, developed, and adapted to enable individuals in the family to move toward goals intended for the well-being of the family as a whole. Relative well-being is subjective within the family and includes how well it adapts to changing challenges developmentally and in larger social contexts. The relationship, couple, or family continues to evolve throughout its existence and can be evaluated according to how well members contribute to the facilitation of growth, well-being, and satisfaction of all family members; encourage the mutual advancement of community and family; and secure the achievement of reality-based developmentally appropriate needs and goals of the family unit (Morris and Blanton, 1998, page 28). These common goals guide individual members' behaviors within the relationship, couple, or family. Family is defined as
a group of individuals who are related to each other by quasi-circular relationships based on marriage or blood ties" (Simadi et al, 2003 page 467). There are often three subsystems: parents, children, and siblings. Each subsystem has its own boundaries. The characteristics of the couple's system and a sibling system will be different. Within any system, system members reciprocally affect one another in
