The Satir Model Family Therapy and Beyond Pdf

222 CHAPTER NINE

with cognitive analyses and beliefs change.three No holds are barred, no feelings stifled. Every bit noted earlier, the therapist is a real flesh-and-blood person who knows who he is, what his needs are, and what he is experiencing from moment to moment during the shared therapeutic encounter with the family unit. At the aforementioned fourth dimension, he expects—nay, insists—that all participants search for, uncover, and express what they are experiencing now, since to Gestaltists, nothing exists except in the now. He urges clients to stay with the experience every bit it is happening, and until they recognize and"own"what they are feeling from moment to moment. All efforts to avoid this awareness are counteracted past Kempler as soon as they occur; it is in the now, say Gestaltists, that people are or are not growing, are or are not enhancing their coping abilities, are or are non in touch on with themselves and with reality.

THE HUMAN 5ALIDATION PROCESS 1000ODEL (SouthATIR)

The human validation procedure model, experiential in nature, emphasizes the collaborative efforts of therapist and family members to achieve family "wellness"by releasing the potential viewed as inherent in every family (Satir & Bitter, 2000). Articulate, congruent communication is stressed in maintaining a balanced and nurturing family organisation, and the edifice of self-esteem is considered essential if all members are to thrive equally individuals and as part of a functional organization. Especially of import to this model—as is the case for all experiential approaches—is the personal involvement of a caring therapist who demonstrates, often through self-disclosure, his or her own honest and spontaneous feelings. More specifically, the therapist, every bit a resources person, encourages family members to develop a procedure for direct expressing emotions, in many cases learning to change embedded rules that discourage or in some cases prohibit dealing with one another at a feeling level.

Leading Figure

Virginia Satir's central identify in the history of the family therapy motility has been noted several times earlier in this book. In the 1950s, amidst the founding parents of the family therapy movement, Satir was in the unique position of being both a woman and a social worker amidst predominantly white male person psychiatrists. Actually, she probably preceded virtually of her male counterparts in working with families, reportedly having seen her first family in therapy in 1951 and having offered the first grooming plan ever in family therapy in 1955 at the Illinois State Psychiatric Institute (Satir, 1982). It was several years later that she read of a group engaging in family enquiry efforts in Palo Alto, California (Bateson, Jackson, Haley, & Weakland, 1956); having contacted them, she was invited by Jackson to help him starting time what became the Mental Research Institute (MRI). More than interested in training than in enquiry, Satir shortly set nigh demonstrating her techniques with families, culminating in the first published description of conjoint family unit therapy (Satir, 1964), truly a groundbreaking text for therapists and students alike.

iiiKempler and Whitaker both seek open, honest, uncensored expression. Whitaker's assertions reflect his efforts to be in tune with his unconscious impulses, while Kempler's statements reverberate his insistence that he and the clients stay in the moment. For Kempler,"staying in the moment"helps strip away the defense force of escaping into talking about the by, changing the subject field, or perhaps asking questions of others instead of expressing one's own thoughts and beliefs.

EXPERIENTIAL MODELS 223

Over a 30-year span, until her expiry in 1988, Satir connected to be a prolific writer. She is especially celebrated for her inspiring family therapy demonstrations (said to number between 400 and 500) around the world. Although linked to the communication approach because of her early MRI affiliation, Satir's work during the 1960s at Esalen, a growth heart, encouraged her to add a humanistic framework and emphasize a number of growth-enhancing techniques (sensory awareness, dance, massage, grouping encounter techniques) to evoke feelings and analyze family unit advice patterns. In her later writing, Satir (1986) identified her approach as a Human Validation Procedure Model in which the therapist and family bring together forces to stimulate an inherent health-promoting process in the family. Open communication and emotional experiencing were the mechanisms that helped achieve that end, as family members, following the therapist'due south lead, learned to take the risk of expressing feelings openly, congruently, and without defensiveness.

Virginia Satir was a charismatic leader, truly an original; no discussion of experiential family therapy would be complete without paying homage to her vision. She presented herself to families (frequently in demonstrations and without prior contact with the family unit) equally a dynamic, nurturing, folksy, genuine person, someone with belief in the goodness of people and in the "healing ability of love" (Satir & Baldwin, 1983). While the latter made her appear simplistic and Pollyannaish to critics, she nevertheless was revered past followers and profoundly touched those families with whom she worked. The "love" she practiced with clients and that she postulated every bit a necessary status for actualizing one's capabilities was based on her assumptions virtually what all-time facilitates change.

Satir assumed people want to be whole, authentic, sensitive, and genuine with ane another. Thus, she looked for and found in people signs of their good for you intentions, even when these were embedded in unhealthy beliefs (Lawrence, 1999). Symptomatic behavior, for Satir, was"adaptive attempts gone amiss"rather than fixed characteristics of the person (Waters & Lawrence, 1993). Summaries of her underlying philosophical assumptions and therapeutic techniques can exist institute in Woods and Martin (1984), Brothers (1991), Andreas (1991), Satir, Banmen, Gerber, and Gomori (1991), and Satir and Bitter (2000).

© Wadsworth/Thomson Learning

Virginia Satir, G.S.Due west.

Symptoms and Family Residual

Satir concerned herself with the family as a balanced system. In particular, she wanted to determine the"price"each part of the system"pays"to continue the overall unit balanced. That is, she viewed any symptom in an private member as signaling a blockage in growth, and as having a homeostatic connexion to a family organization that to proceed its balance requires blockage and distortion of growth in some class in all of its members.

A presenting symptom in a family unit member gave Satir (1982) the initial clues for"unraveling the net of distorted, ignored, denied, projected, unnourished, and untapped parts of each person so that they can connect with their ability to cope functionally, healthily, and joyously"(p. 41).

Individual Growth and Development

Satir believed that all humans strive toward growth and development, and that each of us possesses all the resources we need for fulfilling

B O X 9 . v C 50 I Due north I C A Fifty Northward O T Eastward

Satir's Viii Aspects of the Cocky

Satir (1986) contended that the self—the core of every person—consists of eight split merely interacting elements or levels, which together exert a constant influence on a person's well-beingness. Satir searched for the varying degrees of force in each of these parts of the person. In borer an individual'southward nourishing potentials, she attempted to work at one or more than of the following levels:

Physical (the body)

Intellectual (thoughts, logic, processing of facts, leftbrain activity)

Emotional (feelings, intuition, right-encephalon activity) Sensual (sound, sight, bear upon, taste, smell) Interactional (I-Thou communication betwixt oneself

and others)

Contextual (colors, sound, low-cal, temperature, movement, space, time)

Nutritional (solids and fluids ingested to furnish energy)

Spiritual (1's relationship to life's meaning, the soul, life strength)

our potential, if only nosotros tin gain admission to these resources and learn to nourish them. More than specifically, she pointed to three types of factors influencing human development: (a) unchangeable genetic endowment, determining our physical, emotional, and temperamental potential; (b) longitudinal influences, the result of learning acquired in the process of growth; and (c) the abiding mind-torso interaction.

Longitudinal influences—the sum of learning since birth—are especially meaning. Hither Satir emphasized the kid's experiences of the chief survival triad (begetter, mother, child) as the essential source of cocky-identity. Adult cocky-worth or cocky-esteem evolves from the relative proportion of constructive to destructive interaction experiences arising from this triad. The child also learns to decipher parental messages; discrepancies betwixt words, tone, bear upon, and looks assistance shape time to come adult communication patterns.

Another important cistron in individual growth is the heed, body, feeling triad. Body parts may often take on metaphoric pregnant; each part usually has a positive or negative value attached to it by its owner. Some are liked, others disliked, some need awakening. In what Satir chosen a therapeutic parts political party, clients are encouraged to become aware of these parts and learn to use them"in an harmonious and integrated manner"(Satir & Baldwin, 1983, p. 258).

Every bit noted, Satir believed all persons possess all the resource they need for positive growth, if she could help them harness their potential to nourish themselves. Edifice self-esteem, promoting cocky-worth, expanding awareness, exposing and correcting discrepancies in how the family unit communicates—these were the issues Satir tackled equally she attempted to help each member of the family unit develop "wellness" and become as "whole"as possible. The extent to which they could place and practise new possibilities determined their chances to integrate change into their family life. With success based upon family resiliency, family unit members would discover new solutions to their problems.

EXPERIENTIAL MODELS 225

Family Roles and Communication Styles

Satir contended that the fashion the family communicates reflects the feelings of selfworth of its members. Dysfunctional communication (indirect, unclear, incomplete, unclarified, inaccurate, distorted, inappropriate) characterizes a dysfunctional family system. One of Satir's lasting contributions is her simple—merely far from simplistic— classification of styles of communication, especially apparent in dealing with stress. She argued that nether such stressful conditions, a person in a relationship with another person communicates in 1 of five ways (Satir, 1972). These styles are expressed through body position and body linguistic communication as much as through verbal behavior. The placater acts weak, tentative, self-effacing; always agrees, apologizes, tries to please. The blamer dominates, invariably finds mistake with others, and self-righteously accuses. The super-reasonable person adopts a rigid opinion, remains discrete, robotlike, calm, absurd, maintaining intellectual control while making certain not to become emotionally involved. The irrelevant person distracts others and seems unable to chronicle to anything going on, afraid to offend or injure others by taking a position on an upshot. Only the coinciding communicator seems real, genuinely expressive, responsible for sending directly (non double-bounden or otherwise confusing) messages in their advisable context.

Diverse combinations of these styles exist in most families. For example, take the case of a blaming married woman, a blaming husband, and a placating child triad:"It'southward the school, they don't teach anything anymore";"It's the child down the street, that's where she's learned those bad words"; "Information technology'due south the way yous've raised her, she'south just similar you lot"; "I'll try to do amend, Daddy, you're absolutely right. I'll terminate watching Idiot box tomorrow, become to the library . . . get out the dishes and I'll practice them tomorrow after school."In a blamer/superreasonable couple, the wife might mutter bitterly,"We inappreciably e'er brand love anymore; don't you have whatever feelings for me?"The husband might respond coldly, "Of course I do or I wouldn't be married to you. Maybe we define the give-and-take dear differently."In the case of a conversation between a super-reasonable parent ("Let's discuss precisely why you seem to be having difficulties with your math problems this night") and the irrelevant child ("It's time for my boob tube programme now"), nix gets settled or resolved; the tension is maintained if not increased. Table 9.ane illustrates Satir's four-opinion model of dysfunctional family unit communication. Only the coinciding person maintains self-esteem under stress, making certain that his or her inner feelings are matched by articulate and straight outer communication and beliefs (Satir & Bitter, 2000).

Satir maintained that these roles are essentially poses that keep distressed people from exposing their truthful feelings considering they lack the self-esteem that would allow them to be themselves. Placaters are afraid to run a risk disapproval if they speak up or disagree or act in whatever way independent of a parent or spouse. Blamers too feel endangered and react past attacking in order to cover up feeling empty, unworthy, and unloved themselves. Super-reasonable people feel safe only at a altitude and rely on their intellect to proceed from acknowledging that they as well have feelings and are vulnerable. Irrelevant people (ofttimes the youngest child in a family) proceeds approval simply by acting cute and harmless. Satir, a warm, caring, nurturing person—but likewise capable of being fearlessly direct—inevitably tried to facilitate directly talk between family members, encouraging them to be congruent in their communications, matching words to feelings to body opinion, without qualification.

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Table 9.ane Four Dysfunctional Advice Stances Adopted Nether Stress (Satir)

		Typical
Category	Caricature	Exact Expression	Body Posture	Inner Feeling
Placater	Service	"Any y'all desire	Grateful, boot-	"I am like a cipher.
		is okay, I'm just hither	licking, begging,	Without you I am dead.
		to make you happy."	self-flagellating	I am worthless."
Blamer	Power	"You lot never do any-	Finger pointing,	"I am solitary and
		thing correct. What is	loud, tyrannical,	unsuccessful."
		the affair with you lot?"	enraged

Super-	Intellect	"If one were to observe
reasonable		advisedly, ane might
		notice the workworn
		hands of someone
		present here."

Monotone voice,	"I feel vulnerable."
stiff, automobile-like,
computer-like

Irrelevant	Spontaneity Words unrelated to	In abiding	"Nobody cares. In that location is
	what others are saying.	movement,	no identify for me."
	For example, in midst	constant chatter,
	of family unit dispute:"What	distracting
	are nosotros having for dinner?"

Source: Based on Bandler, Grinder, & Satir, 1976

The "Seed" Model

In her workshops, Satir often presented two contrasting views of the world, which she labeled the "Threat and Reward" model and the "Seed" model. Relationships in the former suppose a hierarchy in which some people define rules for others to follow without question. The hierarchy is based on roles that powerful individuals concur on to for life. While those on peak are non necessarily malevolent, their behavior helps create individuals who feel weak and accept low self-esteem. Conformity is expected in the Threat and Reward model, whether based on gender or lower-status positions in order. The price of nonconformity is guilt, fearfulness, or rejection. Resentment and hostile feelings also are common, and for some people feelings of hopelessness may exist present.

In the Seed model, personhood rather than function determines identity, and every person is built-in with a potential that may be fulfilled. While roles and status differences be (parent-child, doctor-patient), they define relationships merely within certain contexts and are non based on permanent status or role differences outside of that context. In the Seed model, change is viewed as an ongoing life process and an opportunity for growth. Satir was a strong abet of the Seed model, insisting that given the proper conditions of nurture, children, like seedlings, can develop into healthy adults.

A useful exercise for families fixed into rigidly	during the session. The results are often eye open-
defined roles for their members is to inquire each per-	ers and may atomic number 82 to joint efforts to change their
son to play an unaccustomed function for 10 minutes	communication styles.

EXPERIENTIAL MODELS 227

Family Cess and Intervention

Satir tried to assistance people feel good about themselves, often as a consequence of her own boundless, optimistic approach to life. She was less concerned with conducting a formal assessment or zeroing in on the specific content of presenting problems than she was with getting to work clarifying and improving family communication. Her diagnostic understanding of the family came out of her developing human relationship with each of its members. She tended to work with families in terms of their members'twenty-four hours- to-day performance and their emotional experiences with each other. She taught people coinciding ways of communicating by helping to restore the utilize of their senses and the ability to go far affect with and accept what they were really feeling. Thus, she helped individuals (and families) build their sense of self-worth; she opened upward possibilities for making choices and bringing about changes in relationships (Bandler, Grinder, & Satir, 1976).

Considering Satir believed homo beings have within them all the resources they need in gild to flourish, she directed her interventions at helping families proceeds admission to their nourishing potentials—and then learn to use them.This is a growth-producing approach in which she encouraged people to take whatsoever risks were necessary in taking charge of their own lives. Early in the therapy process, Satir would present herself as a teacher introducing the family to a new language, helping them to understand their communication "discrepancies," blocking the kinds of repetitive sequences that end with members falling into the incongruent family advice styles discussed earlier.

Satir'due south chief talent was every bit a therapist and trainer rather than a theory builder or researcher. She aimed at accessibility in her writing style, consistent with her desire for clear and directly advice, although her concepts (self-esteem, family unit hurting, family health) ofttimes lacked precision. She was a vigorous, nurturant, empathetic, downwards-to earth, massively perceptive person who engaged a family unit authoritatively from the first session onward. She spoke simply and directly, kept upwardly a running business relationship of what she was doing with the family, tried to pass forth her communication skills to family members, so bundled encounters between members according to the rules she had taught them.

In the following example from her early on, if somewhat dated work (Satir, 1967), the parents and their children, Johnny (age 10) and Patty (age 7), are being seen together; Johnny, the identified patient, is having behavior issues at schoolhouse. Satir wants to clarify what ideas each fellow member has about what to wait from therapy and why each is there. Note how she tries to help the family unit members (a) recognize individual differences amidst them by having each member speak for himself or herself; (b) accept disagreements and differing perceptions of the same situation; and most important,

(c) say what they see, think, and feel in gild to bring disagreements out into the open up. In this cursory excerpt we also see Satir's effort to build cocky-esteem in each family

member and to emphasize that each person is unique and has the right to express his or her own views without another person (for instance, a parent) answering for him or her. She lets the family unit know her goals, thus enabling them to know what to expect every bit they work together. Warm and caring herself, with a strong set of humanistic values, Satir stressed the office of intimacy in family unit relationships as a vehicle for growth amid all family unit members. A good for you family, to Satir, is a place where members tin can ask for what they need, a identify where needs are met and individuality is immune to flourish. Dysfunctional families practise not permit individuality, and their members fail to develop a sense of cocky-worth. If parental messages to one some other or to their children

228 CHAPTER 9

B O X 9 . 6 T H E R A P Eastward U T I C E N C O U North T Eastward R

SATIR CLARIFIES FAMILY COMMUNICATION

PATTY: Female parent said nosotros were going to talk about family issues.

THERAPIST: What about Dad? Did he tell you the same thing?

PATTY: No.

THERAPIST: What did Dad say? PATTY: He said we were going for a ride.

THERAPIST: I see. So you got some data from Mother and some information from Dad. What almost you, Johnny. Where did you get your information?

JOHNNY: I don't remember.

THERAPIST: Yous don't call up who told you lot? MOTHER: I don't recall I said anything to him, come

to think of information technology. He wasn't around at the fourth dimension, I guess. THERAPIST: How about you lot, Dad? Did you say

anything to Johnny?

FATHER: No, I thought Mary had told him. THERAPIST: (to Johnny) Well, then, how could y'all

call up if zippo was said?

JOHNNY: Patty said nosotros were going to see a lady most the family.

THERAPIST: I see. And then you got your information from your sister, whereas Patty got a clear message from both Mother and Dad. (Shortly, she asks the parents what they remember saying.)

THERAPIST: How nigh that, Mother? Were you lot and Dad able to work this out together—what you would tell the children?

MOTHER: Well, you lot know, I think this is one of our problems. He does things with them and I do another.

FATHER: I think this is a pretty unimportant thing to worry virtually.

THERAPIST: Of form it is, in i sense. But so we can use it, you know, to encounter how letters get across in the family. 1 of the things nosotros work on in families is how family members communicate—how conspicuously they become their messages beyond. We will have to see how Mother and Dad tin assemble so that Johnny and Patty can get a clear message.

(Afterwards, she explains to the children why the family is there.)

THERAPIST: Well, then. I'll tell yous why Mother and Dad take come hither. They have come hither because they were unhappy almost how things were going in the family and they want to work out ways so that anybody tin get more pleasure from family unit life. (Satir, 1967, pp. 143–145)four

are incongruent or confusing, then family communication beyond generations tends to be similarly unclear or confounded. Parents with low cocky-esteem communicate poorly and contribute to feelings of low self-esteem in their children.

In an early technique, Satir initiated a family'southward handling by compiling a family life fact chronology to sympathize the history of the family'southward development by depicting central elements in its evolution, beginning with the nativity of the oldest grandparents. Her goal was to force family members to remember virtually characteristic family patterns and especially about the relevant concepts that had formed the basis for their developing relationships.

4A more than detailed description and analysis of Satir's piece of work with a family can be found in Satir and Baldwin (1983). The major portion of the book is devoted to a transcript of ane of Satir's family therapy demonstrations, including a stride-past-step caption of her techniques and interventions.

EXPERIENTIAL MODELS 229

While she shares with Whitaker the idea that the therapist makes use of himself or herself in dealing with a family, his methods were more than apt to reverberate his psychodynamic beginnings, while hers revealed her debt to Carl Rogers and the humanistic movement's striving for fulfillment and cocky-actualization. Satir believed the therapist must be a resource person who shows the family how to alter, how to get in touch with their own feelings, how to mind to others, how to enquire for clarification if they do not understand another person'southward message, and then on. Through her gentle, caring, matter-of-fact questioning, Satir enabled parents to listen to their children'south statements and opinions, perhaps for the first time; she also helped the children to understand their parents' views and behavior. In time, through such a feedback procedure, congruent advice replaces the blaming, placating, super-reasonable, and irrelevant family advice styles described earlier.

Family Reconstruction

Another therapeutic innovation adult by Satir in the tardily 1960s, family unit reconstruction attempts to guide clients to unlock dysfunctional patterns stemming from their families of origin. The technique blends elements of Gestalt therapy, guided fantasy, hypnosis, psychodrama, office playing, and family sculpting (every bit noted earlier, physically molding family members into characteristic poses representing one family member's view of family relationships at a detail moment—say, after the death of a grandmother). The thought is to shed outgrown family rules and dislodge early on misconceptions. Used with families as well as in group therapy settings (Nerin, 1986), family reconstruction is a process that takes family unit members through sure stock-still stages of their lives. By reenacting their family unit's multigenerational drama, members have an opportunity to repossess their roots, and in the process mayhap view erstwhile perceptions in a new low-cal, thereby irresolute entrenched perceptions, feelings, and beliefs (Nerin, 1989).

Generally speaking, family reconstruction has 3 goals: (a) to reveal to family members the source of their former learning; (b) to enable them to develop a more than realistic picture of the personhood of their parents; and (c) to pave the way for members to find their own personhood. The technique is said to be particularly useful for dealing with family bug when at that place is little or no access to the real family of origin.

Inside a grouping setting, commonly with plenty members so that split up actors tin portray each family unit member, the client (here called the Explorer) elicits the aid of others to play key family unit roles in the history of the Explorer'south extended family across at to the lowest degree three generations. With the therapist interim every bit the Guide, the Explorer works through lingering family conflicts (for case,"healing"a relationship between him and his mother) in an effort to reconstruct the past mysteries of his or her life, come up abroad with a new understanding of by events, and as a consequence become free to maximize his or her potential.

The Guide leads the Explorer through the reconstruction, request questions based on a chronological business relationship of the family history extending over several generations. A trusting relationship betwixt Guide, Explorer, and auxiliary members is essential if the Explorer is to maximize learning from the process.

Satir is quoted (Nerin, 1989) every bit saying:

When one views human life equally sacred, as I do, family reconstruction becomes a spiritual too every bit a cognitive experience to free human energy from the shackles of the past, thus paving the style for the evolvement of being more fully human. (p. 55)

230 Affiliate NINE

The Avanta Network

For the last decade of her life, Satir's influence waned in the family therapy movement, probably because of disharmonize with other leaders and her interest in changing larger systems. She moved away from the mainstream of the family therapy movement.five While continuing to travel effectually the earth as a kind of roving emissary of humanistic family therapy, Satir was persuaded to effort to supply a systematic rationale for her interventions, so that her style could be learned by others and not merely represent a technique unique to her. With ii colleagues who had analyzed and devised a model of Satir's linguistic fashion with families (Bandler, Grinder, & Satir, 1976), she began to place the key elements in her therapeutic approach: challenging the built-in expectations in the family's existing communication patterns; helping the family members work together to empathise what they want in terms of modify; preparing the family unit for a new growth experience; helping the members acquire a new family unit process for coping; and providing the tools they will need to keep the change process subsequently therapy. Virtually important, these researchers' linguistic assay indicated that Satir taught the actual skills necessary to communicate differently every bit a family. Having learned these skills, family members presumably would be able to cope more creatively and finer with any new trouble or crisis using the strategies they themselves developed during family therapy.

Having developed a worldwide following, Satir turned her attention to larger systems. In 1977, as an outgrowth of her humanistic orientation, she formed the Avanta Network (avante is Italian for "moving ahead"; thus, Avanta referred to "going across"), a nonprofit organization for training others in her therapeutic outlook and procedures.

Despite Satir's enormous influence on the field—she was judged during her lifetime to be one of the best family therapy teachers in the world (Braverman, 1986)— her artistically intuitive way of working with families has a dwindling number of followers today. Maybe this is because many continue to perceive her interventions to be more a manifestation of her personality and clinical inventivenss—and thus hard to learn—than a systematic set of therapeutic procedures based on a theoretical structure. Some efforts are nether way, however, to integrate her approach with emotionally focused therapy that is solidly grounded in explicit theory, human relationship principles, and therapeutic skills and processes (Brubaker, 2006).

Her contributions—an insistence on the importance of open up and direct communication, her attempt to assistance clients build self-esteem, her belief in the resiliency of every family unit—were essential to family unit therapy's early development and a needed balance

vAne issue hastening Satir'south deviation—according to Pittman (1989), who was present—occurred in Venezuela in 1974, at a meeting of lath members of the influential journal Family Process. In a heated debate with Salvador Minuchin regarding the hereafter direction of family therapy, Minuchin criticized what he regarded as Satir's evangelical approach, insisting that more than than the healing power of dearest was involved in repairing dysfunction within a family. Satir argued otherwise, calling on her colleagues to bring together her crusade for nothing less than the salvation of humankind through family therapy. When information technology became clear to all assembled that Minuchin'southward position represented the management in which the field was headed, Satir, dissatisfied with its limited mission, directed her efforts away from mainstream family therapy and focused her energies on the Avanta Network and similar organizations.

EXPERIENTIAL MODELS 231

to rival approaches less concerned with emotionality. Beyond that, Cheung (1997) suggests that Satir'south emphasis on the prime number importance of language, her conventionalities that people take the potential to change and make their own choices, and her view of the therapist as participant-facilitator may correspond an early influence consistent with current social construction theories. In Cheung'due south view, family unit reconstruction resembles a narrative approach that affords an opportunity to reexamine beliefs and reconstruct meanings regarding ane's past experiences.

Due eastMOTIONALLY FOCUSED COUPLE THERAPY

(1000REENBERG AND JOHNSON)

What'south new in experiential family therapy are efforts to integrate its focus on the Self with a systems outlook, presenting a model grounded in explicit theory and supported by effectiveness research. Emotionally focused therapy views couples in both intrapsychic and interactional terms, helping them gain admission to what is emotionally significant for each of the partners. At the same fourth dimension, information technology helps them examine what guides their experiences and deportment, and assists their explorations through the ongoing transactions occurring in the close, personal therapist-customer(s) relationship.

EFCT's focus is on the process betwixt people, not what is inherent in each person. Each partner learns to examine how his or her interactions with the other set off cues that maintain distress and dysfunction between the pair. Here the emphasis is on helping clients explore their moment-to-moment inner experiences and relationship events, specially the rigid patterns that block emotional date. The therapist's role becomes i of a facilitator, knowing how to help clients explore particular kinds of experiences, rather than the practiced who knows what the customer is experiencing (Greenberg, Rice, & Elliott, 1996). Greenberg (2002) has described the therapist's task as "coaching" clients to work through their feelings rather than command or avoid them.

Leading Figures

Susan Johnson (2002; 2004) a Canadian psychologist at the University of Ottawa, is also director of the Center for Emotionally Focused Therapy and the Ottawa Couple and Family Found. Les Greenberg (1999, 2002), a psychologist at York University in Toronto, Canada, is the manager of that academy's Psychotherapy Research Centre. Together, the two are the originators and main proponents of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, considered to be among the best empirically validated couples interventions currently bachelor. In addition to their separate publications, the 2 take written books together (Greenberg & Johnson, 1988) and each has published numerous books, articles, and chapters with others over the past xx years.

A Cursory, Integrative Approach

This short-term (8-10 sessions) experiential approach is an outgrowth of humanistic therapy, peculiarly the client-centered procedures of Carl Rogers (creating a safe

232 CHAPTER NINE

therapeutic environment and modeling agile empathic understanding), and Fritz Perls's Gestalt therapy (directing clients toward greater awareness past engaging in res- olution-enhancing affective processes). Add to this mix the contribution of Satir, particularly her emphasis on congruent communication and closeness in the therapist-customer relationship, equally well as an adaptation of Bowlby'south contribution of zipper theory directed at adult love relationships.

EFCT practitioners believe that nosotros humans take an inherent tendency to maximize our capabilities, to actualize ourselves. We also organize what we run across and give information technology meaning, filtered through our current emotional states and the ways in which we organize our experiences. If a couple tin can exist helped to modify their negative emotional patterns, to bond to one another with positive, caring emotion, and learn to restructure their relationship so that they get more attuned and responsive to each other, and so therapeutic changes tin can occur. A sudden surge of emotional intensity in a couple's interactions alerts the therapist that the couple is "caught in dealing with an attachment injury"( Johnson, Makinen, & Millikin, 2001, p. 147).

Courtesy of Susan Johnson

The Alter Process

The thrust of emotionally focused couples therapy becomes, showtime, helping couples place repetitive negative interactive sequences that restrict accessibility to one another, and second, aiding them to redefine their problem in terms of its underlying and compelling emotional blocks. As the therapist helps them reprocess and restructure these rigid patterns, each partner is better able to form a secure sense of zipper and emotional connectedness to the other.

Greenberg and Johnson (1988) believe modify occurs as partners proceeds new experiences, on an emotionally meaningful level, of new aspects of themselves, of their partners, and of the new interactions.

Skills for enhancing empathic exploration and understanding of one another are taught, and specific exercises are directed by EFCT practitioners to aid couples in recognizing and identifying their ain and their partner'southward internal cognitive, emotional, and bodily processes. Brubaker (2006) suggests that what Satir was able to attain intuitively, such as seemingly magically unearthing positive intentions and resources in all presenting problems, EFCTers try to do systematically, offering a step-by-step series of therapeutic tasks, in manual class, to facilitate emotional change.

Specifically, EFCT focuses on helping clients restructure negative interactive patterns (attacking-withdrawing, pursuing-distanc-

Susan Johnson, Ed.D. ing) that have get habitual and have created emotional removal or remoteness or accept led to attack-attack appointment. In dis-

tressed relationships, these patterns become rigid and laden with affect, consequently acting to curtail closeness or trust and precluding the evolution of new patterns or responses. The emotionally focused therapist tries to modify the cardinal emotional experiences of both partners, the positions they take in this relationship dance, and the relationship events that define the quality of their attachment in order for them to build secure emotional bonds (Johnson & Greenberg, 1995).

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Attachment Theory and Developed Relatedness

Attachment theory6 (Bowlby, 1969) plays a primal office here in offer a basis for explaining how developed relationships become troubled and dysfunctional. Each of us needs the anticipated emotional accessibility and responsiveness of significant others in order to achieve a sense of personal security, to experience a sense of trust and rubber, to feel self-confident. If not forthcoming, there is no emotional engagement, and the seeker is left feeling asunder, frustrated, angry, depressed, and ultimately detached. Nether such weather of despair, destructive interactive patterns are about sure to follow.

As Johnson (2003) observes:

. . . when one partner fails to answer at times when the other partner'south attachment needs become urgent, these events will have a momentous and disproportional negative impact on the affective tone of the relationship and its level of satisfaction. Conversely, when partners are able to reply at such times, this will potentiate the connection between them. (p. 266)

Marital distress, then, signals the failure of an attachment relationship to provide security, protection, or closeness, resulting in anxiety and a sense of vulnerability in i or both partners. Couples may hibernate their chief emotions (their existent feelings, such as

6The concept of attachment is used somewhat differently hither than in object relations theory. Acknowledging that early on zipper bonds provide the model for after adult relationships, emotionally focused therapists view all humans equally needing security and protection; in distressed relationships, these substantially good for you attachment needs are thwarted due to the couple'southward rigid pattern of interaction. EFCT tries to help partners in close relationships create secure attachment bonds ( Johnson, 2003).

234 CHAPTER NINE

C L I N I C A L N O T Due east
A rageful spouse who declares he or she has been	other signs of caring were urgently needed. If unre-
betrayed by a mate is likely experiencing a powerful	solved, the injured partner is probable to bring the inci-
attachment injury. The partner, attending a signifi-	dent up repeatedly, sometimes over many years, as
deceit family event such equally a birthday party or funeral,	a symbolic example of the other'south untrustworthi-
was seen as emotionally unavailable or unrespon-	ness and lack of caring.
sive or inattentive at a key moment when support or

fearfulness of rejection) and in their place display defensive or coercive emotions (secondary, reactive emotions such as expressing anger or blaming when afraid), leading to negative interactions in which each partner fears revealing his or her chief emotions. Repeated over time, this pattern builds fears of trusting i'southward partner enough to exhibit honest primary emotions, which in turn go buried even farther. EFCT therapists use the therapeutic human relationship to help the couple access and reprocess the primary emotions underlying their interactional positions, enhance their emotional bond, and change their negative interactional sequences toward increased attachment security.

Steps in the Handling Manual

In contrast with the other forms of experiential family therapy described in this chapter— which typically rely heavily on the charisma of the practitioner—hither Johnson and Greenberg (1995) offer a step-by-step treatment manual for conducting EFCT so others tin replicate the therapy process:

one. Delineating disharmonize bug in the core struggle

ii. Identifying the negative interaction bicycle

3. Accessing the unacknowledged feelings underlying interactional positions

iv. Reframing the problem in terms of underlying feelings, attachment needs, and negative cycles

5. Promoting identification with disowned needs and aspects of self, and integrating these into relationship interactions

6. Promoting acceptance of partner's experiences and new interaction patterns

seven. Facilitating the expression of needs and wants, and creating emotional appointment

viii. Establishing the emergence of new solutions

9. Consolidating new positions

A Final Comment

In addition to spelling out these clinical procedures, EFCT has provided data-based studies demonstrating the effectiveness of this approach in a variety of clinical situations with at-risk populations (e.thousand., trauma victims, marital distress, various family mental health problems) (Baucom, Shoham, Mueser, Daiuto, & Stickle, 1998; Dunn & Schwebel, 1995; Johnson, Hunsley, Greenberg, & Schindler, 1999). These combined efforts—operationalizing therapeutic intervention procedures, supported past inquiry demonstrating successful outcomes—augur well for the revitalization of the experiential approach to family therapy.

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Source: https://studfile.net/preview/4654252/page:29/

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