Family

02
D. John Antony, O.F.M.Cap., 2005
FAMILY
COUNSELLING
The Classic Schools
D. John Antony, O.F.M.Cap.
Other Books by the Author:

01. Dynamics of Counselling
02. Skills of Counselling 2nd Edition
03. Types of Counselling
04. Psychotherapies in Counselling
05. Self Psychology Counselling
06. Trauma Counselling
07. Emotions in Counselling
08. Mental Disorders Encountered in Counselling
09. MWgLJ fiy
10. MWgLJj tiff
First Edition
: September 2005
Published by
: Anugraha Publications
Anugraha (Tamil Nadu Capuchin Institute for
Counselling, Psychotherapy and Research)
Nochiodaipatti Post
Dindigul 624 003
Tamil Nadu, India
Tel. 0451 2550100, 2550324, 2550839
Email: [email protected]
ANUGRAHA PUBLICATIONS
Anugraha
(Tamil Nadu Capuchin Institute for Counselling,
Psychotherapy & Research)
Nochiodaipatti, Dindigul 624 003
Tamil Nadu, India
2005
Printed at
: Vaigarai Pathippagam
Beschi College, Dindigul 624 001
Tamil Nadu, India
Tel. 04512430464
Family Counselling
03
04
Acknowledgements
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
TO
MY FAMILY AND
THE FAMILIES OF MY NEIGHBOURHOOD
IN WHICH I GREW UP
TO
UNDERSTAND
THE DYNAMICS OF THE FAMILY
I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to:

Fr. Divakar,O.F.M.Cap., the then Provincial of the Tamil
Nadu Province and his councillors for having permitted me to do
pastoral counselling in Canada and their constant encouragement
that enabled me to write this book;
Fr. Santiago,O.F.M.Cap., for having arranged to provide me
with the necessary fund to publish this book;
The Capuchins of Central Canada -- Mary, Mother of the
Good Shepherd Province, represented by the Provincial Fr. Louis
Mousseau,O.F.M.Cap., who educated me in Pastoral Counselling;
Fr. Joseph McDonald,O.F.M.Cap., and the community of
Joseph House, Berkeley St., Toronto, where I belonged during the
time of writing the book, for the ample time and support provided, that enabled me to concentrate on writing this book;
The Professors at the Toronto Institute of Pastoral Education
(TIPE), Canada, Rev. Lawrence A. Beech, the Director of TIPE,
Rev. Janice Neal, Rev. Allan Ross Gibson, and Rev. Sheila Stevens
for having taught me family counselling and trained me during
the advanced units programme;
Kathleen Gibson, Co-Director, Caven Library, Knox
College, Toronto, Canada, for having gone out of her way to search
for, acquire and supply me with the necessary books;
Mary Ann Georges, Staff Librarian, Centre for Addiction
and Mental Health, Toronto, Canada, for her generous help in
assisting me to find books and use the library facilities;
Dr. K. Soundar Rajan, Ph.D., for his meticulous and painstaking editing, arranging the ideas in logical sequence and do the
proofreading;
Professor R. Amirtham for checking the grammar, correcting the language and giving the final touch and polish, and
Fr. Arul Xavier,O.F.M.Cap., and the community of
Gnanalaya for having been supportive during the time of editing
and doing the publication of this book.
May the Lord bless you, dear friends, for your extraordinary
generosity towards me!
Family Counselling
FAMILY
05
COUNSELLING
TABLE OF CONTENTS
11
2
The Conceptual Foundations
1. Background
5. Family Projection Process
30
6. Multigenerational Transmission Process
31
7. Basic Types of Sibling Position
31
1) The Oldest Child
1
Introduction
Table of Contents
06
13
13
32
(1) Oldest Sister of Sisters
32
(2) Oldest Sister of Brothers
32
(3) Oldest Brother of Brothers
33
(4) Oldest Brother of Sisters
33
2) The Youngest Child
33
1) Systems Thinking
13
(1) Youngest Sister of Sisters
34
2) Systems Thinking in Family Process
14
(2) Youngest Sister of Brothers
34
3) Systems Theory
14
(3) Youngest Brother of Brothers
34
15
(4) Youngest Brother of Sisters
35
2. Salient Concepts
1) Functionalism
15
3) The Middle Child
35
2) Functionalism in Family Counselling
16
4) The Only Child
36
3) General Systems Theory (GST)
16
(1) Male Only Child
37
(1) Homeostasis
17
(2) Female Only Child
37
(2) Constructivism
18
4) Cybernetics of Families
19
8. Emotional Fusion
38
20
9. Emotional Cut-off
39
5) From Cybernetics to Structure
20
10. Societal Emotional Process
42
6) Virginia Satirs Humanizing Effect
21
11. Normal Family Development
43
7) Bowen and Differentiation of Self
22
12. Treatment Techniques
44
8) Family Life Cycle of Evelyn Duvall
23
(1) Circular Causality
3
Family Systems Counselling of Murray Bowen
5) Twins
38
1) Genogram
44
2) The Therapy Triangle
45
3) Relationships experiments
45
1. Theoretical Formulations
24
4) Coaching
45
2. Differentiation of Self
25
5) The I-Position
45
3. Triangles/Triangulation
27
6) Multiple Family Therapy
45
4. Nuclear Family Emotional Process
30
7) Displacement Stories
46
Family Counselling
07
4
Experiential Family Counselling of Virginia Satir and Carl Whitaker
Table of Contents
08
6) Focal Hypothesis
61
7) Internalised Objects
61
47
8) Active
62
2. Family Life
48
9) Interpretations
63
3. Functional vs. Dysfunctional

Communication in Families
10) Aim
63
49
1) Double Bind
50
4. Defensive Stances in coping with Stress
51
1) Placating
53
2) Blaming
53
3) Super-Reasonable
54
4) Irrelevant Behaviour
54
54
1) Family Sculpting
55
2) Family Reconstruction
55
5
Psychoanalytic Family Counselling
1. Sketches of Leading Figures
56
57
1) Freudian Drive Psychology
57
2) Self Psychology
57
3) Object Relations Theory
57
58
4. Development of Behaviour Disorders
58
5. The Goals of Therapy
59
59
1) Triangles
59
2) Starting Point
59
3) Participant Observer
60
4) Focus
60
5) Assessment
61
6
Structural Family Counselling of Salvador Minuchin
66
1) Family Structure
67
2) Subsystems
68
3) Boundaries
69
(1) Rigid Boundaries
70
(2) Diffuse Boundaries
71
(3) Clear Boundaries
72
73
3. Behavioural Disorders
74
75
1) Joining and Accommodating
75
2) Working with Interaction
76
3) Diagnosing
77
4) Highlighting and Modifying Interactions
78
5) Boundary Making
79
6) Unbalancing
79
7) Challenging the Familys Assumptions
80
7
Cognitive-Behavioural Family Counselling
81
83
1) Responses
85
2) Reinforcements
85
09
Family Counselling
Table of Contents
10
87
89
Current Status of Family Counselling
1) Behavioural Parent Training
89
1. Erosion of Boundaries
108
2) Behavioural Couples Counselling
91
2. Postmodernism
109
3) A Cognitive-Behavioural
Approach to Family Counselling
93
3. Constructivism
109
4) Treatment of Sexual Dysfunction
95
4. Collaborative, Conversational Approaches
110
5. The Hermeneutic Tradition
111
6. Social Constructionism
111
7. Narrative Revolution
112
8. Solution-Focused Therapy
113
9. The Feminists Family Counselling
114
1) Mother Blaming
114
2) Looking through the Lens of Gender
115
(1) Assessment
95
(2) Insight and Attitude Change
96
(3) Sensate Focus
96
(4) Tailored Techniques
97
8
Strategic Family Counselling of Jay Haley and Clo Madanes
98
2. Basic Beliefs
98
10
3. Interest in Changing Behaviour
99
Ones Own Way
4. Healthy Families
100
5. Dysfunctional Families
100
1) Symptoms
100
2) Life Cycle
101
3) Triads and Hierarchies
102
1) Paradoxical Intervention or
Prescribing the Symptom
104
104
10. New Emergence
115
1. Therapeutic Spontaneity
117
2. Let Them Unpack in Your Presence
118
3. The First Conjoint Interview
119
4. Individual Interview
119
5. Periodical Individual and Conjoint Interview
119
11
Conclusion
120
(1) Prescribing Strategies
105
Endnotes
128
(2) Restraining Strategies
105
Bibliography
145
(3) Positioning
106
2) Positive Interpretation
106
3) The Pretend Techniques
106
4) Reframing
107
5) The Ordeal Therapy
107
Family Counselling
11
1
INTRODUCTION
Whenever I use the term family counselling, I mean couple
counselling as well, since the concept of family counselling contains within it the nucleus of couple counselling also. I use the
terms counselling and therapy interchangeably.
In this book I shall be dealing with the classic schools of
family counselling. Among the classic schools, I deal with the
theory and practice of the family systems counselling of Murray
Bowen. In his theory is embedded the systems concept. Some of
the salient concepts are triangulation, multigenerational transmission process, emotional fusion, and emotional cut-off.
Then I take up Virginia Satirs and Carl Whitakers experiential family counselling, which has as its background the thinking of the existential philosophers with its emphasis on freedom
and the necessity to discover the essence of ones individuality in
the immediacy of experience. Both the therapists give importance
to the knowledge of functional and dysfunctional communications in families. The concept of double bind is special to experiential family counselling.
Next comes the famous psychoanalytic family counselling.
Psychoanalysis has played a major role in psychology until very
recently. Still some of the psychological schools have their strong
roots in psychoanalysis. Having the Freudian drive psychology as
the basis, we have its overgrowth as object relations theory and
self-psychology. Self-psychology, for example, has a tremendous
influence on counselling, especially with its colossal emphasis on
empathy. Gone are the days when counsellors used to confront
clients to such an extent that the clients would hesitate to go to the
same counsellor for subsequent counselling. With the arrival of
self-psychology, the client feels understood, upheld, validated and
supported. The counsellor gets into the clients shoes to see the
12
Introduction
clients world from the clients perspective. This is the special merit
of self-psychology. For all these developments, psychoanalysis forms
the basis, though at present the developments seem much different from their source.
Then comes the structural family counselling of Salvador
Minuchin for whom the social context is of paramount importance. Its main belief is that the whole and the parts can be properly explained only in terms of the relations that exist between the
parts. His theory advocates that our psychic life is not merely internal, but interactional with the environment. His valuable concepts for the understanding of family counselling are subsystems,
and boundaries. Then follows cognitive-behavioural family counselling. Its main thrust is that our thinking influences our emotions and behaviours. Therefore instead of changing the behaviour
one would do well to change his/her thinking. Finally I end up
with speaking about strategic family counselling of Jay Haley and
Clo Madanes. They basically believe that clients are not pathological and they can change themselves rapidly. They have developed a set of creative ways to generate change in the clients lives.
At the end I also strongly advocate to develop ones own method
in family counselling, and for that matter counselling itself. We
can never be the duplicate of another individual. Our individuality has to be expressed in every sphere of our activity, especially in
counselling. Though we may follow certain schools of psychology in our counselling approach, it is worth being original in our
approach.
With this brief introduction I invite you to enter into the
different classic schools of family counselling and develop your
own way of doing family counselling.
Family Counselling
13
2
THE CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS
Like any other social science, family counselling had to grow
from its infancy to a mature stature. It definitely needed concepts
to express its experiences and propose guidelines in conceptual
framework. It was prudent enough to borrow the concepts from
other fields that are akin to its attitudes and value system. A perceptive learner of family counselling can easily sense in his/her
study the conceptual influences from other fields.
1. Background1
1) Systems Thinking
Computers were introduced in the 1950s. The speed with

which they perform functions has been ever increasing. The
increasing quantities of information have reached new thresholds
of complexity, so that even the old ways of making sense out of
information have become inadequate. Systems thinking began as a
response to the dimension of the information problem. It focuses
on the processes that govern the data rather than on the content. It
concentrates on the principles of organization that give meaning
to the data than on the cause-effect connections that link bits of
information. One of the characteristics of systems thinking is its
departure from traditional notions of linear cause and effect. In
linear causation, A causes B, B causes C, C causes D, and D causes
E. In multiple causation, A+B+C+D cause E. Here A, B, C and
D together cause E. Systems thinking may resemble multiple
causation but it is different. Though A, B, C and D come together
to cause E, they are not independent forces themselves but rather
they are interdependent with one another. Every part of the
system including the effect E is connected to, or can have its own
effect upon every other part. Thus each component, instead of
having its own discrete identity or input, operates as part of a larger
14
whole. Here what we observe is that the components do not function according to their nature, but according to their position in
the network. Now what has become the unit of study is the structure ABCDEF. If one were to study a part outside the system, one
will find that the part in question will function differently outside
the system. Again the part will function differently even inside
the system depending upon where it is placed.
2) Systems Thinking in the Family Process
When we apply nonlinear thinking to family process, we

understand emotional phenomena in terms of interdependent variables. Thus we conclude 1. The atmosphere necessary for physical
symptoms to erupt in a family may occur only when more than
one condition, some physical and some emotional, are both present
simultaneously. 2. Mother-child relationships must be understood
not only in terms of their mutual influence upon one another, but
also in terms of the emotional field in which they are both situated. 3. The same mother-child relationships will have a different
character depending on how the father is functioning, not just on
how he relates to the child, or to the mother, but by the extent to
which his presence throughout that nuclear system tends to be
reactive, distant, or nonanxious. 4. If we take trauma, it is the
emotional system of the family that either sets up the precondition for the quantity of damage a shock can promote, or extends
the effects of that shock by its continued reaction to the event.
Thus a shocking event will leave traumatic residue to the extent
some other variable such as guilt is present. It is not just shock or
guilt that alone can cause trauma. Therefore now the focus is on
the systemic forces of emotional process rather than on the content of specific symptoms.
3) Systems Theory
One of the conceptual influences is from the systems theory

with the attitude that the whole is greater than the sum of its
parts. But we should remember that systems theory itself was not
well defined and so it had many variations. We can notice this lack
of coherence on the part of the systems theory. The concepts that
are now used in family counselling can be directly linked to other
fields such as biology from which we have the concept systems;
Family Counselling
15
physiology from which we have the concept homeostasis; cybernetics from which we have the concept feedback; psychosomatic
medicine from which we have the concept of the social context of
illness; community mental health from which we have the therapeutic community; anthropology from which we have the
concepts of structuralism, functionalism, the participant observer;
and social work from which we have the concept the social
context of problems. Let us consider in this chapter some of the
most salient concepts that have made a deep impact on family
counselling.
2. Salient Concepts
1) Functionalism
The idea is not definitely foreign to imagine the influence of

anthropology on family counselling since the person who most
influenced family counselling with systems ideas was Gregory
Bateson, an anthropologist. For a protracted time, anthropology
was bound by Darwin with his theory of cultural evolution, which
speaks of the various stages through which humans evolved from
primitive societies to our modern civilization. Their studies were
done outside of their original contexts. Against this evolutionist
tendency, functionalism arose between 1900 and 1930. The
British anthropologists Bronislaw Malinowski and A. RadcliffeBrown were opposed to the historical studies without the context.
These two persons wanted to study cultures as social systems in
the present. Thus they studied cultures ethnographically, as
participant observers. They understood cultural ceremonies and
customs in context, looking for the function that the cultural
practices served for the larger social network. They argued that
the function of any kind of social behaviour served the larger group.
What we saw in the field of anthropology can be seen in counselling also. Psychoanalysis was trying to study the personal history
of individual. The family counsellors reaction against historical
and decontextualized theorizing of psychoanalysis was similar to
the reaction of anthropological functionalists against the same
historical and decontextualized qualities of evolutionism. Perhaps
one of the drawbacks of the family therapys functionalist is his/
her inclination to view any behaviour as potentially adaptive.
16
The functionalist tendency entered sociology through the

work of Emile Durkheim. His proposal was that the kinds of
behaviour society considers deviant or pathological may play a
socially useful role in bringing the larger group together. Some
sociologists went still further and suggested that social groups may
need deviants for their stability. This became the function-of-thesymptom thinking of family therapists.2
2) Functionalism in Family Counselling
The functionalist notion that deviant behaviour may serve a

protective function for a social group was adopted by family counsellors and they applied it to the symptoms of family members.
Their idea of identified patient was a scapegoat, a victim on whom
other family members focused and with whom they fought to avoid
having to deal with each other. Later it dawned on them that the
scapegoats were active volunteers. These symptom-bearers willingly
sacrificed their own welfare for the greater good of the group. The
idea that families profit from the victims troubles at times is farfetched.3
3) General Systems Theory (GST)4
The laws that apply to biological organisms might also apply

to other domains; from the human mind to the global ecosphere
was the proposal of Ludwig von Bertalanffy, a prominent biologist. His work had some influence on all the social sciences. He
described the system as any entity maintained by the mutual interaction of its parts, from atom to cosmos. He said that a system
can be composed of smaller systems and can also be part of a larger
system. Therefore the same organized entity can be regarded as
either a system or a subsystem, depending upon our focus of interest. His idea that a system was more than the sum of its parts was
well accepted. When things are organized into a system, something else emerges. That which emerges is the relationship of the
component parts. Thus he focused on the pattern of relationships
within a system rather than on the substance of its parts. Family
counsellors regarded the family as a system but ignored the larger
systems of community, culture, and politics in which families are
embedded. Family counsellors did well to take his ideas and apply
to counselling the ideas that a family system should be seen as
Family Counselling
17
18
more than just a collection of people and that counsellors should

focus on the interaction among family members rather than on
individual personalities. These ideas have become the central
tenets of family counselling now.
how the family machine works and how to repair it. In this
approach we may be ignoring the value of the familys functional
state and, the culture in which it exists. It is a value-free mechanistic view of the family.
(1) Homeostasis
(2) Constructivism
Family systems thinking locates a familys problem in the

nature of the system rather than in the nature of its parts. This
relocation of the problem is linked to the concept of homeostasis.
Homeostasis is the tendency of any set of relationships to strive
perpetually, in self-corrective ways, to preserve the organizing principles of its existence. Accordingly the family model understands
a systems problems in terms of an imbalance that must have
occurred in the network of its various relationships, irrespective
of the nature of the individual personalities. For example, it does
not matter what the problem is with the child, but it matters very
much in what context the child is placed. Poor school performance
or strained peer relationships are in themselves symptoms of some
underlying problem with the system in which the child finds itself.
Bertalanffy gave importance to the human belief systems. In

this way he was reacting to the logical positivism, which holds
that the only valid data are those derived from observations that
can be empirically verified. Against this logical positivism,
Bertalanffy proposed the term perspectivism which denotes that
while reality exists, one can never be fully objective about it, since
ones view is filtered through ones particular perspective.
Bertalanffys perspectivism is something similar to the philosophy of Kant, known as constructivism. Constructivism had a major
impact on family counselling in the 1980s and early 1990s. Counsellors began to recognize that the way clients interpret events
largely determines the way they interact with each other. Counselling became an exercise of changing meanings, and
constructivism gave counsellors a philosophy that justified that
meaning-focused practice. Constructivists believe that our cognition is not a mirroring of ultimate reality but rather is an active
process, in which we create models of the world. These models
direct what we actually see, what we consider as fact.
Constructivism should not be taken to mean that since no one
can be certain about absolute reality, any interpretation is as valid
as any other, and so counsellors are free to reframe reality in any
way they want as long as the family is ready to accept it.
Bertalanffy says that our inability to know absolute reality
implies that we should be more concerned with our basic values
and assumptions because some perspectives are ecologically destructive.
Though Bertalanffy used the metaphor of organism for

social groups, the organism he spoke of was an open system continuously interacting with its environment. Living organisms are
creatively and spontaneously active and use many ways of maintaining their organization. It is not that they are solely motivated
to maintain the status quo. But family counsellors took the concept of homeostasis, a tendency of the systems to regulate themselves to maintain cohesion in response to changes in the environment. The word homeostasis was coined by the French physiologist Claude Bernard in the 19th century to describe the regulation of such conditions as body temperature or blood sugar level.
It may fit some of the behaviour of the organism. But if we
overemphasise this idea we will land up considering the organism
as a machine. Bertalanffy was against considering the organism in
terms of homeostasis, which reduced the organism to the level of a
machine. Though the term homeostasis is an important concept
in family counselling, its limitations are widely accepted. If this
mechanistic view is taken strictly, then counsellors simply study
By recapitulating what Bertalanffy said we arrive at: 1. A

system is more than the sum of its parts (like a clock is more than
the collection of wheels and springs). 2. The emphasis on interaction within and among systems versus reductionism (reductionism is a tendency to analyse phenomena by dissecting whole
systems and studying their parts in isolation). 3. Human systems
Family Counselling
19
as ecological organism versus mechanism. 4. Concept of

equifinality (Equifinality is the ability to reach a given final goal
in a variety of ways). In nonliving systems, the final state and the
means to that state are fixed. This term in biology identifies the
organisms inner-directed ability to protect or restore its wholeness, as in the human bodys mobilization of antibodies and its
ability to repair skin and bone. 5. Homeostatic reactivity versus
spontaneous activity. 6. Importance of ecologically sound beliefs
and values versus valuelessness and 7. Perspectivism
(constructivism) versus logical positivism. These themes are still
in use in family counselling.
4) Cybernetics of Families5
Cybernetics was developed and named from the Greek word

for helmsman by Norbert Weiner. Norbert Weiner was a mathematician who was asked during World War II, to work on the
problem of how to make guns to hit moving targets. From that he
expanded his ideas about cybernetic systems. It simply signifies
systems that are self-correcting as humans and animals operate.
Gradually this idea spread to other disciplines that refined or
expanded the concept of cybernetics. The central theme of cybernetics is the feedback loop, which is a process by which a system
gets the information necessary to self-correct in its effort to maintain a steady state or move toward a preprogrammed goal. Naturally this feedback should include information about the systems
performance relative to its external environment as well as the
relationship among the systems parts. These feedback loops can
be positive or negative. Consideration of its positive and negative
quality refers to the effect they have on deviations from a steady,
homeostatic state within the system, and not to whether they are
beneficial or not. Whereas negative feedback reduces deviation or
change, positive feedback amplifies it.
Application of cybernetics to family counselling touches
several phenomena. They are: 1. Family rules, which govern the
range of behaviour a family system can tolerate (it is the familys
homeostatic range) 2. Negative feedback mechanisms that families use to enforce those rules such as guilt, double messages,
symptoms 3. Sequences of family interaction around a problem
20
that characterize a systems reaction to it like the feedback loops

around a deviation and 4. What happens when a systems accustomed negative feedback is ineffective, triggering positive feedback
loops.
(1) Circular Causality
It was Gregory Bateson who introduced the concept of
cybernetics to family counselling after meeting Wiener. As a
result of the introduction of cybernetics and expansion of its theme
in family counselling, we have the concept of circular causality
making a shift from the linear causality. According to this concept, pathology is not something caused by events in the past but
something that is part of ongoing, circular feedback loops. Linear
concept is a medical, psychodynamic, and behavioural model.
Bateson opined that the concept of linear causality was useful for
describing the nonliving world of forces and objects and it was not
adequate for the world of living things. In living things, there are
communication, relationships and force, which are not accounted
for by linear causality. You will know the difference between
linear and circular causality if you throw a stone at a wall and at a
human person. In the first, you can predict the result, but not in
the second.
5) From Cybernetics to Structure6
Jay Haley believed that communication was motivated by

the desire of persons to control each other. His interest in power
led him to consider the hierarchy, or generational power structure,
of families. He viewed child problems as being the result of coalitions that cross the boundary between children and parents. He
spoke of hierarchy and boundary. His interest moved toward the
structure of families rather than just their communication circuits.
In 1967 he joined Salvador Minuchin.
Unlike cybernetics, structural family theory draws on
organismic (Bertalanffy and cellular biology) and structural-functional (Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown, Levi-Strauss, Parsons) trends
in the social sciences. Accordingly, the family is considered as an
organism, an open system made up of subsystems, each of which
is surrounded by a semipermeable boundary, which is really a set
Family Counselling
21
of rules governing who is included within that subsystem and how

they interact with those outside it. We are aware that the nuclear
family is itself a subsystem of a larger system. We can again break
the family down into subsystems such as mother-child subsystem,
husband-wife subsystem, siblings subsystem, males in the family
subsystem, the females in the family subsystem. Thus any combination of two or more members as differentiated from one or more
other members may be treated as a social system, which is a subsystem of the family as a whole.
By 1955, families were seen in this structural way, as having
subsystems with boundaries separating them. A healthy structure
requires clear boundaries, particularly generational boundaries.
What create a dysfunctional family structure are unclear boundaries (overly rigid or overly diffuse). A symptomatic family member is one of the manifestations of the dysfunctional family structure. Therefore attempts were made to correct the structural flaw
so that the family organism will return to health. Whereas the
cyberneticians saw circular interactions maintaining the problems,
structural therapists saw boundary violations resulting in
inappropriate alliances and coalitions. To change individuals, it
was enough to change their structural context, which is the
network of relationships in which they are. It is also believed that
even an incompetent family member will attain a more competent self if an improvement in the family structure is effected.
Salvador Minuchin took the Bertalanffian view of systems as
open and flexible, and the Parsonian concepts of structure and
emphasis on generational boundaries, for his action-oriented techniques. Thus he provided the first clear map to understanding and
reorganizing families. In the 1970s structural family therapy
became the most popular and influential brand of family therapy.
6) Virginia Satirs Humanizing Effect
On the one hand, family therapy was associated with the

concept of hierarchy with its emphasis on encouraging parents to
become effective disciplinarians. This attempt was augmented by
the work of Minuchin and Haley. On the other hand, Virginia
Satir advocated that parents should be more affectionate and loving to each other and to their children, besides being firmer. Satir
22
argued that the childrens symptoms can serve the function of

distracting from an unhappy marriage and that communication is
the key in the family process. She was interested in the theories of
Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers. Thus her involvement in
humanistic orientation led her to try to change families into a
place for the positive, loving qualities. She encouraged family members to drop the protective masks they show each other and to
discover and express their real feelings. She deviated from the mechanistic aspects. Rejecting the concept of control, she focused on
nurture, being concerned with the experience of individual family members. Definitely she worked to improve communication
and self-esteem.7
7) Bowen and Differentiation of Self8
Haley, Minuchin, and Satir all had indirect contact with

Bateson and his cybernetic perspective. In spite of their differences,
they all shared an interest in changing the current interactional
patterns of the nuclear family system rather than the family of
origin. Murray Bowen did not follow the cybernetic perspective
but evolved his own line influenced by the biological sciences. He
used the term differentiation because of its specific meaning in
the biological sciences. Differentiation of self will mean a
process similar to the differentiation of cells from each other. The
same applies to the term fusion. He coined the phrase undifferentiated family ego mass to suggest that, because of their emotional reactivity, the whole family is like one chaotic conglomerate. Likewise he spoke of the absence of differentiation of self to
indicate that emotions overwhelmed intellect to the point that
everyone reacted automatically and impulsively. For Bowen the
goal of counselling is the differentiation of self of key family members so that they could help the entire family differentiate. Bowen
was in a way echoing the theory of Freud, especially when he
spoke of differentiation meaning control of reason over emotion.
The way one arrives at differentiation implies the evolutionary
theory. He called this process the multigenerational transmission
process. He argued that most children emerge from their families
with the same level of differentiation as their parents, and only a
few emerge with lower or higher levels. The transmission of differentiation is seen as a genetic-like pattern across generations.
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Bowen too believed that the child problems were related to

the parents marriage. The concept of triangles is central to the
theory of Bowen. Faced with anxiety, it is a natural human
tendency to form triangles. When two individuals, especially those
who are not highly differentiated, experience stress, a third person
is ragged in. In this situation, emotion will flow to the third
person. Now with the involvement of the third party, the level of
anxiety will decrease. Bowen believed that if people in their nuclear
and extended families learned to avoid being pulled into a triangle,
they would gradually differentiate. He contended that to understand and improve an individuals family life, it was essential to
examine the multigenerational patterns in which the individual
was embedded.
8) Family Life Cycle of Evelyn Duvall
The concept of the family life cycle comes from sociology

to form the background to the structural and strategic approaches.
It was sociologists Evelyn Duvall and Reuben Hill who began to
apply a developmental framework to families in the 1940s. They
divided family development into discrete stages with different tasks
to be performed at each stage. These stages were later shortened or
increased by later writers. The stages proposed by Duvall are: 1.
Married couples without children, 2. Childbearing families (oldest child: birth-30 months), 3. Families with preschool children
(oldest child: 2-6 years), 4. Families with children (oldest child:
6-13 years), 5. Families with teenagers (oldest child: 13-20 years),
6. Families launching young adults (first child gone to last childs
leaving home), 7. Middle-aged parents (empty nest to retirement),
8. Aging family members (retirement to death of both spouses).9
I have only dealt with a few prominent figures that contributed to family counselling. There are definitely many others who
in their own way shared their mite. Therefore one need not think
that the above-mentioned alone are those who have laid the foundation of family counselling.
24
3
FAMILY SYSTEMS COUNSELLING
OF MURRAY BOWEN
The pioneers of family counselling undoubtedly recognized
that we are the products of social context. Yet they limited their
attention to the nuclear family alone. However, Murray Bowen
family systems counselling is a comprehensive view of human
behaviour. Bowen argued that wherever we go, we carry our unresolved emotional reactivity to our parents, in the form of vulnerability to repeat the same old patterns in every new relationship
we enter into. The Unresolved issues with our original families are
the most important unfinished businesses of our lives.
For Bowen, his theory centred around two counterbalancing
life forces. He called one of them togetherness and the other individuality. In an ideal situation, these two forces are supposed to
be in balance. But if there is an unbalance in the direction of
togetherness, it is called differently as fusion, stuck-togetherness,
and undifferentiation. In his theory differentiation is considered the capacity for autonomous functioning, which helps people
avoid getting caught up in reactive polarities. If there is no differentiation, emotional reactivity results in polarized positions like
pursuer-distancer, and overfunctioning-underfunctioning. The tension we experience in our life situation is the condition that evolved
from mother-child symbiosis, to undifferentiated family ego mass,
to fusion/differentiation. Before we could differentiate a mature,
healthy personality, the unresolved emotional attachment to ones
family must be resolved rather than passively accepted or reactively rejected. Now let us see some of the core concepts of his
theory. 1
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2. Differentiation of the Self2

Differentiation of the self is an intrapsychic and interpersonal
concept. As intrapsychic differentiation, it is the ability to separate feeling from thinking. If one is not differentiated, one can
hardly distinguish thoughts from feelings. Since ones intellect is
so flooded with feelings, one is almost incapable of objective thinking. On the contrary, the differentiated person is able to balance
thinking and feeling, being capable of the restraint and objectivity
that comes with the ability to resist the pull of emotional impulses.
Interpersonally, the ones who are undifferentiated tend to fuse with
others. Lack of differentiation between thinking and feeling goes
hand in hand with lack of differentiation between oneself and others. Because of the inability to think clearly, they tend to react
emotionally that is, positively or negatively to the dictates of the
family members or authority figures. Needless to say that they
have little autonomous identity.
People who are well-differentiated consider carefully the pros
and cons of various choices. They are capable of making rational
decisions because they distinguish between their thoughts and feelings. They may not impose their beliefs on others and are not
defensive or aggressive with people who have beliefs different from
theirs. One need not take well-differentiated persons as non-feeling persons. In fact they are capable of strong emotions and
express them when necessary. They clearly recognize that feelings
are sources of information about what is going on in their lives.
When they choose, they can be very passionate. They are able to
lose themselves in emotions, especially in love-making, which
involves immersing oneself in a world of sensation and feeling and
letting go of boundaries. They are known for their choices in the
sense that they can decide whether to act or not on feelings.
Differentiated persons think through their position and so
they are able to take a stand and set their limits meanwhile
listening to the views of others. They keep themselves open to
new information and are not swayed by threats or emotional blackmail. They tend to respect others and learn from them. They seem
to delight in differences and are not threatened by them. These
things they can do with people in close relationship like spouse,
parents and children.
26
On the contrary, people who cannot distinguish between

thinking and feeling, and thus less well-differentiated, are good at
thing-oriented tasks as opposed to people-oriented tasks. But they
are totally lost in dealing with intimate relationships. They tend to
be extremely sensitive and easily hurt.
Because of their difficulty in distinguishing between thoughts
and feelings, the less well-differentiated people often assume that
their subjective feelings are an accurate reflection of the actual state
of things.
In Bowens theory we find two main variables in human functioning: anxiety and differentiation. Anxiety could be acute or
chronic anxiety. Acute anxiety can occur in response to real threats
and is time-limited. But chronic anxiety generally occurs in response to imagined threats and is not experienced as time-limited.
We can say that acute anxiety is fed by the fear of what is, whereas
chronic anxiety is fed by the fear of what might be.
Differentiation, for Bowen, is a natural, automatic process
through which humans develop from being symbiotically attached
to the mother, in the context of the parental unit, to being an
emotionally separate self in relation to family and others. It can
also mean a process whereby an individual intentionally seeks to
define a self, to become more of a separate self in relation to his/
her family. More specifically, differentiation of self can be
described as the way an individual manages the interplay of the
individuality-and-togetherness-forces within a relationship system.
It is also described as the ability to act for oneself without being
selfish and the ability to act for others without being selfless. In
sum, it is the ability to be an individual while simultaneously functioning as part of a team.
Differentiation can be defined according to the degree of separation between the emotionally reactive and the thoughtful, goaldirected functioning. This description is at the level of the individual. At the level of marriage in a nuclear family, it means a
continuum consisting of the ways the marital partners maintain
the self. It refers to the degree to which the couple are emotionally separate from each other. At the level of the family of origin,
it is the degree to which family members have open, one-to-one
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27
relationships with one another. In this context, undifferentiation

will mean the degree of unresolved attachment between an individual and his/her parents through either overcloseness or cutoff.
3. Triangles/Triangulation3
In popular parlance, a triangle is any three-way relationship.
We can imagine three corners of a triangle, and an individual or a
group of people can be in each corner. If you take the family, the
basic family triangle is father, mother, and child. Eric Berne spoke
of a triangle of roles as persecutor, victim, and rescuer. One of the
corners can also be a thing or an activity, or an issue. Triangles
have both positive and negative functions. Anxiety might arise
when there is either too much closeness or too much distance. In
an extended family, the anxious person reaches out to someone
very easily and becomes calm. But in a nuclear family, anxiety
becomes acute. In a one-to-one relationship, the tension usually
grows. When there is the escalation of tension, people handle it by
triangling in a third person or issue and talk about that. The
triangling individuals can talk about the third party like kids,
friends or work. They have difficulty only in focusing on themselves in the relationship.
If you take a group of three persons, there will tend to be two
who are close (inside) and one who is distant (outside). It is rather
difficult to maintain equal closeness between all three at the same
time. There are times when this pattern is changed periodically by
rotating two another people being close and the third one being
left out. It is also possible that two individuals who are close permanently keep the third party outside. In our relationships, we
find that very little time is devoted to talking together about ones
self and the other and the relationship. Most of the time we spend
talking about other people and things.
Being close with another works well as long as we get on well
with each other but when differences emerge, one of the two will
be tempted to triangle in someone or something else. In triangles
we find two different states. One is a calm state and the other is a
tense state. In a calm triangle, two close individuals get on well
while the third one is longing to be closer. But in a tense triangle,
the two close people may become anxious over the closeness and
28
potential loss of the self and begin to fight. When this happens the
outside person usually wants to stay distant and avoid the other
two but one of the two close members will try to establish a coalition with the outside person.
Whenever we experience difficult relationship in our families, usually there are two individuals along with one or more third
parties. Any two individuals in a family may experience cycles of
closeness and distance. Triangles are likely to develop when they
are distant. Let us see how triangles develop. In a strained relationship, one of the two connects with someone else as a way of gaining an ally. The third person is sensitised either to one partys
anxiety or to the conflict between them, moves in to offer reassurance or calm things down. Certainly triangulation lessens tension
but it freezes the conflict in place. Triangles usually become chronic
diversions that corrupt and undermine family relationships. Since
most family problems are triangular, working with only one or
two individuals may not solve the problem.
An emotional triangle is formed by any three persons or
issues. Its basic law is that when any two parts of a system become
uncomfortable with one another, they will triangle in or focus
upon a third person, or issue, as a way of stabilizing their own
relationship with one another. Therefore, a person may be said to
be triangled if he/she gets caught in the middle as the focus of
such an unresolved issue. In the same way, when an individual
tries to change the relationship of two others, he/she triangles himself/herself into that relationship and often stabilizes the very
relationship he/she was trying to change. In families we find typical triangles such as mother-father-child; a parent and any two
children; a parent, his/her child, and his/her own parents; a parent, a child, and a symptom in the child (like doing badly in school,
drugs, stealing, sexual acting out, allergies); one spouse, the other,
and the others dysfunction (like drinking, gambling, an affair,
depression).
Emotional triangles are known to have some very specific
rules that they invariably obey. These are applicable to any family
or any group of people.
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1. The relationship of any two members of an emotional triangle is

kept in balance by the way a third party relates to each of them
or to their relationship. Therefore when a given relationship is
stuck, there is probably a third person or issue that is part of the
homeostasis.
2. If one is the third party, it is generally not possible to bring change
(for more than a week) to the relationship of the other two parts
by trying to change their relationship directly. For example, this
happens if you are directly trying to change the behaviour of
another person.
3. Attempts to change the relationship of the other two sides of an
emotional triangle is not only generally ineffective, but also homeostatic forces often convert these efforts to their opposite intent. For example, trying harder to bring two people together
will generally maintain or increase the distance between them. In
the same way, trying to separate two parties or anyone and his/
her cherished beliefs of habits will increase the possibility of the
two parts getting tighter together.
4. To the extent a third party to an emotional triangle tries unsuccessfully to change the relationship of the other two, the more
likely it is that the third party will wind up with the stress for the
other two. That is why the dysfunctional member in families
often takes up responsibility for the entire system.
5. The various triangles in an emotional system interlock so that
efforts to bring change to any one of them are often resisted by
homeostatic forces in the others or in the system itself.
6. One side of an emotional triangle tends to be more conflictual
than the other. In healthier families, conflict will tend to show
up in different persons or different relationships at different times.
But in unhealthy families, the conflict tends to be located on one
particular side of a triangle (the identified patient or relationship).
7. We can only change a relationship to which we belong. Therefore, the way to bring change to the relationship of two others is
to try to maintain a well-defined relationship with each, and to
avoid the responsibility for their relationship with one another.
30
4. The Nuclear Family Emotional Process

The emotional forces in families that operate over the years
in recurrent patterns are known as the nuclear family emotional
process. This was originally called by Bowen as undifferentiated
family ego mass. If there is a lack of differentiation in the family
of origin, it will lead to an emotional cutoff from parents. This in
turn will lead to fusion in marriage. If the individuals experience
less differentiation of self prior to marriage, they will experience
greater fusion with their spouses. But since this new fusion is
unstable it may produce any one or more of the following. They
are: 1. reactive emotional distance between the spouses, 2. physical or emotional dysfunction in one spouse, and 3. overt marital
conflict or projection of the problem onto one or more children.
The intensity of these problems depends upon the degree of
undifferentiation, extent of emotional cutoff from families of origin, and the level of stress in the system.4
5. Family Projection Process
The process by which parents transmit their immaturity and
lack of differentiation to their children is called family projection
process. What we notice in families is that the emotion-fusion
between spouses creates tension that leads to marital conflict, emotional distance, or reciprocal over- and under-functioning. If you
are cut off from your family of origin, you may act distant to your
spouse. This will make your spouse focus on the kids. It is not a
caring concern for the child but it is an anxious and enmeshed
concern. If a kid is the object of the projection process, it will be
the one most attached to the parents (positively or negatively).
Needless to say that this child is the one with the least differentiation of self. The husband may support his wife in this since he
himself is not involved with the kid. The emotional fusion experienced between her and the child may take the form of a warm,
dependent bond or an angry, conflictual struggle. Her overconcern for the child will make the child stunted in its growth. This
stunted growth will make her overcontrol the child distracting her
from her own anxieties but at the same time crippling the child
emotionally. This process will infantilise the child eventually
creating psychological impairment, necessitating further her concern, which only solidifies the family pattern.5
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32
6. Multigenerational Transmission Process
1) The Oldest Child8
The transmission of the family emotional process through

multiple generations is called multigenerational transmission process. At a time in every generation, a child that is most fused will
be the one least differentiated in self while the least involved child
moves toward a higher level of differentiation. Usually emotional
illness will be transmitted not only beyond the individual to the
family, but also beyond the nuclear family to several generations.
Thus an identified patients problem is the product of his/her
parents problem, which in turn was the product of the problem
of their parents, and so on, for several generations. The actual problem rests with the multigenerational sequence in which all family
members are actors and reactors.6
If the oldest child has a sibling within five years, it is a shock

since it is displaced by the new baby. After the age five, the child
finds a place in a society and so the arrival of a new baby does not
affect it very much. If the second child is the same sex, the threat
to the first seems much greater. Therefore the oldest child tries
hard to be good so that its parents will continue to love it. It is also
common that parents expect the oldest child to be a model for the
younger ones. The oldest children usually have many parental
qualities because of the expectation and because they want to please
the parents. Since they tend to be achievement-oriented, they are
tense, more serious, more reserved, and less playful than others.
Oldest children are a fresh and new experience for the parents and
so they receive all the attention possible. Since they identify with
the parents they end up as guardians of the status quo, preserving
the family tradition and morality. They have difficulty in making
friends and have one or two close friends. Of course, the sex, and
number of younger siblings play a crucial role in the final personality development of the oldest children.
7. The Basic Types of Sibling Position

Children seem to develop certain fixed personality characteristics based on the sibling position in their families. In sibling
rivalry we recognize the triangular complications of the siblings
relationship with their parents.
The position we occupy within the sibling constellation of
our nuclear family of origin is an indication of our expectations of
the opposite as well as the same sex, our degree of comfort with
our own various offspring, and our style of leadership in succeeding nuclear groupings.
Our birth order and sex contribute to the formation of our
personality. The way our family members treat us, the way we
think about ourselves and how we react to and treat others outside
the family are all linked together as males or females and as first,
last, or middle born. It was Sigmund Freud who noted that a childs
position in the sequence of brothers and sisters is of very great
significance for the course of his/her later life. It is mere common
sense for many cultures to regard the first born as a person achievement-oriented and having leadership qualities. The result of the
research done on birth order and gender does not indicate what
anyone should be like. It only reports what most people are usually like. Therefore it is not prescriptive but descriptive. There are
also individual differences to the general description.7
(1) The Oldest Sister of Sisters

She is usually bright, strong, and independent, able to take
care of herself and others. She is well-organized and domineering.
She may find it difficult to accept advice or help from others. She
is outgoing and self-confident and has a strong opinion about
everything. By being good, she tries to please her parents. If she
has more sisters, she is less likely to marry happily or marry at all.
For her, the best match will be the youngest brother of sisters who
is used to having a stronger woman in his life. A younger brother
of brothers also will make a good match. The only male child too
may fit in, since he will accept her role as a mother. The worst
match for her will be the oldest brother of brothers. When she has
children, she loses interest in her husband and is overinvolved with
children. Her close female friends are youngest or middle sisters as
in her own family of origin.
(2) The Oldest Sister of Brothers
She is a strong, independent, sensible and at times self-effacing woman. Men are important to her. She would sacrifice her
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33
own work to take care of her spouse, set his goals for him, run his
household and take care of his children. If she was used to many
brothers at home she would not be content with just one man.
She may like many men around and act as a patroness to them.
The best match for her would be the youngest brother of sisters. A
youngest brother of brothers too may accept her leadership. The
oldest brother of brothers is a poor match for her. Her female
friends will be usually the youngest sisters of sisters or a middle
sister. She may like a only female child too. She is always congenial, and will act as a mediator in conflicts. If in leadership position, she will handle things with care and will be tactful. She will
delegate her work because she thinks that it is not worth her time.
(3) The Oldest Brother of Brothers
He is usually the boss. He has a lot of leadership qualities, is
meticulous, perfectionist and wants to win every game. He is successful, gets along well with other men but is not on intimate terms
with anyone. He likes his wife to mother him. Though he expects a lot from his wife, he gives little. He will find the youngest
sister of brothers a good match. Perhaps the worst match for him
is the oldest sister of sisters. He likes jobs like lawyer, minister,
economist, politician, astronaut, president of a company or of a
country.
(4) The Oldest Brother of sisters
34
much beyond their babyhood. They get an awful lot of attention

from all the members of the family. Since they learn to expect
good things from life, they are usually great optimists. May be due
to tiredness in rearing children the parents do not put much pressure on the youngest one. They may lack self-discipline and may
have difficulty in making decisions since in their life there was
always someone who did the decision-making. In marriage they
either expect the spouse to take decisions or resent and refuse to
help. They do not follow family tradition and left to themselves
they like creative arts. They may be adventurous and are open to
try new things. In spite of their rebellion at times, they are followers and not leaders. Basically they remain dependent on others.
They tend to be sociable, easygoing, and popular if treated well in
their childhood.
(1) The Youngest Sister of Sisters
She is spontaneous, cheerful, adventurous, messy, capricious
and at times bratty. She tends to act the youngest all her life. She
could be competitive especially with men and flirtatious. Her good
match is the oldest brother of sisters. The oldest brother of brothers also would do for her. Her worst match is the youngest brother
of brothers. Her best friends are oldest sisters of sisters. She is likely
to resent strong leadership though she herself is not a leader and
has trouble making decisions.
He is an easy going, fun-loving, hedonistic, considerate and

unselfish guy. As he is often fond of women, he is considerate to
them. He can get along well with practically all women. His good
match would be the youngest sister of brothers. The youngest
sister of sisters may accept his leadership but the oldest sister of
sisters is the most difficult match for him. He is more concerned
about his wife than his children. As a father he is not very strict.
He is a good worker if there are women around him like in
theatre, the ballet, or the church. He is best at advertising, public
relations and as a paediatrician or an obstetrician/gynaecologist.
(2) The Youngest Sister of Brothers
2) The Youngest Child9
(3) The Youngest Brother of Brothers
The youngest and the only child are never replaced by a newborn. They are always the baby of the family. They are babied
He is daring, headstrong, capricious and rebellious. In history many assassins are youngest sons. His characteristic trait is
She is a congenial, optimistic, attractive, fun-loving woman.

She is the one most favoured in her family and continues to be so
throughout her life. She is fond of men being around her and has
difficulty in settling for just one man in her life. She prizes her
husband but may want several male friends or mentors besides her
husband. An oldest brother of sisters is her good match. The youngest brother of brothers is the worst match for her. She is usually a
good mother. She is not a serious career woman. She would prefer
an older male superior.
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35
unpredictability. At one time he is in a high mood and at the next

moment he is depressed. He may not plan ahead. He just lives for
the moment. When things go well, he can be carefree and goodnatured. When things do not work, he just leaves. He is usually
gregarious but shy with women. At times he is too polite which
makes him appear awkward. The best match for him is the oldest
sister of brothers. A middle sister with younger brothers too is a
good match. Having children is a strain for him. For him male
friends are more important than his wife and children. At work he
is a follower. He often turns to physical activities, such as sports,
and creative activities.
(4) The Youngest Brother of Sisters
He is the one taken care by women all his life. He usually
likes women and is comfortable with them. Being the youngest
and the only male child he might have been doted upon by everyone in the family. There is no need for him to distinguish himself
because of his unique position. He likes a partner who will take
care of him. He works well with jobs that have rigid job descriptions and does not require self-motivation. In spite of his geniality,
he has mood swings. The more sisters he has the more difficult for
him to settle down with just one woman. He needs women around
him at all time. His best match is the oldest sister of brothers. He
considers his children as intruders. Even his sons may be considered as his rivals. He gets on well with his daughters. The whole
work of parenting is left to his wife.
3) The Middle Child10
The middle children are the older siblings to the children

who have followed them, and the younger siblings to those who
came before them. That is why they are confused as to their identity and therefore they do not develop any distinctive traits. They
are not particularly special in families. They do not have the experience of having their parents to themselves. They are in a way
forced to compete with older siblings who are smarter, stronger
and with the younger siblings who are cuter, more dependent.
Therefore when they grow older they are not likely to take initiatives or think independently. They seem to be the lowest achievers
academically.
36
Since they neither have the rights of the oldest nor the privilege of the youngest, they often feel life is unfair to them. There is
a sense of being cheated in life. To get attention from others and to
feel important, they may do crazy things and become self-destructive by eating or drinking too much. They may even become
socially destructive but not like big criminals. They often
exhibit annoying attention-getting habits. They neither have the
authority of the eldest or the spontaneity of the youngest. But
they know how to deal with any type of persons. They are good
negotiators, diplomats, secretaries, barbers, athletes, and waiters.
Because they crave for attention and affection, they may turn to
the field of entertainment.
The position of the middle child can take a huge variety of
combinations with regard to the ages, sexes and numbers of other
siblings and so it is difficult to deal with every variety. When there
is greater variety in the siblings, it is more difficult to find the
appropriate description for the middle child. Nevertheless, one
can safely say that a middle child will tend to have more of the
characteristics of the birth position that he/she is closest to. For
example, if the middle child is at the higher end of the birth order
scale he/she will resemble the oldest child, or if he/she is at the
lower end of the birth order scale, his/her characteristics will be
more like the youngest child. The way the sexes and ages of siblings are distributed is more important to the development of the
personality of the middle child.
If all the children are the same sex, the middle child gets the
least attention and has to compete. He/she will be confused and
will have nearly equal mixture of characteristics of the youngest
and the oldest and will be the most anxious and self-critical. On
the contrary if all the other children are of the opposite sex, then
the middle one gets the most attention and is pampered. Since
such a home situation cannot be duplicated, marriage is rather
difficult for such persons.
4) The Only Child11
The only children have the best and the worst worlds. They
deem themselves as perpetually the oldest and the youngest child
in the family. Even though they have the characteristics of an old-
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37
est child, yet may remain childish in many respects. It is known

that the only child picks up the characteristics of the same-sex
parents sibling position. Since they are never replaced, they tend
to be more at ease with themselves and have a higher self-esteem
than oldest children, with less need to control others. They are
less resentful of authority. They generally demand a lot from life.
Their parents tend to have high expectations of them in academic
life and in later endeavours. They are the highest scorers of all
birth positions.
Since they have lived alone most of the time without any
siblings, they do not know how to cope with intimate peer relationships. They have difficulty in accepting or understanding
normal mood changes in other people. There are cultural differences between male only children and female only children.
(1) The Male Only Child
In most cultures, the male only child is usually more favoured
than the female only child. These children think that just as their
parents approve and love them, the rest of the world should do the
same thing to them. He usually does not go out of his way for
anybody. He does not often pursue friendships and usually prefers
his own company. Just like his parents did, his spouse has to do
everything for him receiving not much from him. He may match
well with a younger or middle sister or brothers. The oldest sister
of brothers also is a good match since she will mother him. In any
case, another only child is usually the most difficult mate for an
only child. Often he is a high achiever and expects his work situation to be set up so that it shows off his achievements.
(2) The Female Only Child
She is known as the special person and is hurt if others do
not treat her that way. She forever craves for approval from men.
She will appear mature for her age and yet perpetually childish.
Since she was overprotected by her parents, she will expect her
husband to do the same for her. She chooses a husband who is
flexible, easygoing, good-natured, and able to cope with her
wilfulness. She prefers an older man who is rather amused rather
than threatened by her capriciousness. Like her counterpart, she
38
is not suited to any particular birth-order spouse. Her choices in

order will be an oldest brother of sisters, or youngest brother of
sisters, or a middle brother of sisters. For her another only child is
the most difficult match. Her husband has to do most of the
parenting. Her female friends are likely to be oldest sisters of
sisters or sometimes youngest sisters of sisters. She is quite intelligent and competent and likes a congenial environment to work.
5) Twins
In case there is no other child in the family, twins will act

like two siblings of whatever gender they are, without the age conflict. They both will have some characteristics of the youngest and
the oldest of their sex. If the parents and other caretakers insist on
treating one as senior and the other as junior, then the older one
may take the role of the oldest and treat the younger like a younger
sibling. All twins are generally known to be close to each other
and if they happen to be the same sex, they often act as one person.
If there are other children in the family, the twins will take
up the characteristics of the birth position they share. If they happen to be the oldest, or the youngest, or the middle, they will have
corresponding characteristics. In intelligence tests, they are the
lowest of all birth positions since their greatest influence is on
each other. They tend to pay less attention to, and learn, from
elders, whether siblings, parents, or teachers. Usually other siblings and class mates may have little to do with them. At times
they have difficulty in getting separated and marry. Even male/
female twins have problem of separation but they have the advantage of being used to the opposite sex. Identical twins are the most
difficult persons to be separated. It is not uncommon that they
marry twins. Surprisingly, they even share one lover or friend
without conflict since they think of themselves as one person.12
8. Emotional Fusion
To understand what emotional cutoff is, it is good to look at
the concept of emotional fusion. Fusion is the emotional oneness
or emotional stuck-togetherness between family members. In any
family stuck-together fusion means a continuum of closeness or
Family Counselling
39
40
bond between a child and its parents. It has an extended meaning

of bond that exists between an individual and his/her siblings,
members of the extended family, and significant nonfamily
others. Its main function is to keep individuals attached to the
nucleus of the family, specially the parents. For the sake of survival it keeps all members of the family from falling away from
the emotional nucleus. Some behavioural patterns are identified
which function automatically to control the intensity of the
emotional fusion and anxiety within the nuclear family. They are:
over-underfunctioning reciprocity between spouses, projection process, triangling, and conflict or distancing between spouses. There
are several specific expressions of fusion. Some of them are 1. acting as if one can read the others mind; 2. speaking or acting for
the other; 3. automatically expressing emotional, social, or physical responses that are reactions to expressed or unexpressed
behaviour or feelings of another family member; and 4. adopting
or living out, automatically, a family belief, tradition, or lifestyle
choice. 13
parental home and spend their lives elsewhere but will make only
duty visits when it is absolutely essential and unavoidable.
9. Emotional cutoff14
For Bowen, emotional stuck-together fusion and emotional

cutoff are interrelated expressions of undifferentiation. The greater
degree of stuck-together fusion in a family, the greater the degree
of cutoff that will necessarily follow. We can observe these
patterns in multiple generations. According to systems thinking,
which says that change in one part of a system elicits compensatory change in another part of the multigenerational family
system, a pattern of fusion in the family of origin will trigger off
an equivalent degree of cutoff in the same or another segment of
the family as a multigenerational system.
Emotional cutoff is the way people manage undifferentiation

and the emotional intensity associated with it between generations.
It is believed that the greater the emotional fusion between generations, the greater the likelihood of cutoff. It may happen that some
people seek distance by moving far away from their parents.
Others might do so emotionally. One need not mistake emotional
cutoff for emotional maturity.
There are people for whom the only way to deal with
demands of any kind is to withdraw. They simply leave or cutoff.
They could withdraw either physically or emotionally when things
are too tense for them. It could be observed in ones changing the
conversation, or starting to engage oneself in some activity, or one
could just leave the house, the city, or even the country. Often we
encounter people in counselling who are in the same house but
far removed from each other emotionally. One of the manifestations of cutoff is witnessed in a family where the husband is a
compliant person but emotionally he is not there. Another
version can be seen in young people who move away from their
The reason for cutoff is that the person who moves away
feels powerless with the other person who is all powerful. The
person does not see any way of being himself/herself in a close
relationship with that powerful person. Just because they are unsure of themselves, they deny their need of the other by isolating
themselves. Their appearance to be independent is only a faade.
At the cost of emotional distance they maintain independence. If
they happen to be close, they experience a great deal of anxiety.
They are seen to be normal and relate well socially and occupationally. Everything is all right with them if they do not get
involved emotionally with others. The more the degree of unresolved emotional attachment in the family of origin, the greater
will be the depth of the emotional cutoff. Surprisingly even the
person who is cutoff also feels powerless and thinks that the
person withdrawing has all the power. In short they do not see
any way of being themselves in a close relationship.
Emotional cutoff is understood as the emotional process

between the generations through which individuals separate themselves from the past in order to start their lives in the present
generation. It is the same as emotional distance that regulates the
discomfort of emotionally stuck-together fusion between generations. When the emotional fusion between parents and children is
too intense, chronic anxiety can arise. To ward off this feeling of
anxiety, individuals break away from the family of origin and
remain emotionally cutoff and even physically cutoff. It can be
Family Counselling
41
expressed through a range of behaviours from little to extreme

emotional distance, manifested internally or geographically. So
cutoff is an automatic, emotional, behavioural reaction. It can also
include an intentional effort at times to distance from situations
involving extreme conflict, fear, and anxiety. When the level of
differentiation is low and the level of anxiety is high and chronic,
the degree of cutoff will be intense. Emotional cutoff or otherwise called emotional process between generations, indicates primarily an individuals relationship with his/her parents after leaving home. In effect, it takes place when one starts a new nuclear
family or sets up an independent living situation.
Cutoff does not take place just by one single individual. It
requires at least two or more persons to create and sustain it. In
most cases it takes one parent and a child. Cutoff is integrally
related to the process of the parent-child triangle, as well as the
emotional immaturity that resides in the parents and their relationships to their own parents. Therefore emotional cutoff is rooted
in the emotional process of the family as a multigenerational unit.
When there is a parent-child triangle with emotional divorce between the parents, undergirded by lower levels of differentiation
and higher levels of anxiety in the family, then we can expect the
outcome to be the separation between the generations, which leads
to emotional cutoff.
Cutoff can refer to many variations of emotional distancing
which occur among people both within and outside their family
systems. Thus cutoff describes the immature separation of people
from each other. It simply means a process between an individual
and others besides his/her parents. The degree of cutoff one experiences in relation to parents is positively correlated to the degree
of cutoff one experiences from others in the present and in the
future generations.
One of the aims of cutoff is the unfolding process of emotional separation between the adolescent or young adult and his/
her parents. We can imagine this process along a hypothetical continuum. At the highest level it can be conceived of an individual
growing away from his/her family of origin, leading to the development of an autonomous self. In the middle, we have the indi-
42
vidual tearing away from his/her family of origin to become a

pseudo self. At the lowest level of functioning we have the intense
degree of cutting off or distancing. This is followed generally by
collapsing, in which, the individual emotionally collapses in the
first effort to function independently, returns home, and then
retreats into an internal cutoff as a way of denying the emotional
attachment between self and parents.
There are a variety of forms of cutoff that can occur along a
continuum. Some of them are:
1. A young adult (or any family member) not communicating with
other family members when geographically distant, particularly
avoiding communicating bad news,
2. Being conflictual with a family member prior to embarking on a
separation from that person,
3. An individuals polarizing his/her position with a parent in
order to gain emotional distance,
4. Forgetting or choosing not to acknowledge important family
events or milestones such as birthdays, anniversaries, graduations
or achievements,
5. The absence of or refusal to make eye contact with the other,
6. The absence or avoidance of verbal communication with the
other,
7. Not referring to the other by name,
8. Not initiating contact but responding to it and
9. Not initiating and not responding to contact from the other.
10.
Societal Emotional Process
Bowen wanted to extend his understanding of the family as

an emotional system to an understanding of the society as an emotional system. According to him, the triangle exists in all living
systems, not just the human family. Society could be in the grip of
increasing chronic anxiety. Society responds to this with emotionally determined decisions to allay the anxiety of the moment
which results in symptoms of dysfunction. The efforts to relieve
the symptoms result in more emotional band-aids like legisla-
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43
tion, which increase the problem. This cycle keeps repeating, just
as the family goes through similar cycles. The emotional process
in society influencing the emotional process in families is called
societal emotional process. When there is a high level of social
anxiety, it can result in a gradual lowering of the functional level
of differentiation in families. I have noticed that in certain societies, there is a high level of mistrust and correspondingly a high
level of anxiety too. This somehow is reflected in individual families. 15
For Bowen, there is no discontinuity between normal and
abnormal family development. There are no discrete categories of
families (schizophrenic, neurotic, or normal), but all families vary
along a continuum from emotional fusion to differentiation.
Optimal family development takes place when the family members are relatively differentiated, anxiety is low, and parents are in
good emotional contact with their own families of origin. Emotional attachment between spouses resembles that which each had
in the family of origin. If you were relatively undifferentiated in
your family of origin, you will continue to be undifferentiated
when you form a new family. Fogarty (1976) elaborates the characteristics of well-adjusted families. They are:
1. Families are balanced and can adapt to change.
2. Emotional problems are seen as existing in the whole group, with
components in each person.
3. They are connected across generations to all family members.
4. They use a minimum of fusion and a minimum of distance to
solve problems.
5. Each dyad can deal with problems between them.
6. Differences are tolerated, even encouraged.
7. Each person can deal on thinking and emotional levels with the
others.
8. They are aware of what each person gets from within and from
others.
9. Each person is allowed his or her own emptiness.
44
10. Preservation of a positive emotional climate takes precedence over

doing what is right or what are popular.
11. Each member thinks it is a pretty good family to live in.
12. Members of the family use each other as sources of feedback and
learning, not as emotional crutches.
For Bowen, the hallmark of the well-adjusted person is rational objectivity and individuality. If you are a differentiated person, you will be able to separate thinking from feeling, and remain
independent of, though not out of contact with, the nuclear and
extended family.16
In Bowenian family systems therapy there are seven most
prominent known techniques:
1) Genogram
Genogram is a family diagram to collect and organize important data concerning the multigenerational family system. Its main
function is to organize data during the evaluation phase and to
track relationship processes and key triangles over the course of
therapy.
Genograms have been adapted in various ways for clinical
use. Dynamic markings have been developed to point out couples
relationships, repeated patterns, or complementary relationships.
Genograms guide the counsellor to address problem-maintaining
issues in either or both families of origin, and to plan realistically
regarding long-term family change. They may facilitate treatment
for specific types of couple problems, such as sexual dysfunction,
family illness patterns, spiritual and religious issues, or medical
and genetic disorders that could affect planning of children.
Genogram can be used to look mainly at family structure. Patterns of relationship repeat themselves over generations without
varying, and the same symptoms are repeated over generations.
They include spousal abuse, poor health, depression, educational
failure, multiple divorces or desertions, and drug addiction. These
may lead to marriage problems in the here-and-now like distancing, fusion, chronic mistrust, contempt, or triangling in the third
parties. Multigenerational patterns may involve patterns of work,
religion, or political affiliation.17
Family Counselling
45
2) The Therapy Triangle
Conflictual relationship processes within the family have

activated key symptom-related triangles in an attempt to re-establish stability. Any family will automatically attempt to include the
counsellor in the triangling process. If the counsellor stays detached,
its members will calm down to the point where they can work out
solutions to their dilemmas.
3) Relationships Experiments
Usually relationships experiments are done around structural

alterations in key triangles. Its main purpose is to help family
members become aware of the systems process and to recognize
their own role in them. Fogarty uses this with regard to emotional
pursuers and distancers. Pursuers are encouraged to restrain their
pursuit, stop making demands, and decrease pressure for emotional
connection, while distancers are encouraged to move toward the
other person and communicate personal thoughts and feelings.
4) Coaching
Coaching is a technique to counsel the clients directly to work

on their family problems. It involves asking process questions
designed to help the clients figure out family emotional processes
and their role in them. It does not imply telling family members
what to do. Here the counsellor shall avoid becoming embroiled
in family triangles.
5) The I-Position
To break cycles of emotional reactivity, it is good to say what

one feels instead of saying what others are doing. Instead of telling
You avoid my presence one could say I desire your being present
to me when you are at home. One of the assumptions of Bowen is
that confrontation usually increases anxiety and decreases the ability to think clearly and see options. When we displace the focus,
making it less personal and less threatening, it will increase objectivity.
6) Multiple Family Therapy
In this technique, the counsellor works with a few couples

at a time, taking turns focusing on first one, then another, and
minimizing interactions. The purpose of this technique is that one
couple may learn more about emotional process by observing
46
others. In other couples they are not so invested so as to have their

vision clouded by feelings. It is learning from other couples, being
observers.
The techniques of family therapy with a single family (both
spouses) were adapted for use with a number of families in the
mid-1960s. Early experiences with multiple-family group therapy
and later experiences with single families were incorporated into
the method. The aim was to keep each family unit a contained
triangle along with the counsellor, to work on the emotional process between the spouses, and to avoid emotional communication
between families. From experiences of the past, counsellors
believed that the emotional exchange between families encouraged
a fusion of all the families into a large undifferentiated ego mass.
They argued that it made it difficult to focus on details within a
single family and made the differentiation process difficult in any
family. Nevertheless, they believed that each family could learn
much from the close observation of other families.
The participant families were not known to each other. They
were asked not to have any social contact with each other outside
the sessions. The counsellor, who is one side of a potential
triangle with each family, approached each family in the same way
as he would do if working with only that family while the other
families observed. This process was repeated with each of the other
families. However any family could talk to the counsellor about
another family but not directly to the other family. The optimal
number of families is three to five for each multiple-family group.
Families learn from observational exposure to other families. Each
family experiences progress about one and a half times faster than
similar families do in single-family therapy. Perhaps it is easier to
see ones own problem when it is present in another family than
when the problem involves oneself.18
7) Displacement Stories
Displacement stories are a technique meant to minimize

defensiveness of the family members. This technique was developed by Guerin. Showing films and videotapes and telling stories
were employed to teach family members about systems functioning. 19
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47
4
EXPERIENTIAL FAMILY
COUNSELLING OF VIRGINIA
SATIR AND CARL WHITAKER
It was from the humanistic psychology of the 1960s that an
experiential branch of family counselling emerged. Experiential
counselling emphasized immediate, here-and-now experience. It is
believed that the quality of ongoing experience is both the measure of psychological health and the focus of therapeutic interventions. Feeling-expression is viewed as the medium of shared experience and the means to personal and family fulfilment. When
family counselling was in its infancy, experiential counselling was
most popular. It borrowed its techniques from individual and group
counselling. It drew heavily from Gestalt therapy and encounter
groups. There were other means, which were expressive techniques
such as sculpting, and family drawing, which bore the influence
of the arts and of psychodrama. We should keep in mind that
experiential treatment emphasized sensitivity and feeling-expression. Therefore it was not well suited to family counselling. In
recent times, experiential counselling is not used as much as it was
used earlier. Nonetheless, its emphasis on unblocking honest emotional expression in families is a valuable counterweight to the
reductionistic cognitive emphasis of solution-focused and narrative approaches. Now of course, Susan Johnsons emotionally focused couple therapy is revitalizing the experiential approach of
counselling. 1
For experiential family counsellors, theory is useful only in
the beginning. Later the counsellor should be just himself/herself. What are required are openness and spontaneity not theory
and technique. When one tries to copy the methods of the mentor, one loses spontaneity and creativity. Perhaps we create dis-
48
Experiential Family Counselling of Virginia Satir & Carl Whitaker
tance in the name of objectivity when we stick to a certain theory

instead of just being with the families and help them grapple with
their problems. Counsellors may need supportive co-counsellors
and helpful supervisors. When the counsellor involves himself/
herself, that enables him/her to do his/her best. By avoiding theory,
families are left to form their own theory of dealing with their
problems. Of course, by saying there need not be any theory, they
are advocating a theory of non-theory. In other words, they are
advocating sharing feelings, fantasies, and personal stories with
clients. Thus experiential family counselling is a child of the existential, humanistic, and phenomenological tradition.
Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Binswanger,
Medard Boss all reacted against the deterministic psychoanalysis
and formulated existential thought. Existentialists emphasized freedom and the necessity to discover the essence of ones individuality in the immediacy of experience. They argued that instead of
being pushed by the past, people are pulled toward the future,
impelled by their values and personal goals. Existentialists substituted a positive model of humanity for an unduly pessimistic
psychoanalytic model. These ideas were translated into practice
by Victor Frankl, Charlotte Buhler, Fritz Perls, Rollo May, Carl
Rogers, Eugene Gendlin, Sidney Jourard, R.D. Laing, and Carl
Whitaker. 2
2. Family Life
When a child is born in a family, it enters into a preexisting
system, especially the family system. The preexisting family
system has already got its own rules. These rules govern communications, especially who says what to whom and in what conditions. There are parents who are worried about their children and
they set more rules. It can happen that the rules are absolute and
impossible to follow, in which case children find it difficult to comply with the rules. In such circumstances, rules become ineffective
and dysfunctional. In a healthy family we find there are a few
rules and they are consistently applied. Too many rules and absolute demands may stifle growth, but all of us need rules, which
need to be rather limited in number instead of being infinite, and
they need to be observed as consistently as possible.3
Family Counselling
49
3. Functional vs. Dysfunctional Communication in Families
Family counsellors usually speak of functional and dysfunctional families, and in the same way, in experiential family counselling they speak of functional and dysfunctional communications. In families we establish a communication pattern. In each
family this can very well be noticed. In a family where there is a
functional communication, the members have their own lives without any invasion from others and also a shared life. It is a kind of
identity and separation. There is a balance between being an individual and being a part of the family. Members of the family
welcome change and view it as an opportunity for growth. There
is thrill and excitement about newness and growth. They keep
themselves flexible and maintain open communication. On the
contrary in dysfunctional communication patterns, there is a lot
of rigidity with no room for flexibility. Stability is valued more
than flexibility and hence any sign of change and growth is looked
down upon. Of course, there is hardly any open communication.
Individuals are not allowed to pursue their own interest and enjoy
their own designs of life but rather they need to conform to the
inflexible rules of the family. Needless to say that they do not
receive any support from the family members, especially the
caregivers. Since there is no genuine autonomy, there is no intimacy either. The family system is purely bound together by rules,
and rules in themselves will not hold for too long any system, and
so the family becomes dysfunctional due to its dysfunctional communication pattern.
Clear communication refers to successful exchange of information between individuals, and in the context of the family among
the members. It allows checking out communication in order to
clarify meaning, and intention. On the contrary, lack of clear communication will mean vague or confusing exchanges of information, and paradoxical communication. Besides there is no room
for checking out meaning.
There are two concepts that describe communications processing theme. They are double bind and paradox. Paradox is
either benevolent or neutral for the person who receives the paradoxical communication. A paradox is a type of interaction between
50
two or more people that makes use of the contrast between contradictory messages at two levels of abstraction in order to alter a
persons behaviour. Double bind is harmful especially in the case
of children. Therefore let us consider in detail what double bind
is. 4
1) Double Bind
A double bind is understood as an outcome from an interaction that is generated through a structured sequence of events and
uses multilevel, conflicting injunctions. It results in a behavioural
change in the recipient, the person to whom the double bind is
directed. It necessarily carries a negative connotation since it disallows alternate responses on the part of the recipient, that are based
on internal perceptions. We effect a double bind through communication process.
At times we receive a double-level message from another person who has not made himself/herself clear to us. When an
individuals words and expressions are disparate, if that person says
one thing and seems to mean another by his/her voice or gestures,
that individual is presenting an incongruent manifestation, and
the person to whom he/she is talking receives a double-level
message. This double-level communication need not lead to symptomatic behaviour. Nevertheless under certain conditions, especially where children are involved, it is known to produce a vicelike situation effect which has been termed the double bind. When
you warmly invite a person for an embrace and keep that person
at a safe distance while embracing, you are giving a double-level
message. On the one hand you ask the person to come closer by
your welcoming and on the other hand by your nonverbal
behaviour you give the message not to come closer.
Now let us see what conditions need to be present for a child
to experience the pressure associated with a double bind. First, the
child must be exposed to double-level messages repeatedly and over
a long period of time. Second, these must come from persons who
have survival significance for the child. Parents are survival figures
for the children since they depend upon them for physical life, for
love and approval. The child learns the techniques for mastering
the environment through the way parents structure their message
Family Counselling
51
to the child. Third, the child must be conditioned from an early

age not to ask for clarification regarding what the parent meant.
Thus the child is left to accept the parents conflicting messages in
all their impossibility. The child must be faced with the hopeless
task of translating them into a single way of behaving. The third
condition is the most important one.
In double bind, the child is threatened in his/her present
dependency because he/she cannot obey on one level of meaning
without disobeying on another, and thus continually invites
parental rejection. The conflict within the messages is hidden and
the child has been trained not to see it as the source of his/her
disturbance; he/she turns the blame on himself/herself saying to
himself/herself perhaps he/she can never do the right thing and
so feels that he/she is bad. On a covert level, the child is quite
aware of the impossible situation in which he/she is placed. Maybe
as a last resort, the child covertly answers the message by the language of disguised protest, which is crazy or sick behaviour.5
4. Defensive stances in coping with stress
Communication is a big deal in experiential counselling
especially for Virginia Satir. According to her when the family
system is crumbling due to escalating stress, the members tend to
resort to defensive stances. She identifies four universal communication patterns that serve as defensive postures or stress positions.
They are: placating, blaming, being super-reasonable, and being
irrelevant.
Virginia Satir identified certain seemingly universal patterns
in the way people communicate. There are four ways of handling
the negative results of stress. These four patterns occurred when
one was reacting to stress and at the same time felt ones selfesteem was diminished. Discrepancies between verbal and nonverbal communication produce double messages. Ones words are
saying one thing, and the rest of the person is saying something
else. Troubled families generally handle their communication
through double messages. Double messages stem from the following views:
52
1. I have low self-esteem and believe I am bad because I feel that way,
2. I am fearful about hurting the other persons feelings,
3. I worry about retaliation from the other,
4. I fear rupture of our relationship,
5. I do not want to impose, and
6. I am unconscious of anything but myself and do not attach any
significance to the other person or the interaction itself.
The individual is unaware that he/she is giving double messages in nearly all of these instances. Therefore the listener will be
confronted by two messages and the outcome of the communication will be greatly influenced by his/her response. The possible
responses are that one picks up the words and ignores the rest, or
picks up the nonverbal part and ignores the words, or ignore the
whole message by changing the subject, leaving, or going to sleep,
or comments on the double nature of the message. Unless family
communication leads to realness or a straight, single meaning, it
cannot possibly lead to the truth and love necessary to nourish
family members.
It is good to take a closer look at the four universal patterns
people use to get around the threat of rejection. When we feel and
react to threat, we do not want to reveal our weakness and so we
attempt to conceal it in the following ways: placate, so the other
person does not get mad; blame, so the other person will regard
one as strong (if the person goes away, it will be his/her fault, not
ones own); compute, so that one deals with the threat as though
it were harmless, and ones self-worth hides behind big words and
intellectual concepts; distract, so one ignores the threat, behaving
as though it were not there (maybe if one does this long enough, it
really will go away).
Our bodies portray our feelings of self-worth. When our selfworth is in question, our bodies show it through some form of
physical manifestation. Thus there are four physical stances corresponding to the universal patterns:6
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53
1) Placating / Placater
The placater is known to talk in an ingratiating way, trying

to please, apologizing, and never disagreeing, no matter what. This
person is a yes man who talks as though he/she could do nothing for himself/herself. This person must always get someones
approval. In this position one thinks of oneself as really worth
nothing. One feels really responsible for everything that goes
wrong.
Eric Berne in his theory of transactional analysis speaks of
five drivers: be perfect, be strong, hurry up, try hard, and please
me. The placating people constantly seek to please others at all
costs. They are driven by the please me driver. Since they do not
have a strong sense of inner worth and value, they depend upon
others for their validation and thus do what will please others.
Placating people usually end up pleasing nobody. Those who are
able to take up a stand and assert are able to please at least one
person. But the person who wants to please everybody will please
none in the ultimate analysis.7
2) Blaming / Blamer
The blamer is a fault-finder, a dictator, a boss who acts superior. One does not really feel one is worth anything. So if one can
get someone to obey him/her, then one feels one counts for something. When someone obeys, one feels effective.
54
whatever means are possible. If in a relationship both partners are

attackers, they will attempt to demonstrate each ones superiority
or at least equality with the other in all things.8
3) Super-Reasonable/Computer
The computer is known to be correct, very reasonable and

shows no semblance of feeling. The individual seems calm, cool,
and collected. The individual can be compared to an actual computer or a dictionary. When one is a computer, one uses the longest words possible, even if one is not sure of their meaning, in
order to sound intelligent.
Super-reasonable individuals are those who would like to
exercise absolute control over themselves, others and the environment. They are purely governed by principles without any consideration for feelings. They ultimately land up being isolated and
are often seen as loners.9
4) Irrelevant Behaviour/Distracter
Whatever the distracter does or says is irrelevant to what anyone else is saying or doing. This particular individual does not
respond to the point. The person is a kind of lopsided top, constantly spinning but never knowing where one is going, and not
realizing it when one gets there. At first this role may appear to be
a relief, but later terrible loneliness and purposelessness will arise.
All of us experience hurt, pain, and stress. Some of us take to
irrelevant behaviour to distract themselves from their hurt, pain
and stress. In some sense, their pain diminishes by their distracting behaviour patterns. In an extreme form, their lives are pulled
in different directions at the same time. They seem to be frightened of stress and so avoid taking a clear position lest they should
offend others.10
There are people who keep blaming others for anything. It is

their need to find fault with others at any cost. They play the role
of persecutor and are constantly after victims whom they can persecute. In the language of Eric Berne, they play the game of blemish by which they find small items of faults in others that usually
go unnoticed and blame the victims. They put down others in a
bid not to be put down by others.
The blamers are attackers. Attackers are known to deal with

their anxiety about differences by blaming others for their anxiety
as well as for everything else. They have knowledge of what they
are in need of and are very upset when they do not get it. Somehow they think that the other is the cause of their frustration and
so they blame the other. Since the attacker thinks that the other is
the problem, he/she openly tries to change the other by using
In experiential family counselling, there are no techniques

but only people. It relies on the curative power of the counsellors
personality. What the counsellors are is more important than what
they do. A counsellor who is an alive, aware, and fully feeling
person will awaken potentials in families. Open and genuine
counsellors would foster openness and authenticity in their clients too.
Family Counselling
55
According to Carl Whitaker, there are three phases of the

counselling process. First is the engagement, second comes involvement, and the third is disentanglement. Corresponding to the three
phases of counselling, we also notice three roles of the counsellor.
First of all, at the beginning, the counsellor assumes an all-powerful position thereby increasing the anxiety of the family. This only
makes them realize their interactional patterns. When this happens, the family members may come up with alternative ways of
operating. At this point the counsellor changes his/her role from
being a dominant and parental figure to being an adviser and a
resource person. Gradually the family members assume responsibility for their own living and changing. As it happens, the counsellor becomes more personal and less involved in the family system. The principle involved here is that change is to be experienced rather than designed.11
1) Family Sculpting
The counsellor could ask any one member or all the members of the family to arrange the entire members of the family in a
meaningful tableau. It can be done in various ways such as toys,
drawings, or making use of the real members of the family or
members of a group. This is a graphic means of portraying each
individuals perceptions of the family, in terms of space, posture,
and attitude. It increases awareness in the members of the family
as to how they function and how others view them in the family
system. It is worthwhile that the identified patient does this
family sculpting.12
2) Family Reconstruction
Family reconstruction is a type of psychodrama of reenactment through which clients explore significant events in three
generations of family life. This helps members identify the roots
of their old learning, formulate a more realistic picture of their
parents, and discover their unique personality. Clients could make
use of group members for this purpose. Family maps, family lifefact chronology or wheel of influence (a spatial diagram of all the
significant people in ones life) or some combination of these three
could be used.13
Besides these two, experiential family counsellors could use
drama, reframing, humour, touch, Gestalt therapy and personcentred therapy depending upon the situation.
56
5
PSYCHOANALYTIC FAMILY
COUNSELLING
Psychoanalysis had a tremendous influence on every field of
psychotherapy for a long time. Many of the pioneers of family
counselling were trained in psychoanalysis, including Nathan
Ackerman, Ian Alger, Murray Bowen, Lyman Wynne, Theodore
Lidz, Israel Zwerling, Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy, Carl Whitaker, Don
Jackson, and Salvador Minuchin. But all of them turned towards
systems dynamics. While Jackson and Minuchin moved far away
from psychoanalysis, Bowen, Lidz, and Wynne retained a distinctly
analytic influence in their work.
In the 1980s, family counsellors took a renewed interest in
the psychology of the individual. Gradually there was a revival of
interest in psychoanalytic thinking. It definitely reflected changes
in psychoanalysis moving from the individualism of Freudian
theory to the more relationship-oriented object relations theories
and self psychology.1
Freud was interested in the family but he thought that the
family is the context where people learned neurotic fears, rather
than the contemporary context where such fears are maintained.
Later, major advances were achieved in the psychoanalytic understanding of family dynamics by child psychiatrists. They began to
analyse mothers and children concurrently. The result of the concurrent analysis of married couples revealed the family as a group
of interlocking, intrapsychic systems. Erik Erikson explained the
sociological dimensions of ego psychology. In the 1950s and 1960s
one notices that the American Psychoanalysis was dominated by
ego psychology, which focuses on intrapsychic structures. At the
same time, object relations theory, which lends itself to interper-
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57
sonal analysis flourished in Britain. It was Edith Jacobson and

Harry Stack Sullivan who were the most influential thinkers who
helped bring American psychiatry to an interpersonal point of
view. The work carried out at the National Institute of Mental
Health (NIMH) in the USA was important to the development of
family counselling. 2
1) The Freudian Drive Psychology
For Freud, at the heart of our nature are the drives, which
are sexual and aggressive. When children think that these basic
impulses will lead to punishment, mental conflict arises. Conflict
is usually signalled by unpleasant affect: anxiety or depression.
Anxiety is unpleasure associated with the idea, which is often
unconscious that one will be punished for acting on a particular
wish. Depression is unpleasure plus the idea, which is often
unconscious, that the feared calamity has already occurred. The
balance of conflict can be shifted in any one of the two ways. It
could be by strengthening defences against a conflicted wish or by
relaxing defences sufficiently to permit some gratification.3
2) Self Psychology
Heinz Kohut, the father of self psychology says that all

humans long to be appreciated. When our parents appreciate us,
as we are young, we internalise this in the form of strong and selfconfident personalities. But by chance as it is likely to happen
most of the times, if our parents insufficiently demonstrate admiring acceptance, then our craving for it is retained in an archaic
manner. 4
3) Object Relations Theory
From what we have considered above, we can clearly see that

drive psychology and the psychology of the self describe the basic
motives and fears of human nature and the resultant conflict. Psychoanalysis is the study of individuals and their elemental motives
(drives and the need for attachment). Family counselling is the
study of social relationships. The bridge between the two is object
relations theory. Object relations theory holds that one relates to
others in the present partly on the basis of expectations formed by
58
early experience. Now the residue of these early relationships leaves

internal objects, which are mental images of, self and other, and
self in relation to others, built from experience and expectation. It
is claimed that the unconscious remnants of those internalised
objects form the core of the person as an open system developing
and maintaining its identity through social relatedness, present and
past. 5
Consideration of the psychoanalytic model of normal development depends upon concepts from object relations theory,
attachment theory, and theories of the self. For Freud psychological well-being depends on gratification of instinct, realistic control
of primitive drives and coordination of independent psychic structures. For object relations theory, psychological well-being depends
on achieving and preserving psychic wholeness through good
object relations.6
While psychoanalytic counsellors identify problems within
the interacting people, nonpsychoanalytic family counsellors
locate problems in the interactions between people. For psychoanalysis, symptoms are the attempts to cope with unconscious
conflicts and the anxiety that signals the emergence of repressed
impulses. But when psychoanalytic thinkers shifted their emphasis from instinct to object relations, infantile dependence and
incomplete ego development became the core problems in development. Now fear-dictated flight from object relations, which
begins in early childhood, is considered the root of psychological
problems. One of the reasons for relationship problem is that the
child develops distorted perceptions by attributing qualities belonging to one person to someone else. It was called transference
by Freud. This phenomenon is being called by others as
scapegoating, merging, irrational role assignments, delineations, symbiosis, and family projective process. Melanie Klein
called this projective identification. It is a process by which the
subject perceives an object as if it contained elements of the subjects
personality and evokes behaviour and feelings from the object that
conform to these projected perceptions. Projective identification
is an interactional process.
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For object relations theorists, inadequate separation and

individuation as well as introjection of pathological objects are the
critical determinants for poor adult adjustment. Difficulty in separating seems to create lasting problems.7
5. Goals of Therapy
Psychoanalytic family counselling aims to free the family
members of unconscious restrictions so that they will be able to
interact with one another as whole, healthy persons on the basis
of current realities rather than unconscious images of the past.8
6. Treatment Techniques9
1) Triangles
There are four psychodynamic techniques, which are, listening, empathy, interpretation, and maintaining analytic neutrality.
Listening is a strenuous but silent activity. In order to establish an
analytic atmosphere it is important to aim at listening and understanding without worrying about making changes or solving problems. Change may come about as a byproduct of understanding.
That is the presupposition of psychodynamic family counselling.
The counsellor suspends all anxious involvement with the outcome. This frame of mind is of great importance in establishing a
climate of analytic exploration. The counsellor resists the temptation to be drawn in to reassure, advise, or confront families in
favour of a sustained but silent immersion in their experience.
Whenever an intervention is made by the counsellor, it is to
express empathic understanding to help family members open up.
The counsellor interprets to clarify the hidden and confusing aspects of the experience.
60
sellor would be more interested in helping the partners explore

their individual emotional reactions.
For example, the psychoanalytic counsellor might ask questions such as Why did they get so angry? What do they want
from each other? What did they expect? Where do these feelings and expectations come from? The psychoanalytic counsellor
would not attempt to resolve the argument, but would interrupt
to ask a series of questions about the fears and longings that lay
underneath it. Affect is the signal of intrapsychic conflict. The
counsellor instead of asking, who did what to whom, will key in
on strong feelings and use it as a starting point for detailed inquiry
into its roots. The counsellor would ask questions such as What
were you feeling? When have you felt that way before? And
before that? What do you remember? The counsellor does not
stay on the horizontal place of the partners current behaviour;
he/she looks for openings into the vertical dimension of their internal experience and its history.
There is a third line of inquiry, which includes the counsellor, transference, and countertransference reactions.
3) Participant Observer
Psychoanalytic counsellors function less as detached observers and more as participants in the interpersonal patterns of treatment. Their function is described as participant observation. Thus
psychoanalytic family counsellors organize their explorations along
four channels, namely 1. internal experience, 2. the history of that
experience, 3. how the partner triggers that experience, and 4. how
the context of the session and the counsellors input might contribute to what is going on between the family members.
2) Starting Point
4) Focus
Conflict between partners is taken as the starting point for

exploring intrapsychic and interpersonal psychodynamics. Supposing an argument has taken place between two partners, a systemic
counsellor might ask them to talk with each other about what
happened, hoping to observe in their interaction what they were
doing to keep the argument from getting settled. Here we notice
the focus is on behaviour and interaction. A psychoanalytic coun-
If one is a nonanalytic counsellor he/she will tend to focus

his/her evaluations on overt communications and interactions, as
well as on conscious hopes and expectations. But, for a psychoanalytic counsellor, such descriptions only scratch the surface. For
him/her the unconscious forces constitute the core of family life.
This in no way limits the scope of psychodynamic counsellors.
They do not deal only with the psychology of individual person-
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61
ality defects. For them family dynamics is more than the additive
sum of individual dynamics. They believe that individuals may
bring impaired object relations to family life, but it is the unconscious fit between family members that determines adjustment.
5) Assessment
Dicks (1967) applied object relations theory to family evaluation and proposed three levels on which to assess the marital relationships: 1. cultural values and norms race, religion, education,
and values, 2. central egos personal norms, conscious judgements
and expectations, habits, and tastes, and 3. unconscious forces that
are repressed or split off, including drives and object-relations needs.
Dicks says that if a couple is in harmony on any two of these three
levels, then they will stay together, but if they are incompatible on
two or more levels, they will probably end in divorce.
6) Focal Hypothesis
Arnon Bentovim and Warren Kinston offer a five-step strategy for formulating a focal hypothesis:
1. How does the family interact around the symptom, and how does
the family interaction affect the symptom?
2. What is the function of the current symptom?
3. What disaster is feared in the family that keeps them from facing
their conflicts more squarely?
4. How is the current situation linked to past trauma?
5. How would the counsellor summarize the focal conflict in a short
memorable statement?
It is only after the preliminary psychodynamic assessment

that the counsellor will decide whom to include in treatment. These
counsellors today work with every possible combination of family members. Of course they often work with married couples.
7) Internalised Objects
Object relations theory understands marriage as a transaction between hidden, internalised objects. Their marital and
parenting relationships are reflected by these internal objects. Now
62
the counsellors bring these into awareness by interpreting the

unconscious bases for the couples interactions. Dicks says that
couples are found to have dominant shared internal objects, based
on unconscious assimilation of parent figures. It is true that some
aspects of internalised objects are conscious, readily expressed, and
easily examined. One can say that these are based on direct identification with consciously perceived parental models, or overcompensation against negative images. Psychoanalytic counsellors rely
on a nondirective exploratory style in order to get unconscious
images to emerge. Analytic counselling differs from other types of
counselling in the process of discovery. Its process of discovery is
protracted and directed not only at the clients conscious thoughts
and feelings, but also at their fantasies and dreams.
8) Active
When we consider the nature of psychoanalytic family counselling, it is more active than classical psychoanalysis. All the same,
it remains a nondirective, uncovering technique. The counsellor
interferes minimally and scrutinizes ones responses to eliminate
unessential or leading interventions. This is done with individuals
and with families. For them interpretations are not meant to reassure nor to direct the clients. Interpretations should facilitate the
emergence of new material, forgotten or repressed, and mobilize
the feelings previously avoided. The counsellors even limit the
number of interpretations per session.
Usually sessions are started with the invitation of the counsellor to discuss current experiences, thoughts, and feelings. In the
sessions that follow, the counsellor might begin either by saying
nothing or perhaps saying, Where would you like to begin
today? The counsellor after asking such a question sits back and
lets the family talk, with minimal direction or interference with
the spontaneous flow of their communication. If at all questions
are asked by the counsellor, they are limited to requests for amplification and clarification like Could you tell me more about that?
Have the two of you discussed how you feel about this? This
process will naturally dry up. At that time the counsellor probes
gently, eliciting history, peoples thoughts and feelings, and their
ideas about family members perspectives like What does your
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63
mother think about your problems? How would she explain them?
This is done to understand assumptions and projections.
It is true that psychoanalytic family counselling is nondirective in nature, but it need not be taken to mean being passive.
When family members speak about what is on their minds, the
counsellor is actively analysing what is being said for deriving their
drives, defences, ego states, and manifestations of transference. The
bare facts from the clients are always ambiguous, but the counsellor organizes them and makes them meaningful. Besides this, the
counsellor pursues the past. The childhood memories and associations to the interactions with parents are probed.
9) Interpretations
Once the historical roots of the current family conflicts have

been uncovered, it is time for interpretations to be made about
how family members continue to reenact the past, and the often
distorted images from childhood. The counsellor gets the data for
such interpretations from transference reactions to the counsellor
or to other family members, as well as from actual childhood memories. Counsellors deal less with recollections of the past than with
reenactments of its influence, manifested as transference. That is
why it is deemed very important to establish a milieu in which the
patients feel safe enough to relive the unresolved conflicts and
reactivate the early relationships images.
10) Aim
In psychoanalytic counselling the aim is to analyse resistance

and to work through the past in the transference of the present. In
psychoanalytic family counselling, the counsellors claim that the
resistance is collusive and more often manifests in overt behaviour
than it is in private therapy. Since the discussions of problems are
painful, most people go to great lengths to avoid them. There are
some common forms of resistance, which are: seeking individual
counselling or separate sessions to avoid facing family problems,
persistently talking to the counsellor instead of to other family
members, avoiding conflictual topics, scapegoating, becoming
depressed to avoid the danger of angry confrontations, and steadfastly refusing to consider ones own role in problematic interactions.
64
There is a difference in interpreting resistance between individual psychoanalytic counselling and psychoanalytic family counselling. In the former the counsellor will wait until three or four
occurrences take place in order to make an interpretation. For example, a client is late for the session a few times. At the first
instance the counsellor will not attempt to interpret it. But in family counselling it is done at the earliest.
Finally counselling not only fosters insight and understanding but also stimulates the family members to consider what they
are going to do about the problems they discuss. Family members
must first of all be aware of their motivations, and also hold themselves accountable for their behaviour. Counsellors must help clients face the intrinsically destructive expectations involved in
invisible loyalties, and then help them develop a balance of fairness among various family members.
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6
STRUCTURAL FAMILY
COUNSELLING OF SALVADOR
MINUCHIN
Structural family counselling became the most influential
model in the 1970s. Families are collections of individuals who
affect each other in powerful but unpredictable ways. Structural
family counselling attempts to offer a clear framework that brings
order and meaning to the transactions of the members. Since there
are consistent, repetitive, organized, and predictable patterns of
family behaviour, we are inclined to think of a structure, though it
is only in a functional sense. There are concepts like boundaries
and coalitions, which are in themselves abstractions, but they are
helpful for counsellors to intervene in a systematic and organized
way in family counselling.
Structural family counselling approaches the human person
in his/her social context. It is one of the many responses to the
concept of human person as part of his/her environment. The
mind is viewed as extracerebral as well as intracerebral. Therefore
pathology may be inside the client, in his/her social context, or in
the feedbacks between them. Counselling designed from this perspective rests on three axioms:
1. An individuals psychic life is not entirely an internal process.
One influences his/her context and is influenced by it in constantly recurring sequences of interaction. The individual living
within a family is a member of a social system to which he/she
must adapt.
2. Changes in a family structure contribute to changes in the
behaviour and the inner psychic processes of the members of
that system.
66
3. When a counsellor works with a client or a family, his/her

behaviour becomes part of the context. Now the counsellor and
the family join to form a new, therapeutic system, and that system then governs the behaviour of its members.1
1. Theoretical formulations
The theoretical foundation of structural family counselling
rests on the belief that the whole and the parts can be properly
explained only in terms of the relations that exist between the
parts. It focuses on the link that connects one part to another.
Human social phenomena are considered expressions of these linkages. Therefore all human products, whether they are behavioural,
linguistic, institutional or material, essentially communicate a
social relation.
Structuralism attempts to identify the codes that regulate the
human relationship. It also presupposes that there is in man an
innate, genetically transmitted and determined mechanism that
acts as a structuring force. Structures are inseparable from performance. The structures we see in society emanate from human reason and reflect the structure of the human mind.
There are dominant structures and subordinate structures.
The dominant structures are those upon which most of our family operations are based. The subordinate structures are those which
are less frequently called upon. The structural dimensions of transactions often identified in structural family counselling are boundary, alignment, and power (or force). Each and every unit of transaction contains all three of these structural dimensions.
Boundaries of a subsystem are the rules defining who participates, and how. These rules dictate who is in and who is out of an
operation, and define the roles those who are in will have vis--vis
each other and the world outside in carrying out that activity.
Alignment is the joining or opposition of one member of a system to another in carrying out an operation. This dimension includes the concepts of coalition and alliance. Coalition is a process
of joint action against a third person in contrast to an alliance
where two people might share a common interest not shared by
the third person. Power is the relative influence of each family
member on the outcome of an activity. In a unit of operation,
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67
boundary and alignment define the members of a family system

as in or out (boundary), and for or against (alignment). But these
structural dimensions depend on power for action and outcome.
For example, in a family in terms of boundary, the parents are the
disciplinarians; alignment indicates what disciplinary issues they
agree upon and disagree with one another and with the children;
power informs about which of the parents will prevail if they disagree.2
The primary exponent of structural family counselling is
Salvador Minuchin. Structural family counselling is a blueprint
for analysing the process of family interactions. It provides a basis
for consistent strategies of treatment, which obviates the need to
have a specific technique. Three constructs are the essential components of structural family theory. They are structure, subsystems,
and boundaries.
1) Family Structure
Family structure is a set of covert rules that govern transactions in the family. It is shaped partly by universal and partly by
idiosyncratic constraints. It is the organized pattern in which family members interact. It is a deterministic concept, but it prescribes
or legislates behaviour. It describes predictable sequences. When
family transactions are repeated, they foster expectations that
establish enduring patterns. It is seen that once the patterns are
established, members use only a small fraction of the full range of
behaviour that is available to them. It is like something as follows,
regarding who has to do what: It starts questioning who is going
to do. Then it is followed by the answer so and so will probably
do. Later so and so will always do becomes a structure.
Family structure is known as the invisible set of functional
demands that organizes the ways in which family members interact. A family is viewed as a system that operates through transactional patterns. So repeated transactions establish the patterns of
how, when, and to whom to relate, and these patterns underpin
the system. It is the transactional patterns that regulate the
behaviour of the family members. They are maintained by two
systems of constraint: 1. generic, and 2. idiosyncratic. The generic
system of constraint involves the universal rules governing family
68
organization. For example, parents and children have different levels

of authority and power in the family. The idiosyncratic system of
constraint involves the mutual expectations of particular family
members. It originates from the explicit and implicit negotiations
among family members, often around small daily events, like who
does what. The system maintains itself and resists any change
beyond a certain range. Any deviation experienced going beyond
the systems threshold of tolerance induces mechanisms, which
re-establish the accustomed range. The family is bound to respond
to internal and external changes. For that it must be able to transform itself in ways that meet new circumstances without losing
the continuity that provides the frame of reference for its members.3
2) Subsystems
For performing various functions, families are differentiated

into subsystems of members. Every individual is considered a subsystem. Dyads or larger groups make up other subsystems, determined by generation, gender, or common interests. We can also
group people as parents or adolescents. In a family any two members may form a tight bond as a subsystem excluding the other
members. Sometimes families can be split into two camps. We
notice certain common patterns. In a way, the possibilities for
subgrouping are endless. As a member of our family, each one of
us plays many roles in several subgroups. You may be a husband, a
father, a son and the like. In each of these roles you are required to
behave differently and exercise a variety of interpersonal options.
We have got different subsystems. The spouse subsystem is
one of them. It is formed when two adults of opposite sex join
with the express purpose of forming a family. It has its own
specific tasks vital to the functioning of the family. We have
another subsystem called the parental subsystem. With the birth
of the first child, a new level of family formation is reached. Now
a boundary must be drawn which allows the child access to both
parents while excluding it from the spouse subsystem. Then we
have the sibling subsystem when a second child is born. Here again
a boundary must be drawn that separates two subsystems namely
the spouse subsystem and the sibling subsystem.4
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70
3) Boundaries
(1) Rigid Boundaries
Boundaries are barriers that regulate the amount of contact

with others. Individuals, subsystems, and whole families are
demarcated by interpersonal boundaries. By managing proximity
and hierarchy, the boundaries serve to protect the autonomy of
the family and its subsystems. Subsystems need to be protected by
boundaries. Otherwise it will limit the development of interpersonal skills achievable in these subsystems. For example, a dispute
between parents need not be intervened by the children, nor every
quarrel between siblings be settled by the parents. Every subsystem
should be allowed to fight its own battles. Otherwise they will be
handicapped in their dealings with others.
Rigid boundaries are overly restrictive and permit hardly any

contact with outside subsystems. This results in disengagement.
Of course, disengaged individuals or subsystems are independent,
nevertheless isolated. Its positive effect is that it fosters autonomy,
growth, and mastery. But it can terribly limit warmth, affection
and nurture. Perhaps only when the disengaged families come
under extreme stress, mutual support is forthcoming.
The boundaries of a subsystem are the rules defining who

participates, and how. For a family to function properly, the boundaries of subsystems must be clear. They must be defined in such a
way that the members of the subsystems carry out their functions
without undue interference, but allow contact between the members of the subsystem and others. The clarity of boundaries is
important. The clarity of boundaries within a family is a useful
parameter for a counsellor to evaluate family functioning.5
Interpersonal boundaries can vary from rigid on one side and
diffuse on the other with a clear boundary in the middle. Rigid
boundary involves disengagement, diffuse boundary involves
enmeshment and clear boundary involves normal range. They can
be represented as follows:
Boundaries
Type of Boundary
Associated with
Representation
Rigid Boundary
Disengagement
_____________________
Clear Boundary
Normal Range
- - - - - - - - - - ---- - - - - - - - -
Diffuse Boundary
Enmeshment
.....................
Disengagement is a state that exists when persons, groups,

nations, or machine parts are not connected to one another for the
purpose of dynamic interaction. People experiencing disengagement also experience apathy, or lack of emotional response and
delayed or absent response to persons around them. With regard
to the family, disengagement results in a rigid boundary that prevents the various family members from being aware of and
responding to normal stimuli of family life. Disengagement is
viewed as negative or pathological because it leads to inadequate
communication and to blighted patterns of primary socialization.
The manifestation of disengagement will be seen in the
following ways:
1. A child has a need for bonding with parents.
2. Parents provide the infant with visual, touch and vocal stimulation as well as disciplinary direction.
3. The child responds with emotions of pleasure to the various
attentions of parents. By disciplinary direction the child maximizes this pleasure and minimizes discomfort.
4. As the child is cycled through steps one, two, and three repeatedly, social habit develops within the context of primary socialization.
5. The child comes to expect steps one, two and three to happen as
a matter of course.
6. On occasion, parents separate themselves from the process of giving the child stimulation and direction.
7. This separation breaks a pattern of expectation for the child.
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8. Separated by the childs usual pattern, the child responds with

emotions of displeasure or rage, independent actions of its own
apathy and/or nonresponsiveness,
9. Emotions of displeasure and independent action result in the child
receiving parental punishment.
10. The child learns to minimize the pain of parental punishment by
becoming apathetic and nonresponsive.
11. In some families the parental separation involving the mother,
father, or siblings becomes habitual.
12. When habitual filial and/or sibling separation occurs, the child
will develop a habitual response pattern of apathy, atomism, and
absence of (or delayed) responsiveness in its primary field of contact. 6
(2) Diffuse Boundaries

Diffuse boundaries result in enmeshed subsystems. It offers a
heightened sense of mutual support, but there may not be independence and autonomy. If the parents are enmeshed, they spend
a lot of time with the children. If children are enmeshed, they
become dependent on their parents and less comfortable by being
themselves. They will have problem relating to people outside their
families.
The opposite of differentiation is known as fusion. To be
fused will mean being stuck in a symbiotic or parasitic relationship. Love is an example of fusion. The relationship between mother
and infant begins as a fused one. We are always driven by this need
for fusion. But growing up will mean becoming a separate,
distinct, self-supporting person responsible for meeting ones own
needs. Indeed fusion is a powerful element in intimate relationship. In fusion we come to know the other almost as well as they
know themselves. We can know the wants and wishes, thoughts
and feelings of the other without the other even telling us. Problems arise only when the fusion is so intense to the extent that
differences between family members are denied.
Enmeshment is essentially the failure of a family to draw
clear boundaries between individuals or subsystems within the
72
family. Manifestation of enmeshment will be seen in the following ways:

1. When individuals marry, they develop certain roles and responsibilities that become routine and comfortable for them.
2. If they do not keep a sense of individual autonomy, however, one
partner or both may attempt to live through the other one, or to
control the other one.
3. A sense of belonging evolves but it requires a loss of autonomy
from at least one partner.
4. When children are born, they become a part of the emotional
fusion of the family and are controlled inappropriately by their
parents or are looked to for the nurturance of the parents.
5. Cognitive and problem-solving skills may fail to develop among
the children.
6. The parental subsystem and the sibling subsystem fail to differentiate, and some children in the family may assume functions
that are actually parental functions, just as one parent may function in a childlike manner.
7. One parent may be excluded from a parent-child subsystem.
8. Any stress in the system or stress experienced by one individual
tends to be magnified and may precipitate a crisis.7
(3) Clear Boundaries

Clear boundaries strike a balance between the rigid and the
diffuse, and are considered normal. There is enough of dependence
and independence. There is enough of identity and separation.
There is enough of embeddedness and separation. In a way they
experience interdependence. These people are flexible not being
overly rigid, or overly diffuse. First of all, when two people decide
to join together to form a spouse subsystem, they must learn to
accommodate to each others needs and preferred styles of interaction. There should be a give-and-take attitude between them. The
spouse subsystem should be demarcated by the boundary that separates it from parents, from children and from the outside world.
Only a clear boundary will enable the children to interact with
their parents but exclude them from the spouse subsystem. A clear
boundary ensures some privacy for the couple. At the same time
it establishes a hierarchical structure in which parents exercise a
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position of leadership. If parents give their children their choice of

food, that is respectful of them and they are flexible; whereas if
they ask a toddler to decide if he needs to go to school, it is not a
sign of clear boundaries. Complementary patterns, like pursuerdistancer, active-passive, dominant-submissive, are found in most
couples. But exaggerated complementary roles can detract from
individual growth. Moderate complementarity enables spouses to
divide functions, to support and enrich each other. Exaggerated
complementary roles will become pathological and create a dysfunctional subsystem. Counsellors need to recognize the workable patterns of structures and challenge only those that do not
work. 8
Families usually struggle with the problems of living. The
absence of problems does not distinguish a normal family from its
opposite. Only a functional family structure is a distinguishing
mark of a normal family. First, couples have to adjust to each other;
they need to rear their children; they have to deal with their parents; they have to cope with the demands of their jobs; and they
must fit into their communities. These struggles are likely to change
with developmental stages and situational crises.
The structural requirements for any new union are accommodation and boundary-making. In everyday living there are several items that need adjustment. Therefore the first priority is
mutual accommodation. One of the spouses organizes the relationship along familiar lines and pressures the other partner to
accommodate to them. Hence each has to adjust to the other
persons expectations and wants. They have to come to an understanding regarding the major issues affecting their family lives. They
need to coordinate daily rituals as well.
The second priority is boundary-making. These boundaries
are first of all between them, as well as between them and the
outside world. Each ones expectation of the boundary experience
in marriage depends upon the boundary experiences they had had
in their family of origin. Whether you had an enmeshed or disengaged boundary experience in your family of origin will determine your expectation in your marriage. Spouses need to define
74
their boundary separating them from their original families. It is a

difficult task both for the spouses and their parents. In extended
families the spousal subsystem is subjected to the larger extended
family framework. It should be the other way about. The spousal
subsystem should take precedence over the interest of the extended
family system. Spouses need to separate themselves from the sibling subsystem once they have children. Now they will have a
parental subsystem and a sibling subsystem. The boundary between these two needs to be defined. As children grow up in the
family, parents need to constantly adjust to the growing demands
of their children. This growing pain is not pathological. Nobody
can clearly demarcate the line between the normal and abnormal
families. All that one can say is that the normal families modify
their structures to accommodate to changed circumstances whereas
the pathological families increase the rigidity of structures that are
no longer functional.9
3. Behavioural Disorders
Family dysfunction is the result of a combination of stress
and failure to realign themselves to cope with stress. One of the
most common expressions of fear of change is conflict-avoidance,
when family members shy away from addressing the pain of facing each other with hard truths. Conflict can be avoided by disengaged families by avoiding contact, while enmeshed families do by
denying differences or by constant bickering, which allows them
to vent out feelings without pressing each other for change or resolution of the conflict. A method usually resorted to for conflictavoidance between partners is diverting the conflict to the children. Instead of worrying about each other, the partners worry
about the child. This strategy might reduce the strain on the partners but victimizes the child and so it is dysfunctional. Another
version of this can happen in a way that one of the partners is
overinvolved with the child while the other one is withdrawn.
Each of the partners may be critical of each others activity. The
result is a cross-generational coalition between the overinvolved
parent and the child, which excludes the other parent. Family
members may be called upon to make structural adjustment when
divorced, or when widowed spouses remarry. When it happens,
such blended families either readjust their boundaries or soon
experience transitional conflicts.10
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75
Structural family counselling is a counselling of action. It
aims to modify the present, not to explore and interpret the past.
Here the assumption is that since the past was instrumental in the
creation of the familys present organization and functioning, it is
manifest in the present too and will be available to change by
interventions that change the present. Therefore the target of
intervention in the present is the family system. The counsellor
joins that system and uses himself/herself to transform it. The
counsellor changes the position of the members of the system and
thus change is brought about in the subjective experiences of the
members. To do this, the counsellor relies on some of the properties of the family system. They are:
1. A transformation in its structure will produce at least one possibility for further change.
2. The family system is organized around the support, regulation,
nurturance, and socialization of its members. Therefore, the counsellor joins the family not to educate or socialize it, but to repair
or modify the familys own functioning so that it can better perform these tasks.
3. The family system has self-perpetuating properties. So, the processes that the counsellor initiates within the family system will
be maintained in his/her absence by the familys self-regulating
mechanisms. 11
Structural family counsellors make use of the seven following steps to deal with couples and families:
1) Joining and Accommodating
The terms joining and accommodating mean one and the

same process. We use the word joining to emphasize the actions of
the counsellor aimed directly at relating to family members or the
family system. The word accommodation is used to emphasize
the counsellors adjustments of himself/herself in order to achieve
joining. In order to join a family system, the counsellor must
accept the familys organization and style and blend with them.
By accommodating, the counsellor oscillates thus engaging and
disengaging with the family; engaging in order to be immersed,
and disengaging in order to evaluate.
76
Every family that comes for counselling has its own established homeostatic patterns. Nobody likes to be disturbed in the
established homeostasis. A counsellor is an outsider who introduces himself/herself into the family system and disturbs the homeostasis. Because family members may consider the entry of the
counsellor as an intrusion, they might resist the presence and
intervention of the counsellor. The family members outnumber
the counsellor. In such a situation, the counsellor needs to disarm
their defences and ease their anxiety by conveying understanding
and acceptance to every single member. Greeting each person by
name and making some friendly contact is good initially. It is good
to accept the hierarchical structure and organization of the family.
This will mean allowing the parents to present the problem and
then of course not ignoring the children; ask them to tell their
version of the problem. The counsellor need not force a silent
member to speak up. He/she could wait until the silent member
feels comfortable to speak up. However, acknowledging and inviting the silent member to become involved and speak up when
opportune should be extended. As a practical step, the counsellor
could greet the family in a friendly way and ask for each persons
view of the problem. This should be followed by careful listening
and reflecting the content and feeling (what the counsellor hears
and experiences).
For the sake of transforming the family system, the counsellor has to intervene so as to unbalance the system. Whenever it is
done, it should indicate that you the counsellor have no preference and act in a way that is consonant with truth and justice.
When unbalancing occurs by the coalition of the counsellor with
any one member of the family, the other members experience stress
and so they may insist on system maintenance. But the counsellor
should make the members move towards the therapeutic goal while
enduring the uncertainties of the transitional period. The counsellor can facilitate this process by his/her understanding, support,
and confirmation of the family members experiences and felt
needs.12
2) Working with Interaction
Family dynamics can be seen while the members are in

action, not in what they say happens or what the counsellor thinks
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77
must happen. It is good to allow the family dynamics unfold by

getting the family members to talk among themselves. Who speaks
what, to whom and in what manner will indicate what the counsellor needs to know about the dynamics of the family. Who speaks,
who keeps silent, who intervenes, how the children involve, and
such things keep the counsellor informed of the working of the
family firsthand. 13
3) Diagnosing
It would not be surprising to note that family members conceive of problems as located in the identified patient and as determined by events from the past. This is done so that the counsellor
may not disturb the family homeostasis. But family counsellors
need to regard the identified patients symptoms as an expression
of dysfunctional transactional patterns affecting the whole family.
First of all, a structural diagnosis broadens the problem beyond
the individual(s) to family system. Secondly, it moves the focus
from discrete events in the past to ongoing transactions in the
present. The goal is to transform the family in a way that it benefits all of its members. Humans can get used to any situation.
What we initially saw as pathological may become a normal course
of action in our own eyes as the days pass by. This happens because in family counselling the counsellor is slowly inducted into
the family dynamics. Therefore he/she is not able to perceive the
problem areas as clearly as he/she saw them at the beginning.
Therefore it is good to take note of the first impressions and assessments made by the counsellor, which can later be edited. Otherwise the counsellor may become blind to the obvious facts of the
dynamics of the family. It is good to take into account both the
problem the family presents and the structural dynamics they display.
What is meant by diagnosing is the working hypothesis that
the counsellor evolves from his/her experiences and observations
upon joining the family. It involves the counsellors accommodation to the family to form a therapeutic system, followed by his/
her assessment of his/her experiences of the familys interaction
in the present.
The counsellor focuses on six major areas in assessing the
familys interactions.
78
1. The counsellor considers the family structure, its preferred transactional patterns and the alternatives available.
2. The counsellor evaluates the systems flexibility and its capacity
for elaboration and restructuring, as revealed by the reshuffling
of the systems alliances, coalitions, and subsystems in response
to the changing circumstances.
3. The counsellor examines the family systems resonance, its sensitivity to the individual members actions.
4. The counsellor reviews the family life-context, analysing the
sources of support and stress in the familys ecology.
5. The counsellor examines the familys developmental stage and
its performance of the tasks appropriate to that stage.
6. The counsellor explores ways in which the identified patients
symptoms are used for the maintenance of the familys preferred
transactional patterns.14
4) Highlighting and Modifying Interactions
Naturally when families begin to interact, problematic transactions emerge. It is good to focus on process, not on content.
Therefore let the counsellor look for who says what to whom and
in what way. For example, when one of the members complains
about another member, the counsellor could ask the other member to respond to the statement. Families do respond to intense
messages. Intensity comes from being clear about the goal. Intensity can be achieved by selective regulation of affect, repetition,
and duration. To raise the affective intensity of statements, tone,
volume, pacing, and choice of words can be used. Intensity can
also be achieved by extending the duration of a sequence beyond
the point where the dysfunctional homeostasis is reinstated. For
example, a teenager wanting to go out at night after 10 p.m. may
create a scene so that his/her parents may allow him/her. If only
the parents were to maintain their position without yielding, the
teenager may not in future resort to the tactics he/she customarily
uses. At times, intensity may require repetition of one theme in a
variety of contexts. For example, infantilising parents (who do
things for their children the things which they themselves can do)
could be told not to do so.
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79
By shaping competence, the counsellor can modify interactions. Intensity is used to block the stream of interactions, but
shaping competence is like altering the direction of the flow by
highlighting and shaping the positive. Instead of dwelling on the
mistakes, the counsellor could concentrate on the right things that
the members do. The counsellor needs to keep in mind that he/
she need not do things that the clients can do for themselves.15
5) Boundary Making/Marking Boundaries
One of the functions of the structural counsellor is to realign

boundaries, increasing either proximity or distance between family subsystems. In an enmeshed family, members could be urged
to speak for themselves; interruptions are blocked, and dyads are
helped to finish conversation without intrusion from others. In a
disengaged family the counsellor could intervene to challenge conflict avoidance, and to block detouring in order to help disengaged members increase contact with each other. Structural counsellors attempt to move the family discussions from linear to circular causality by stressing the complementarity of family relations.
For the healthy functioning of the family, the family must
protect the integrity of the total system and the functional autonomy of its parts. The counsellors task is to facilitate the family
to create the flexible interchange between autonomy and interdependency that will best promote the psychosocial growth of its
members. First, the counsellor must delineate individual boundaries. The counsellor could give some ground rules to protect and
promote individual autonomy. For example, all the members will
stop talking and listen when one of them chooses to talk. Children should be differentiated, receiving individual rights and privileges according to their age and position in the family. Secondly,
there should be clear demarcation of subsystem boundaries. For
example, spouse subsystem boundaries should be protected from
intrusion by the children or by adult members of the extended
family. 16
6) Unbalancing
The aim of unbalancing is to change the relationship of members within a subsystem. It happens when families are stuck in a
stalemate in conflicts. The members check and balance each other
and as a result remain frozen in inaction. Evidently in unbalanc-
80
ing, the counsellor joins and supports any one individual or subsystem at the expense of others. Unbalancing is not done in a bid
to prove who is right or wrong, but to unfreeze and realign the
system. Ultimately balance and fairness are achieved since the counsellor takes sides in turn with various members of the family.
Escalating stress is one of the most radical strategies in the
restructuring repertoire. Stress need not be taken as dysfunctional
in the family system. On the contrary it can be used to demonstrate differences or to challenge a family system that is not functioning properly. To do this, the counsellor allies himself/herself
with one member of the family to precipitate a crisis during the
family session.17
7) Challenging the Familys Assumptions
Structural family counsellors sometimes challenge the way

family members perceive reality. Structural family counselling does
not primarily take to cognitive treatment and yet it has found it
useful to challenge the beliefs of the family members. Whatever
we say from our memory is a narrative truth, which has more
influence than historical truth. What the family members present
to the counsellors is partly historical truth and partly a construction. The constructions are the shared reality of a family. They
represent mutual understandings and shared prejudices. Some of
them are hopeful and helpful and some are not. There are times
when the structural family counsellors act as teachers, offering
information and advice based on their training and experience.
This is done to reassure the anxious family members, to help them
behave more competently, or to restructure their interactions.
Counsellors also can use constructions that are pragmatic fictions
to provide family members with a different frame of experience.
For example, telling a child that he/she behaves younger than his/
her age will effect a change in the child. At times, the counsellor
may use paradoxes. Paradoxes are cognitive constructions that frustrate or confuse the family members into a search for alternatives.
It is usually expressed as scepticism about the family member(s)
changing. The members are impelled to prove by their behaviour
that what the counsellor said was not true.18
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81
7
COGNITIVE-BEHAVIOURAL
FAMILY COUNSELLING
Behavioural family counsellors started out using the learning theory techniques. These techniques were used to treat individuals and applied to the problems encountered by families. This
has grown to such a state that it has developed a variety of powerful, pragmatic techniques that it administers to a variety of family
problems. Its main emphasis is on parent training, behavioural
couples therapy, and treatment of sexual dysfunctions.
The origin of behaviour family counselling is from the classical and operant conditioning. At the outset, the target behaviour
is precisely specified in operational terms. Then operant conditioning, classical conditioning, social learning theory, and cognitive strategies are used to produce change in the target behaviour.
Gradually behavioural counsellors began to address such traditionally nonbehavioural concerns as the therapeutic alliance, the need
for empathy, the problem of resistance, communication, and problem-solving skills. At all times they are distinguished by their
directive approach. They are known for their assessment and evaluation. In behavioural counselling, analysis of behavioural sequences
prior to treatment, assessment of counselling in progress, and evaluation of final results are made. Since behavioural counselling believes that behaviour is determined more by its consequences than
its antecedents, counsellors are explicit and direct.1
Behaviour counselling originates from the laboratory investigations of Ivan Pavlov, the Russian physiologist whose work on
conditioned reflexes led to the development of classical conditioning. When we analyse classical conditioning, we find that an
unconditioned stimulus (UCS), such as food, which leads to a re-
82
flex unconditioned response (UCR), like salivation, is paired with

a conditioned stimulus (CS), such as the ringing of a bell. Now the
conditioned stimulus begins to evoke the same response. The
experiment done in animals was applied to abnormal behaviour
in humans.
Later John B. Watson applied the classical conditioning principles to experimentally induce phobias. Classical conditioning
was thought to have limited practical utility. In 1948, Joseph Wolpe
introduced systematic desensitisation, which was used to treat
phobias. Wolpe proved that anxiety is a persistent response of the
autonomic nervous system acquired through classical conditioning. He argued that systematic desensitisation deconditions the
anxiety through reciprocal inhibition, by pairing responses that
are incompatible with anxiety to the previously anxiety-arousing
stimuli.
Classical conditioning was used in family counselling especially for the treatment of anxiety-based disorders, including agoraphobia, sexual dysfunctions, and enuresis.
B.F. Skinners operant conditioning had greater influence on
behavioural family counselling. The term operant refers to
voluntary behavioural responses, as opposed to involuntary or reflex behaviour. The frequency of operant responses is determined
by their consequences. Skinner proved that responses that are positively reinforced would occur more frequently while those that
are punished or ignored will be extinguished. In operant conditioning, after identifying target behaviour, the counsellor quantifies its frequency and rate. Then, to complete a functional analysis of the behaviour, the counsellor notes the consequences of the
behaviour to determine the contingencies of reinforcement. Skinner argued that behaviour problems could be dealt with directly,
not merely as symptoms of underlying psychic conflict. Skinners
technique is particularly effective with children since parents have
considerable control over reinforcers and punishments.
Behavioural family counselling was not developed by any
single individual but we can identify three leaders who played a
major role. They are a psychologist, Gerald Patterson; a psychiatrist, Robert Liberman; and a social worker, Richard Stuart.
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83
Patterson developed methods for sampling periods of family interaction in the home. Liberman used the operant learning framework to family problems. Stuart transferred the operant principles
used to modify childrens behaviour to the couples in distress. He
applied a reciprocal reinforcement paradigm in which couples
learned to
1. List the behaviour they desired from each other,
2. Record the frequency with which the spouse displayed the
desired behaviour, and
3. Specify exchanges for the desired behaviour.
Tokens were used for reinforcers. Mutual exchanges were based

on written contracts. The early stage of behavioural family counselling depended almost entirely on operant conditioning, especially with behavioural problems that were relatively straightforward stimulus-response exchanges.
In the 1970s behavioural family counselling was developed
into three major packages, such as parent training, behavioural
couples therapy, and sexual therapy. There had been some new
development, namely, that many nonbehavioural family counsellors selectively include behavioural interventions in their work.
For example, Minuchin used operant conditioning in his work
with anorexia nervosa. There has been a rapprochement between
stimulus-response conditioning models and cognitive theories.
Presently the leading figures in behavioural couples counselling
are Robert Weiss, Neil Jacobson, Richard Stuart, Michael Crowe,
Ian Falloon, Norman Epstein, and Gayola Margolin.2
In behavioural family counselling, one comes across a number of terms with their special meaning even though they are used
interchangeably. They are, for example: learning theory, behaviour
modification, behaviour therapy, and social learning theory.
Learning theory refers to the general body of principles discovered in laboratory experiments on learning and conditioning.
Behaviour modification and behaviour therapy have been
used interchangeably. Yet behaviour modification adheres to strict
84
operant procedures, while behaviour therapy is associated with

counterconditioning methods for treating anxiety. But now,
behaviour therapy is commonly used to refer to all operant and
nonoperant behavioural treatments.
Social learning theory is a broad approach to human
behaviour, integrating principles from social, developmental, and
cognitive psychology along with those principles of learning
derived from experimental psychology. In it, the environmental
influences are the primary concern.
For behaviour counselling, the central premise is that
behaviour is maintained by its consequences. Therefore it follows
that a behaviour resists change unless more rewarding consequences
result from the new behaviour. Elaborating the consequences of
behaviour, as well as the cues that elicit it, requires an understanding of stimuli and reinforcements. Learning theorists speak of four
different stimulus functions: eliciting stimuli, discriminative
stimuli, neutral stimuli, and reinforcing stimuli.
Eliciting stimuli are aspects of a situation that reliably produce a response. This is precisely the case of classical conditioning, where certain eliciting stimuli are known to produce reflexlike
responses. We have discriminative stimuli when a particular
response will be followed by a certain consequence. Because of the
past association of those stimuli with those consequences, discriminative stimuli have acquired a cueing function making particular
responses more probable. This is because of the earlier association. When we, for example, receive many commands from our
superiors, we make out from our past experiences which commands are really meant.
We have neutral stimuli that have no direct relationship to
behaviour, but conditioning can establish a link between a previously neutral stimulus and a response. Classical conditioning of
Ivan Pavlov is a case in point.
The last one is reinforcing stimuli that are the consequences
of behaviour that affect the probability of future responses. They
are so to say cues that the reinforcement will follow.3
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85
1) Responses
Responses are understood as respondent or operant. Respondents are those that are under the control of eliciting stimuli, and
their consequences do not usually affect their frequency of occurrence. Operants are those behaviours that are not automatically
elicited by some stimulus, but whose occurrence is affected by
their consequences. From what we have said, it is clear that operants are causes while respondents are effects. It is a linear viewpoint but when we think in terms of circular causal chains of systems, the distinction between these two responses is not useful.
There are some responses, which may not be recognized as operants (something done to get something) just because we are not
aware of the reinforcing payoffs. For example, temper tantrum is
usually reinforced by attention. Even though the attention may be
unpleasant (like yelling), it may be the most social interaction that
the child receives. Therefore, responses are often maintained under conditions that are counterintuitive.4
Responses
Respondent (those that are under the control of

eliciting stimuli, and their consequences do not
usually affect their frequency of occurrence)
Operant (Behaviours that are not automatically
elicited by some stimuli, but whose occurrence is
affected by their consequences)
2) Reinforcements
Reinforcements are those consequences that affect the rate of

behaviour, either accelerating or decelerating it. So if consequences
accelerate behaviour, then they are called reinforcers, while those
that decelerate behaviours are known as punishers. Reinforcers can
be either positive reinforcers, positive or rewarding consequences
or negative reinforcers, aversive consequences terminated by a
response. Thus one can make a postpsychiatric patient to wash
his/her clothes by rewarding him/her after he/she does it, or negatively reinforce him/her by nagging until he/she does it.
Punishment can be either aversive control, such as yelling or
spanking, or withdrawal of positive consequences, such as having
86
to sit in the corner or being asked not to go out for a week. Negative reinforcement and punishment are often confused but they
have distinctly different meanings. Reinforcement and punishment
can be either primary or secondary. Primary reinforcers are natural or biological outcomes, including sex and food. Primary punishments are physical pain or loud noises. Secondary reinforcers
are those that have acquired a positive meaning through social learning, like praise or eye contact. Secondary punishments are criticism or withdrawal of attention. Attention as such has a very powerful influence on behaviour. Therefore focusing attention on
undesirable behaviour often provides unintended social reinforcement.
1. Positive (Positive or rewarding
consequences)
2. Negative (aversive consequences
terminated by a response)
1. Reinforcers
(Consequences
1. Primary (Natural biological
accelerate
outcomes, including sex and food)
behaviour)
2. Secondary (The ones that have
acquired a positive meaning
Reinforcements
through social learning, like praise
(Consequences
or eye contact)
that affect the
1. Aversive Control (e.g., yelling or
rate of
spanking)
behaviour)
2. Withdrawal of Positive Conse2. Punishers
quences (Having to sit in the corner or being grounded for a week)
(Consequences
that decelerate 1. Primary (Physical pain or loud

behaviour)
noises)
2. Secondary (They include criticism
or withdrawal of attention)
Extinction will occur when no reinforcement follows a

response. Inattention is the best response one can think of to meet
a behaviour we do not like. The relationship between a response
and its consequences defines the contingencies governing that
response. Reinforcement schedules describe the relationship be-
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87
tween responding and the occurrence of consequences. When

reinforcement occurs at irregular intervals, the response becomes
more resistant to extinction. We can easily reinforce simple
responses but it is difficult to learn a response that is not yet in
ones repertoire. For this we have the technique called successive
approximation, or shaping. We can shape someones behaviour by
paying attention to and praising the persons gradual development
of the component skills of the behaviour being learned. Modelling is another technique to learn complex or new behaviour.
Modelling is a short-cut technique in the place of trial-and-error
learning.
In all the techniques we spoke of, counsellors seem to ignore
thoughts and feelings. But now behaviour counsellors are increasingly aware that people not only act but also think and feel. Nowadays inner events such as cognitions, verbalizations, and feelings
are recognized as events that function as stimuli in controlling the
behaviour. Behaviour counsellors shifted their attention from individuals in isolation to family relationships. For this to happen,
they rely on Thibaut and Kelleys theory of social exchange, according to which people strive to maximize rewards and minimize
costs in their relationships. In the marital context, this behavioural
economics provides a basis for understanding the reciprocity that
develops between spouses. What we can observe in a successful
marriage is that both partners work to maximize the mutual
rewards, and minimize the costs. Behaviour exchanges follow a
norm of reciprocity over time, so that aversive or positive stimulation from one person tends to produce reciprocal behaviour from
another. Thus your pleasantness will beget pleasantness and likewise your nastiness begets nastiness.5
The view of the behaviourists is that symptoms are learned
responses, involuntarily acquired and reinforced. According to them
there is no underlying meaning in symptoms, and they do not
posit conflict in or between spouses as leading to problems in children. They concentrate on the symptoms themselves and look for
environmental responses that reinforce the problem behaviour. One
wonders why people should reinforce undesirable behaviour that
88
causes them so much pain. The reason does not reside in a motive
for suffering, but in the simple fact that people often inadvertently reinforce precisely those responses that cause them the most
distress.
It is likely that punishment will produce the opposite effect
from what is intended. For misbehaviour if you use punishment
even by shouting, that is an attention, which reinforces the
behaviour. To get that attention one may misbehave. Attention is
an extremely powerful social reinforcer. Parents, who respond to
problem behaviour in their children by scolding and lecturing,
though looking like punishment, may in fact be reinforcing
because of the attention the child gets. Ignoring is one of the best
ways in such situations. When we ignore some misbehaviour, we
need to do it consistently; otherwise things will become worse
since intermittent reinforcement is the most resistant to extinction. Punishment should be effective. If you make threats, you
should follow through. Punishment should neither be that mild
that it is not effective, and nor so severe to cause fear and anxiety,
instead of discriminative learning.
Behavioural family counsellors have identified a number of
defective patterns of reinforcement in cases of marital discord. Azin,
Naster, and Jones give us eight causes of marital discord:
1. Receiving too little reinforcement from the marriage.
2. Too few needs given marital reinforcement.
3. Marital reinforcement no longer provides satisfaction.
4. New behaviours are not reinforced.
5. One spouse gives more reinforcement than he or she receives.
6. Marriage interferes with the extramarital sources of satisfaction.
7. The communication about potential source of satisfaction is not
adequate.
8. Aversive control predominates over positive reinforcement.
The major determinant of marital unhappiness is the use of

aversive control. Usually we notice in dysfunctional marriages,
spouses reacting to problems with attempts at aversive control like
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89
nagging, crying, withdrawing, or threatening. These things usually alienate each other. But on the contrary, if they learn to shape
positive alternatives, it will enhance their marriage. One notices
in distressed marriages, there are less of rewarding exchanges and
more of punishing exchanges verbal and instrumental. What
happens in such situations is that spouses typically reciprocate their
partners use of punishment, and this creates a vicious circle. Whenever there is a failure to exchange benefits, the reward system shifts
from positive to aversive control. Couples in distressed families
may have poor problem-solving skills like changing the subject
while discussing important issues, phrasing wishes and compliments in vague and critical ways, and responding to complaints
with countercomplaints. 6
Behavioural family counselling is used mainly for parent training, couples counselling, family counselling, and treatment of sexual
dysfunction. We shall deal with these three separately.
1) Behavioural Parent Training
For most family counsellors, the family (not the individual)

is the problem. But on the contrary, behavioural counsellors accept the parents view that the child is the problem and so they
meet with only the child with one parent and in some cases they
meet with both the child with the parents and older siblings. Their
approach is straightforward with simple strategies. They apply
experimental principles to clinical problems and carefully verify
the results of their procedures. The techniques used are operant
conditioning, respondent conditioning, and cognitive/affective
techniques. What is used most often is operant conditioning, where
the reinforcers employed may be tangible or social. Counsellors
found that smiling, praise, and attention are as effective as money
or candy. Operant techniques include: shaping, token economies,
contingency contracting, contingency management, and time out.
Shaping refers to reinforcing change in small steps that gradually approximate the desired goals. Token economies use a system
of points or stars to reward children for successful behaviour. Once
the children accumulated a sufficient number of tokens, they collect a reward. Contingency contracting involves agreements by the
90
parents themselves to make certain changes following the changes

made by their children. For example, if the child passes the exam
in first class, he/she will be given a bicycle. Contingency management is giving and taking away rewards and punishments based
upon the childs behaviour. Time out is a punishment where the
child is made to sit in the corner or sent to its room.
Respondent conditioning techniques are modification of
physiological responses. Among them the most common are: systematic desensitisation, assertiveness training, aversion therapies,
and sex therapies. The most commonly used cognitive/affective
techniques include thought-stopping, rational emotive behaviour
therapy, modelling, reattribution, and self-monitoring. Parents
usually complain of personality traits rather than problem
behaviour. For example, they may say that their son is hyperactive. Counsellors need to know what the boy is doing when he is
hyperactive. Also the counsellor needs to enquire what the parents do when their son is hyperactive. Thus asking for detailed
descriptions elicits information about the frequency, intensity,
duration, and social consequences of the problem behaviour. Then
comes the measurement and functional analysis stage, which consists of observing and recording the target behaviour, as well as its
antecedents and consequences. The stage that follows is the one in
which the counsellor designs a specific treatment package to match
the particular needs of the family.
Once the assessment is complete, the counsellor decides on
which behaviour should be increased and which one is to be decreased. In order to accelerate a behaviour, the Premack principle
is used. This principle says that a high probability behaviour (particularly pleasant activities) is chosen to serve as a reinforcer for
behaviour with a low probability of occurrence. For a child that
does not take a shower every day, its TV watching can be made
contingent on taking a shower. For decreasing a behaviour, deceleration techniques apply contingent punishment and extinction.
The most common technique for decelerating behaviour is timeout from positive reinforcement. This means ignoring or isolating
the child after it misbehaves. Research has confirmed that a duration of about five minutes is most effective. Usually children are
to be warned beforehand in order to give them a chance to control
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91
their own behaviour before they are put into time-out. Parents
could also use verbal reprimand, ignoring, and isolation. But simply repeating commands to the child is the most ineffective way to
change its behaviour.
Counsellors could observe parent and child interaction
behind a one-way glass screen in the clinic. In this method, parents can be taught how to play and discipline their children. This
is useful in dealing with small children and preadolescents. But
with teenagers it is better to use contingency contracting. In this
technique, everybody in the family gets something by making compromises. Both parents and teenager are asked to specify what
behaviour they would like the other to change. In this there should
be a clear communication of content and feelings and clear presentation of demands leading to negotiation with each person
receiving something in exchange for some concession. It is always
good to start with easy issues.7
2) Behavioural Couples Counselling
Couples counselling begins with an elaborate, structured

assessment process. This may include clinical interviews, ratings
of specific target behaviours, and standard marital assessment questionnaires. Assessment is meant to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the couples relationship and the manner in which
rewards and punishments are exchanged. Relationship skills too
are evaluated like the ability to discuss problems, current reinforcement value for one another, skill in pinpointing relevant
reinforcers, competencies in sex, childrearing, financial management, distribution of roles, and decision-making. After the assessment comes the analysis of the couple relationship in social learning terms. It has been noted that couples express what is to be
decelerated rather than accelerated. Couples can be coached to give
positive feedbacks. Dysfunction of couple relation is the result of
low rates of positive reinforcement. A major treatment strategy is
to increase positive control while decreasing the rate of aversive
control. Another major strategy is to improve communication,
which is hoped to facilitate the couples ability to solve problems.
It was Stuart who proposed five intervention strategies that summarize the behavioural approach to treating troubled marriages.
They are: 1. Couples are taught to express themselves in clear,
92
behavioural descriptions, rather than in vague and critical complaints. 2. They are taught new behaviour exchange procedures
emphasizing positive, in place of aversive, control. 3. They are
helped to improve their communication. 4. They are encouraged
to establish clear and effective means of sharing power and making decisions, and 5. They are taught strategies for solving future
problems, as a means of maintaining and extending gains initiated
in therapy.
Stuart used the operant method of exchanging token as
rewards for targeted desired behaviours. Later refinements of this
approach dispensed with tokens, but mutual exchanges were based
on written contracts. His contingency contracting and principles
of enhancing the mutual positive reinforcement potential of family members have been used widely by behavioural family counsellors. Couples were asked to express their wishes and annoyances
specifically and behaviourally. One way of doing this is to ask
each spouse to list three things that he/she would like the other to
do often. A variant of this method is that each partner thinks of
things the other might want and do to see the results. Yet another
method is to celebrate love days during which each one doubles
his/her pleasing behaviours towards the other. This could be also
called caring days. It will become evident to notice that these
procedures are meant to help couples establish reinforcement reciprocity, based on rewarding behaviour, in place of coercion. Of
course we may agree that positive control is more pleasant and
effective than aversive control. Partners need to say what they want
than expect the other to intuit it. Research has proved that
disagreement and angry exchanges may not be harmful in the long
run. May be it means dissatisfaction at the present but later they
may get on well with each other. On the contrary defensiveness,
stubbornness, and withdrawal from conflict leads to long-term
deterioration in marriages.
Group format is the ideal setting for training in communications skills. It may involve instruction, modelling, role-playing,
structured exercises, behavioural rehearsal, and feedback. Couples
can be specific, express requests in positive terms, respond directly
to criticism instead of cross-complain, talk about the present and
future rather than the past, listen without interruption, minimize
punitive statements, and eliminate questions that sound like declarations.8
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3) A Cognitive-Behavioural Approach to Family

Counselling
It was from the behavioural approach that the cognitive

couples therapy developed. First it came as a supplemental component to the behavioural approach and gradually became a more
comprehensive system of intervention. The same pattern of progression took place for the cognitive family therapy too. There are
eighteen different types of cognitive therapy used by counsellors.
Let us consider some of the most prominent ones.
Albert Ellis is the founder of the Rational Emotive Behaviour
Therapy (REBT). He concentrated on individuals perceptions and
interpretations of events that occur in the family. What is presumed here is that family members create their own world by the
phenomenological view they take of what happens to them. The
counsellor concentrates on how the particular problems of the
family members affect their well-being as a unit. In this method,
family members are treated as individuals, each of whom subscribes
to a particular set of beliefs and expectations. The family members realize that their illogical beliefs and distortions serve as the
foundation for their emotional distress. This method illustrates
that it is not the events that cause emotional distress but the beliefs about the events. Therefore they are assisted to dispute their
irrational beliefs. By this method they are put on a more rational
basis. The counsellor teaches the family actively and directly that
emotional problems are caused by irrational beliefs and that by
changing these self-defeating ideas, they can improve the overall
quality of the family relationship. Perhaps here there is no uncovering of the core schemata, which are deeper assumptions; there is
not much awareness of the family systems dynamics.
The cognitive-behavioural approach takes a more expansive
and inclusive approach by focusing in greater depth on patterns of
family interaction and by remaining consistent with the elements
derived from a systems perspective. Family relationships, cognitions, emotions, and behaviour are viewed as exerting a mutual
influence on one another, so that a cognitive inference can evoke
emotion and behaviour, and emotion and behaviour can likewise
influence cognition. Cognitions, feelings, behaviour, and environ-
94
mental feedback are in constant reciprocal interaction among themselves and sometimes serve to maintain the dysfunction of the family unit. The fact that members of a family simultaneously influence and are influenced by each other is shared by the cognitivebehavioural approach and the systems theory. Thus, the behaviour,
cognitions, and emotions in the other members elicit reactive cognitions, behaviour, and emotions in the original member. In this
process, the family dynamics escalates, rendering the family vulnerable to negative spirals of conflict. There are four means identified by which family members cognitions, behaviour, and emotions may interact and build to a volatile climax. They are: 1. The
individuals own cognitions, behaviour, and emotion regarding the
family interaction, 2. The actions of individual family members
toward him or her, 3. The combined (and not always consistent)
reactions several family members have toward him or her, and 4.
The characteristics of the relationships among other family members. These serve as stimuli during the family interactions and often become ingrained in family patterns and permanent styles of
interaction.
Aaron Becks method is called cognitive therapy (CT), which
places a heavy emphasis on schema or core beliefs. Just like individuals have their own schemata, family members too have their
own joint beliefs about their family, which is called family schemata. These family schemata are the jointly held beliefs about
the family formed as a result of years of integrated interaction
among the members of the family unit. We are supposed to have
two separate sets of schemata about families: one is related to our
parents family of origin, and the other is related to families in
general. In any case both types have a major impact on how we
think, feel and behave within the family setting. The family of
origin of each partner in a relationship plays a crucial role in the
shaping of the immediate family schema. It is hoped that the beliefs, whether conscious or unconscious, passed down from the
family of origin contribute to a joint or blended schema that leads
to the development of the current family schema.9
Cognitive-behaviour family counselling is in its infancy and
needs a lot more research. All the same it is recognized as a major
theoretical approach.
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4) The Treatment of Sexual Dysfunction
10
At times counsellors may find it difficult to decide whether

to focus directly on sexual problems or to treat them as a symptom
of underlying problems in the relationship. Sometimes working
on the interpersonal relationship, sexual problems could be
resolved indirectly. There are times when intractable interpersonal
problems can be resolved only with the improvement in a couples
sexual relationship. One needs to have informed clinical judgement in order to treat the sexual dysfunction directly. Wolpe (1958)
introduced systematic desensitisation that was a major advancement in treating sexual dysfunction. Wolpe considered most sexual
problems as the result of conditioned anxiety. He advocated a
therapy in which couples were instructed to engage in a graded
series of progressively more intimate encounters, avoiding thoughts
about erection or orgasm. As a complement to desensitisation came
assertive training. This helps persons who are socially and sexually inhibited to accept and express their needs and feelings.
(1) Assessment
A breakthrough came with the publication of the Masters
and Johnsons (1970) approach. It was presumed that anxiety
interfered with couples ability to relax into arousal and orgasm.
Most sex therapists follow a general approach to treatment. The
first step is a careful and thorough assessment. It automatically
includes a complete medical examination to rule out organic problems. Then the nature of dysfunction is understood and goals are
set. In nonorganic problems, lack of information, poor technique,
and poor communication in the sexual area are the most amenable to sexual therapy. Brief treatments are usually helpful to
people who are suffering from premature ejaculation, vaginismus,
or orgasmic dysfunction. Ejaculatory incompetence, erectile failure, and longstanding lack of sexual desire are generally known to
be more difficult to resolve. Kaplan (1979) is of the opinion that
there are three types of problems corresponding to the three stages
of sexual response. They are: disorders of desire; arousal disorders;
and orgasm disorders. Disorders of desire can be from low sex drive
to sexual aversion. With the highly motivated clients, success is
possible. Usually counselling consists of deconditioning anxiety,
96
and helping clients identify and stop the negative thoughts that
interfere with sexual desire. In arousal disorders, there are decreased
emotional arousal and difficulty achieving and maintaining an erection, or dilating and lubricating. Clients with such problems are
helped with a combination of relaxation techniques, and teaching
couples to focus on physical sensations involved in touching and
caressing, instead of worrying about what comes next. In orgasm
disorders, what is involved is the timing of orgasm (e.g., premature
or delayed), the quality of the orgasm, or the requirements for
orgasm (e.g., some people only have orgasm during masturbation).
Premature ejaculation and lack of orgasm may respond to sex
therapy. In the latter case, the woman can be taught to practice on
her own and learn to fantasize.
(2) Insight and Attitude Change
Once the assessment is over, the couples are presented with

an explanation of the role of conditioned anxiety in problems with
sex, and how anxiety is developed and is being maintained in their
sexual relationship. Behaviour counselling believes in insight and
attitude change as fundamental to the treatment. Changing attitude is of great value in treatment. Once I was counselling a couple
on sexual issues. The husband wanted frequent sexual intimacy
whereas the wife was not interested so frequently. As they both
were working full time, they could engage in a relaxed mood only
during the weekends. But the wife would undertake all kinds of
works in order to avoid sexual intimacy. While in the session I
asked her what makes her too busy during the weekend, she
replied that life is not meant only for sex. Here her attitude towards sex indicated that it is good enough to have sex once in a
way but not more often. I have also met couples who consider
sexual intimacy as a necessary sin and so after the act they feel
guilty. To repeat, attitude is an important determinant of sexual
problems.
(3) Sensate Focus
Most treatments start with sensate focus. It involves teaching
the couple how to relax and enjoy touching and being touched.
They take turns to gently caress each other. The one being touched
will relax and concentrate on the feeling of being touched and
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97
later let the partner know which touch is most pleasing and which
is less so. At the beginning they are to avoid touching the sensitive
parts like breasts or genital areas in order to avoid undue anxiety.
After this, the couple is asked to become more intimate gradually
but should slow down if any one of them becomes anxious. When
anxiety drops, desire may mount and this is the time when the
couple needs to engage in progressively more intimate exchanges.
During this time the couple is asked to communicate what they
like and what not. Besides, it is good to say what type of stroke or
touch each one likes. Instead of enduring an unpleasant touch until
one explodes with anger, it is good to communicate to the partner
at the very beginning in a very gentle manner. The couple is taught
not only to communicate when they want sex but also when they
do not want sex.
(4) Tailored Techniques
After the sensate focus exercise, the couple is introduced to
specific techniques tailored to their problems. For women, the most
common problem is orgasm. This problem seems to be rooted in
lack of information. One may expect the woman to have orgasm
during intercourse without additional clitoral stimulation. For men,
the most common problem seems to be premature ejaculation for
which the squeeze technique is used. In the squeeze technique, the
woman stimulates the penis of the man until he feels the urge to
ejaculate. At that time, the woman squeezes the fraenulum (at the
base of the head) firmly between her thumb and first two fingers
until the urge to ejaculate subsides. After a while stimulation can
be resumed and then followed by another squeeze. For erectile
failure, the counsellor counsels the man how to reduce the performance anxiety and increase sexual arousal. Usually desensitisation
of the mans anxiety is undertaken. There could be discussions in
which the partners describe their expectations. They could increase
the variety and duration of foreplay. There is also the teasing technique, in which the woman alternately starts and stops stimulating the man. The couple could also start intercourse with the
woman guiding the mans flaccid penis into her vagina.
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Strategic Family Counselling of Jay Haley & Clo Madanes
8
STRATEGIC FAMILY
COUNSELLING OF JAY HALEY
AND CLO MADANES
The prominent proponents in the strategic family counselling model are Jay Haley and Clo Madanes. Theirs is called communication therapies. In strategic counselling, the counsellor initiates what happens during treatment and designs a particular
approach for each problem. In this model the counsellor takes the
initiative and responsibility for directly influencing family members. The counsellors intention is to have some influence, however temporary it could be, in order to bring about beneficial
change. The main concern of the counsellor is about the theory
and means for inducing change. The prominent figures besides Jay
Haley and Clo Madanes are Milton Erickson, the Mental Research Institute (MRI) group (including John Weakland, Paul
Watzlawick, Richard Fisch, Arthur Bodin, and Carlos Sluzki),
Gerald Zuk, Lynn Hoffman, Mara Palazzoli-Selvini and associates
in Milan, Italy, and Richard Rabkin. Let us now consider the commonalities among the major strategic approaches represented by
the above groups. We specially give attention to the general principles that apply to most of them.1
2. The Basic Beliefs
Strategic family counselling operates with the beliefs that 1.
counselling should be brief, 2. people are not pathological, and 3.
clients can change rapidly. The strategic school applied Gregory
Batesons ideas directly to family treatment, resulting in a set of
creative ways to generate change, and outwit the resistance, in families seen as cybernetic systems. In the 1970s and early 1980s, strategic methods were amply used but later in the 1990s the strategic
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99
family counselling method seen as therapist-as-expert-manipulator was rejected in favour of therapist-as-collaborator. All the
same this approach contains the elements of sophisticated understanding of family complexities and powerful techniques. They
are useful in family counselling.2
3. The Interest in Changing Behaviour
The strategic counsellors were more interested in changing
behaviour than in understanding them. Therefore one will find
more literature on techniques than on theories. They are ever
active in designing novel strategies for solving problems. In a way
they are pragmatic. The one who influenced the thinking of strategic counsellors is Milton Erickson. Milton Erickson was not in
agreement with what was the psychiatric tradition of his time.
Psychoanalysts were not concerned about the symptoms since they
believed that symptoms only represented the tip of the intrapsychic iceberg. But Erickson was symptom- or problem-focused.
Unlike psychoanalysis, Erickson found the unconscious mind a
source of wisdom and creativity. Therefore, if unfettered by conscious inhibition, it could solve problems and heal symptoms. So
he did not advocate the traditional attempts to foster insight through
interpretation. He was of the opinion that deep down the clients
knew what to do. Perhaps, he thought, the clients did not have
access to that wisdom. Therefore he proposed that one way to get
access was to break out of habitual patterns of behaviour and thinking. For that he developed a number of clever ways of getting people
to simply do something different in the context of the old
behaviour, or to do the old behaviour in a new context.
Erickson, because of his association with hypnosis, was convinced that clients could change quickly and so he made therapies
as brief as possible. If there were any failure, he would not attribute it to resistance but would find ways to bypass or use resistance. By using hypnotic techniques, he applied paradoxical techniques. For example, to induce trance, he would ask the client to
keep the eyes open until they become unbearably heavy instead of
telling them straight away to close the eyes. Thus rapid change and
utilization of resistance became the cornerstones of strategic family counselling. Added to that, the cybernetic concepts of Bateson
100
were introduced into counselling. Strategic counsellors borrowed

the concept of the positive feedback loop from cybernetics.3
4. The Healthy Families
Though the strategic therapists were keenly aware of normal
family developmental patterns, they were more concerned about
dysfunctional than healthy families. Strategic counsellors argue that
healthy families are less preoccupied with themselves and their
own motivations or problems, showing less interest in any kind of
search for insight. Batesan is of the opinion that a great deal of
growing up, of maturation in the normal environment, does not
depend on insight at all. In conformity with what Batesan said,
Erickson commented that if you look over the lives of happy, welladjusted people, they have never bothered to analyse their childhood or their parental relationships. Among the writings of strategic counsellors, one area that stands out obviously is the normal
vs. dysfunctional family differences in the family developmental
life cycle. Every family undergoes normal transitional steps or stages
over time. These can be potential crises points. Most families usually weather these crises points without much difficulty. But
dysfunctional families are unable to make such transitions
smoothly. Haley finds that in normal families the hierarchies and
structures are usually in line with the cultural practices. He observed that in most societies, parents are expected to be in charge
of their children. Cross-generational coalitions, such as one parent-child dyad siding against another parent-child dyad, are not
known to be common. There is hardly any confusion in healthy
families regarding the hierarchical organization and there is a general adherence to the socially sanctioned hierarchical structure. In
dysfunctional families, there is confusion in hierarchy with crossgenerational coalition being common.4
5. Dysfunctional Families
1) Symptoms
Symptoms are viewed by strategic family counsellors as the

resultants or concomitants of misguided attempts at changing an
existing difficulty. These symptoms make things worse. For example, asking a depressed person to cheer up may worsen the con-
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101
dition. Individual problems are manifestations of disturbances in

the family. A symptom is a communicative act, with message qualities, which serves as a sort of contract between two or more members and has a function with the interpersonal network. It is viewed
as a label for a sequence of behaviour within a social organization.
What we observe is that a symptom usually appears when a person is in an impossible situation and is trying to break out of it.
Thus the person is locked into a sequence or patterns with the rest
of the family or significant others and cannot see a way to alter it
through nonsymptomatic means. In this perspective, the family is
an interpersonal system, which is in many ways analogous to other
cybernetic systems. It is considered to be of the nonlinear type
with complex interlocking feedback mechanisms and patterns of
behaviour, which repeat themselves in sequence.5
2) Life cycle
Strategic counsellors make use of the family developmental

process as a framework for explaining symptomatology. The problems of the dysfunctional families are the results of not being able
to adjust to transitions, which occur within the family life cycle.
The members become stuck at a particular point.
Though family members tend to endure problems in their
lives, there are special developmental challenges that members must
meet as the family evolves in order to remain stable and gratified.
Challenges are usually met well by the competent families and
poorly by the inept ones. Boss provides a chart of normative transitions for couples, which she terms as life span boundary changes.
She tries to see family life cycle changes from the vantage point of
boundaries between family members and those outside the family. Generally the changes include formation of the dyad, birth of
the first child, children first going to school, job-related parent/
spouse absence or presence, adolescent children leaving home, taking in children not your own or blending children from different
dyads, loss of a spouse, loss of parents, remarriage or remaining
single.
The first one, formation of the dyad, requires leaving home
which is ones family of origin and becoming an adult in a new
household. Now a new family is formed. Family loyalties may
102
become confusing, especially when loyalty to ones parents seems

to require remaining a child. Here there is the possibility of triangulation when one of the partners joins the family of origin. This
weakens the husband-wife bond. The birth of the first child is a
second dramatic challenge to the couple with the threat of triangulation. The mother-child relationship may alienate the husband/
father. This is particularly stressful for the new father. When children start going to school, parents experience loss resulting from
the growth and development of their children. Of course job-related absences are increasingly common for both sexes. This stresses
the couple dyad and requires a wider range of adaptiveness. When
adolescent children leave home, the parents feel depressed. With
the increasing divorce and remarriage rate, taking in children not
ones own is challenging. Disciplining nonbiological offspring is
very difficult. There are many subtleties of relationships with stepchildren, half-siblings, or foster children. There will be boundary
problems when a child lives part of the time in one home and part
of the time in another with a different set of family rules and
limits. Then may come the loss of spouse: beyond the couple dyad,
outside networks are necessary for a sense of well-being. The death
of parents can also trigger regression and system conflict. There
may be also issues after the death of a spouse if one should
remarry or remain single. New marriages of older couples present
tremendous challenges in negotiating new family rules and new
ways of doing the simple everyday things.6
3) The Triads and Hierarchies
Family counsellors have identified the triangles as the basic

building blocks of any emotional (interpersonal) system. It happens in the following way: When tension between members of a
two-person system becomes high, usually a third person is brought
into the picture. Now a family, which is an emotional system, is
composed of a series of interlocking triangles. Most children problems include a triangle consisting of an overinvolved parent-child
dyad (a cross-generational coalition) and a peripheral parent. Therefore it is commonsense to realize, that when a child displays symptoms, at least two adults are involved in the problem and the child
is both a participant and a communication vehicle between them.
Conflicts can cut across several levels in familial hierarchy. One is
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103
disturbed in direct proportion to the number of malfunctioning

hierarchies in which one is embedded. From the strategic counselling point of view dysfunction can be summarized as: 1. Symptoms can be viewed simply as particular types of behaviour functioning as homeostatic mechanisms, which regulate the family
transactions. 2. Problems in an identified patient cannot be considered apart from the context in which they occur and the functions which they serve. 3. An individual cannot be expected to
change unless his/her family system changes. 4. Insight per se is
not a necessary prerequisite for change.
Coalitions between two points of a triangle serve two functions. They are firstly to reduce anxiety and secondly to control
the third point of the triangle. It is normal in every family to experience coalition. Coalition usually helps those who are weak. It
provides both additional support and additional strength to a person who is feeling anxious and weak. It might help us deal with
our poor self-esteem and increase our influence. In coalitions, the
inside person appears good and attractive, and the outside person
appears bad and unattractive. In coalition we tend to distort reality. At the end, one feels disillusioned and ends up feeling weaker
or taken advantage of. There could be secret coalition(s) in families. They are difficult to deal with since they are not openly acknowledged.
A common phenomenon of coalition is between parents and
the good child against the bad child. The bad child is scapegoated.
Scapegoating is common in all groups. It is known to be the normal way to handle anxiety. When scapegoating is done, family
members covertly agree that only one has the problem and the
rest are fine. Scapegoating is a means of dealing with the anxiety
one feels about ones own sense of self and about being in close
relationships. When scapegoating happens, attention is focused
on the problem child, which means that there are deeper, more
basic issues being ignored in the family. Those issues are between
the mother and the father and their anxiety about their relationship with each other. Their anxieties stem from their experience
in their families of origin, which they have never looked at or
dealt with. Scapegoating can take place in such a way that even the
scapegoat may not realize what is happening. Surprisingly the scape-
104
goat is rarely an innocent victim. It looks as though the scapegoat,

quite unconsciously, volunteers for the role and almost on purpose does things that the family will find upsetting. Ordinarily
the scapegoat is a very sensitive person, who feels for the parents
and fears their potential separation. Because the scapegoat is afraid
that it will lose its self-security if the parents separate, he/she offers voluntarily to help the father and the mother stay together by
providing a focus for them outside of their relationship. When
mom and dad ignore their differences and focus instead on the
scapegoats differences, the scapegoat keeps them together. Triangles
or scapegoating or coalition can take various forms. Grandparents
may form triangles with parents or grandchildren.7
The strategic family counsellors take an attitude of pragmatism. They are concerned about techniques that work, however
illogical they may appear to be. Their aim is to eliminate or substantially reduce the symptom or presenting problem. Therefore
they are symptom-focused and behaviour-oriented. Their therapeutic tools are tasks and directives. They may also attempt to
unbalance a system by joining with one or more members on a
conflictual point. They tend to fortify the generational boundaries and tactically support the various members at certain times.8
1) Paradoxical Intervention or Prescribing the Symptom9
Using paradoxical intervention existed even from the 18 th

century onwards and so it is not a novel idea. Paradoxical interventions are those which appear absurd because they exhibit an apparently contradictory nature, such as requiring clients to do what
in fact they have been doing, rather than requiring that they change,
which is what everyone else is demanding. Paradoxical intervention is also called prescribing the symptom. Let us consider how
paradoxical intervention is useful in therapeutic situations. There
is a great amount of resistance to change within the family. Added
to this, the entry of the counsellor into the family is not that welcome. The family members tend to resist the efforts of the counsellor to change. Therefore if the counsellor tells them to do what
they are already doing, they are in a therapeutic bind. When they
follow the instructions of the counsellor to continue to do the
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106
things they have been doing, they are just obeying the counsellor,
which means that the members give undue power to the counsellor. Thus the counsellor can make the symptom occur at his/her
bidding. If the members resist the paradoxical instructions, they
are moving towards improvement, which in the long run amounts
to doing the bidding of the counsellor. Certainly there is going to
be confusion as to how to resist ? which leads to new patterns and
perceptions, and thus to change. This leads to a certain amount of
detachment from the disturbing behaviour. Thus, a directive, which
appears on the surface to be in opposition to the goals being sought,
serves to move toward them. Here one can see the principle clearly
that if you can turn the symptom on when you try, you will be
able to control it, instead of it controlling you.
actively said that they may not need frequent counselling, that
impelled the couple seek counselling quite frequently.
Strategic family counsellors divide the strategies of paradoxical intervention into three types: prescribing, restraining and positioning.
The counsellor, by advocating a more homeostatic behaviour

than the family, secures a position of greater power and control as
the family moves toward transformation in its efforts to unseat
him. The members have to change in order to resist the counsellor.
(1) Prescribing Strategies

Here the counsellor takes the initiative to encourage and instruct the client to engage in the specific behaviour that is to be
eliminated. For example, asking a person with obsessive thoughts
and compulsive behaviour to overdo the same thoughts and
behaviours will eventually make them disappear.
(2) Restraining Strategies
In these strategies, the counsellor discourages or even denies
the possibility of change. For example, the counsellor can ask the
client to go slow or warn of the dangers of change. Once, a family
came to me for counselling. It became evident to me that the husband was more at fault and needed a lot of counselling and change.
Asking them come for counselling met with less interest on their
part. Then I proposed that they may not need counselling quite
often and if ever they feel the need they could phone me. Now the
man kept phoning every now and then to fix an appointment with
me. Besides, after every session he used to ask me when they could
meet me next. This is precisely what I wanted. My enthusiasm
that they get counselling did not work when I positively proposed
it. But when I became indifferent to their getting counselling and
(3) Positioning
In this strategy, the counsellor attempts to shift a problematic position by accepting and exaggerating that position. This
intervention is used when the patients position is (assessed to be)
maintained by a complementary or opposite response by others.
For example, when a clients helplessness is reinforced or maintained by an encouraging response from the significant others, the
counsellor may outdo the clients helplessness by defining the situation as even more dismal than the client had originally held it to
be.
2) Positive Interpretation
By positive interpretation, the counsellor ascribes positive

motives to the clients. Blame, criticism, negative remarks all tend
to mobilize resistance, as the family members muster their energies to disown the pejorative label. When they do it, the counsellor may feel impotent. Therefore there is a need for positive interpretation. Some strategic counsellors hold the view that all symptoms are highly adaptive for the family, in a sense holding that
everything that everybody does is for good reason and is understandable. By strengthening the homeostatic tendency, the counsellor gains influence over the ability to change that is inherent in
every living system. Positive interpretation addresses in a respectful way the resistance and ambivalence, which induces the family
to move towards change.10
3) The Pretend Techniques
In pretend technique, the counsellor can make use of humour,

fantasy, and playfulness. It could be done even as a psychodrama.
A member may be asked to pretend to have a symptom and other
members of the family will be asked to pretend to help the mem-
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ber. This technique brings to the awareness of the members in a

very forceful manner the dynamics of the symptom and the ways
it could be dealt with, which were not recognized by the family
before the pretending exercise.11
4) Reframing
Interpreting the problem and reframing are one and the same.
When the counsellor gives a new meaning to a behaviour pattern,
the client may evolve a new behaviour pattern in order to fit the
counsellors new interpretation. Thus, reframing has helped the
client to change his/her behaviour. For example, when the
overinvolvement of the mother is interpreted by the counsellor as
concern for the child, the mother might change her behaviour
into one of concern rather than maintain it as overinvolvement.12
5) The Ordeal Therapy
The ordeal therapy is meant to facilitate bonding among family members by rituals of penance and absolution. Any
misbehaviour on the part of any individual in the family that has
seriously affected other members of the family needs to be dealt
with. The concerned person is asked to apologize to, or ask pardon of, the other members of the family. This helps restore dignity and love among the members.13
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9
CURRENT STATUS OF
FAMILY COUNSELLING
Unlike other branches of psychology, family counselling had
a wide variety of leaders and theorists and drew followers from
many backgrounds. The systems-oriented family therapy models
had differentiated from each other. Boundaries around each model
tended to be rigid. But the family that each of these models was
trying to understand was not well differentiated. Most of them
were addressing two-parent nuclear family systems. No consideration was given to ethnicity, class, race, or sexual orientation, or to
family variation such as single-parent families, foster families, or
stepfamilies. Family counsellors were experts who would overcome
families homeostatic tendencies and reorganize their structure or
convert them to a better way to view their problems. Since they
were focusing their attention on systemic issues, they lost sight of
the personal experience of individual family members and viewed
their expression of feelings as distraction from the main issue, which
is systemic. This period could be placed between1960 and 1970.1
1. Erosion of Boundaries
Rigidity to hold on to a model or approach, gradually, gave
in and the boundaries between the discrete schools within the field
have largely melted. Now counsellors borrow liberally from a
variety of approaches, even models which cannot be classified as
family counselling. Gone are the days when counsellors thought
themselves to be experts, confident of fixing families. Now they
are inclined to consider themselves more as facilitators or partners
hoping to awaken the inherent resources in the members of the
family. The resources are found both within the family structures
and social forces in which they are embedded.2
2. Postmodernism
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It was in the 1980s that an era of scepticism and reexamination had started. Established truths were challenged. It was a reaction to modernism, which began around the turn of the century
as an optimistic, pragmatic replacement for romanticism, which
held that there were unseen, unknowable forces at work in the
world. According to modernism the truth of things could be uncovered through objective scientific observation and measurement.
Besides, it considered that the universe was conceived of as a machine whose laws of operation were waiting to be discovered. Thus
modernism was interested in large-scale theories (grand narratives)
that could explain human behaviour. If universal laws were discovered, we could control its environment, and the problems could
be solved. This thinking influenced family counselling too. Family counsellors were considered technical experts who could diagram and diagnose the functional from the dysfunctional family
systems. But postmodernism was a reaction to this modernist thinking. One quickly realized that there is no absolute truth and ones
truth may be as good as someone elses truth. Authority was questioned; faith was lost in the absolute validity of the scientific, political, and religious truths. One began to doubt whether absolute
truth could be known at all. Scepticism has been gradually building up. Einsteins theory of relativity challenged the solid certainties of Newtonian physics. Marx challenged the right of any one
class over another. The feminists challenged patriarchal dominance.3
3. Constructivism
According to postmodernism there are no realities, only
points of view. From this view emerged an interest in how the
narratives that organize peoples lives are generated. Postmodernism
concerns itself with how people make meaning in their lives and
how they construct reality. Thus we have constructivism, which
took hold of family counselling in the early 1980s. For
constructivism, reality does not exist as a world out there but instead is a mental construction of the observer. When this view is
applied to family counselling, it will mean that counsellors should
not consider what they are seeing in families as existing in the
110
families. What they see is the product of their own particular set
of assumptions about people, families, and problems, and their
interactions with the family. The implications of constructivism
are a note of humility on the part of the counsellor. The theory
with which the counsellor approaches is not the most accurate
reflection of reality, but only one of the many potentially useful
stories about people. Counsellors bring their stories in the form of
theories, and clients bring their own stories, which may be more
or less useful than the counsellors but no more or no less true.4
4. Collaborative, Conversational Approaches
Constructivist philosophy was translated into a collaborative
approach in the 1980s and 1990s. It was a process of democratisation
of the traditional counsellor-client hierarchy by persons like
Harlene Anderson, Harry Goolishian, Lynn Hoffman, and Tom
Andersen. They were united in their opposition to the cybernetic
model and its mechanistic implications. They are the
postmodernists who focused more on caring than curing. They
advocated that instead of trying to manipulate language, one should
hold empathic conversations from which emerge new meanings.
In this model, the counsellor moves out of the expert-in-charge
position to form a more egalitarian partnership with the clients.
Theirs is more of an attitude or philosophy than a particular
method. They have the conviction that too often the clients are
not heard because the counsellors are doing counselling to them
rather than with them. For the collaborative family counsellors,
questions are important. Conversational questions come from a
position of not knowing and are the counsellors primary tool. In
counselling, conversational questions are not generated by technique, method or a preset template of question. We can say that
each question comes from an honest, continuous therapeutic posture of not understanding too quickly, of not knowing. Since there
is no formula about the language-based, collaborative approach, it
is difficult to describe it. The counsellor reflects, empathizes, and
offers a positive reframe here and there. In other words, the counsellor gives clients the feeling that their story has been heard and
helps them hear each others stories.
The collaborative approaches did not constitute a new school
of family counselling, since they were a manifestation of a new
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way of thinking about how to understand people. This new collaborative perspective was heavily influenced by an approach to
knowledge that emerged from the Biblical studies called hermeneutics, which comes from the Greek word for interpretation.5
5. The Hermeneutic Tradition
According to hermeneutics, understanding experience, including ones own, is never simply a process of seeing it, grasping it, or
decoding it. Our experience is fundamentally ambiguous. Fragments of experience without determinate meaning are understood
only through a process that organizes them, selects what is salient,
and assigns meaning and significance. Though there is nothing
democratic about hermeneutic exegesis, it challenged the therapeutic authoritarianism. The hermeneutic tradition seemed a perfect partner to efforts to make counselling a more collaborative
enterprise. When two people converse on their own beliefs, they
may both walk away feeling understood and with some new perspectives on ones own and the others beliefs. When this is translated into clinical practice, the collaborative counsellor is forever
setting aside presumptions and assessments in order to sincerely
understand the clients world. 6
6. Social Constructionism
We have already seen how constructivism focuses on how
individuals create their own realities. We also know that family
counselling has always emphasized the power of interaction. Combining these aspects, another postmodern psychology called social constructionism arose. Its main proponent is a social psychologist Kenneth Gergen who emphasized the power of social interaction in generating meaning for people. From the point of view of
social constructionism, not only are we unable to perceive an objective reality, but the realities we do construct are anchored in the
language systems in which we exist. Gergen did not accept the
notion that we are autonomous individuals, holding independent
beliefs, and implies instead that our beliefs are highly plastic, changing radically with changes in our social context. He argues that
the sense of what is real and what is good emerges from relationships. For him, people do not have innate resources that the counsellors can draw out. He says that people are like sponges,
112
internalising the conversations around them. People are not affected by early childhood experiences. Their personalities can be
reconstituted rapidly once situated in a new conversational environment. Since we have a sponge-like self, we can become easily
overwhelmed by the many messages with which we are bombarded
on a daily basis. We lack a sense of coherence and feel torn in
many directions, a condition that produces incoherent and disconnected relationships.
Its clinical implication is in line with postmodern scepticism.
It suggests that since everyones thinking is governed by his or her
social environment, no one has the monopoly of the truth. All
truths are merely social constructions. First of all, this idea invites
counsellors to help clients understand the cultural roots of their
beliefs. Secondly, it suggests that if counsellors can lead clients to
new constructions about their problem, the problems open up.
One is viewed as a participant in multiple relationships. A problem is a problem because of the way it is constructed in certain of
these relations. Thirdly, it suggests that counselling has to be collaborative. Neither the counsellor not the client brings the truth
to the table. New realities emerge through conversations where
both sides share opinions and respect the other persons perspective. Fourthly, since clients are so thoroughly influenced by their
current relationships that, once the counsellor succeeds in becoming significant to the client and in co-creating new, more useful
constructions about the problem, the counselling is basically complete. Therefore the counselling can be quite brief.7
7. Narrative Revolution
There were some family counsellors who were trying to shift
the fields focus from changing the action to changing the meaning. They warmly welcomed social constructionism. They believed
that the counsellors job was to co-create new realities with families, and not to direct or advise them. Thus came into existence
narrative counselling. Narrative counsellors follow Gergen in
considering the self a socially constructed phenomenon. Our sense
of self is thought to emerge when interpersonal conversations are
internalised as inner conversations. These conversations are then
organized into stories by which one understands ones experience.
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All of us have points of view and their effects. It is not the question of truth but of which points of view are useful and which
lead to preferred effects for clients. For narrative counsellors, the
problems are not in persons as psychoanalysis holds it, or in relationships as family systems theory holds it, but rather the problems are embedded in the points of view about individuals and
their situations. Therefore narrative counselling is a process of
helping the clients reexamine the stories they live by. The selfhate, pessimisms, and passivity that disempower many clients would
be related to having internalised toxic cultural narratives regarding
their worth. Narrative counselling highlights the impact of patriarchy, heterosexism, racism, social class, and materialism on the
family members self-concepts. Therefore the goal of narrative
counselling is to expose these internalised narratives so they can
be replaced with more empowering life stories.8
8. Solution-Focused Therapy
Steve de Shazer and his colleagues took up the concepts of
constructivism and social constructionism to more pragmatic
direction. Thus we have the emergence of solution-focused counselling. They argued that if a clients reality is merely a social construct that is a product of language, then the goal of counselling is
simply to change the way the client languages the problem. They
believed that once the problem is described differently, it disappears, since it only existed in the way the client talked about it.
Here it is easy to note that language is reality. Solution-focused
counsellors are not interested in identifying and debunking the
internalised cultural narratives. What they aim at is to get the clients to shift from dwelling on their problems to identifying solutions. Perhaps they already have solutions but they are not using
them. Whatever solution the families come up with are fine as
long as the solutions are satisfying to the family members.
Solution-focused counsellors were assisting clients to shift
from problem talk (trying to understand or analyse their problems) to solution talk (focusing on what is working or could work
in the future) as quickly as possible. The fact that one focuses
ones attention on solution, it eliminates problems. In this direction, solution-focused counsellors have designed a number of clear-
114
cut techniques for getting clients into this future-oriented, productive mindset. As solution-focused counsellors lead clients toward
solution-talk, they remain collaborative in the sense of not imposing particular kinds of solutions but trusting the clients to find
their own way. Their attitude seems to be one of strengths-oriented, concentrating on client resources and successes. They believe that exploring the problems encourages the paralysing problem-talk. Solution-focused model became popular in the 1980s
when mental health agency budgets were slashed, and managed
care began to erode the number of sessions for which private practitioners could be reimbursed. This demanded a brief, formulaic,
commonsensical approach. We can say that solution-focused counselling is one of those.9
9. Feminists Family Counselling
Feminism brought to light the pernicious effects of cultural
attitudes on families. It accuses of the gender bias inherent in the
existing models. The Batesonian version of cybernetics was strongly
opposed to the use of power metaphors. He said that unilateral
control in systems was impossible because all elements are continually and circularly influencing one another in repetitious feedback loops. Therefore, if all parts of a system are equally involved
in its problems, no one is to blame. This idea somehow was appealing to family counsellors since family members often enter
therapy pointing fingers at each other and failing to see their own
steps in their circular dances. But feminists had difficulty with the
idea of equal responsibility for problems. In this case, we blame
the victim and rationalize the status quo. Take for example the
cases of battering, incest, and rape, for which psychological theories have long been used to imply that the women either provoked
or consented to the crime. In our patriarchal society, marriage and
family life inherently subjugate women, and to suggest that husbands and wives have contributed equally to and have equal responsibility for changing their problems is to collude with the
rules of these patriarchal microcosms of society.10
1) Mother Blaming
Family counsellors spoke a lot about the dysfunctional family constellation in which contributing to the problems is the pe-
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115
ripheral (but dominant) father, the mother who is overinvolved

with her children, and the symptomatic child who is caught up in
the parents relationship. Psychodynamic counsellors have, for
years, been blaming the mothers attachment to the child for the
symptoms. Though women are overinvolved, insecure, controlling, ineffectual, and overemotional, it is not because of psychopathology on their part, but because they are put in, and encouraged
by society to desire, emotionally isolated, economically dependent, overresponsible positions in families, positions that are crazymaking. The feminists argue that instead of further diminishing
an insecure mothers self-esteem by replacing her with a peripheral father, it is good to help the family examine and change the
rules and roles that keep the mother down and the father out.
They advocate that the father may be encouraged to become more
involved in parenting, not because mothers are incompetent, but
because it is a fathers responsibility as a parent and because it will
allow the mother to begin to move out of that crazy-making position. 11
2) Looking through the Lens of Gender
The feminists complain that issues of gender or, more specifically, patriarchy, permeate the counsellors work, even though
they have been conditioned not to notice them. Counsellors need
to avoid and counter the unconscious biases toward seeing women
as primarily responsible for childrearing or housekeeping; as needing to support their husbands careers by neglecting their own; as
needing to be married or at least to have a man in their lives. They
need to stop relying on traditional male traits such as rationality,
independence, competitiveness, as their standards of health and
stop denigrating or ignoring traits traditionally encouraged in
women like emotionality, nurturance, and relationship focus.
10. New Emergence
There are issues like family violence, multiculturalism, and
gay and lesbian families. These have emerged so strongly these
years. Family counsellors need to take into account these new realities.
It was in the early 1990s that the family counsellors first
started to look at family violence. According to the traditional
116
view of the family counsellors, family violence involves the interacting influences of all the members of the family. Family violence was viewed as the outcome of cycles of mutual provocation,
and escalation.
When in a country there are culturally different ethnic groups,
the stereotyped family therapies will not be adequate to address
the cultural differences of the people. What in one culture one
considers as evidence of enmeshment or overprotectiveness is considered as virtue in another culture. Therefore family counsellors
need to be wary of transferring concepts, which are culturally
bound to some other cultures that have a different meaning altogether. Family counsellors have to look again at many of the things
they previously considered pathological.
There are issues like gay and lesbian families. Many straight
family counsellors may not understand what such clients face in a
homophobic world. One should keep in mind that harmonious
relationships are more difficult to achieve for gay and lesbian
couples, not because they are inherently more pathological than
straight couples, but because our society presents them with far
more obstacles.12
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10
ONES OWN WAY
Here let me introduce my own way of doing couple/family
counselling. After all where we are most competent is when we
are able to counsel people in the way we feel strong and competent. By approach I am eclectic and so I have no interest in delineating differences between approaches. Approaches are points of
view and they are all valuable. All of them speak of truth in their
own way and each has its own contribution to make. To limit
oneself to one approach is a danger, we lose the viewpoints of
others. I have no great concern to have an elaborate narrative or
grand theories of personality and healing. They may be elegant
but may not have practical utility. Whenever I underwent training
for counselling, I did not like the limitation each model had in
insisting on holding on to a certain pattern of the model only.
Though I have always been trying to make use of the model they
present for the most part, I accessed other methods as well, that
were appealing to me in dealing with clients. In fact I do encourage counsellor trainees to go ahead and find their own method of
doing counselling. What is taught as a method or skills are only
guidelines, and they are not absolutes. This has been proved through
the centuries by the shifts we have been having starting from
psychoanalysis to the latest models in postmodernism.
Here I intend to narrate the way I approach couple/family
counselling that works out for me, and may not be for you. Take
it for what it is worth. The basic aim of writing this chapter and
sharing my method is that you will do your own type of counselling and enrich the life of the clients. Counsellors who were themselves and had their own stamp of counselling without condemning other methods have always attracted me.
1. Therapeutic spontaneity
Being spontaneous is of paramount importance in counselling. Genuineness is one of the most important attitudes a counsellor can adopt. Genuine people are spontaneous without put-
118
Ones Own Way
ting on an air of wisdom and power. One can bring out ones best
as a counsellor only when one is spontaneous. When we are
inhibited or try to hide and put on a front, the clients can very
easily notice the discrepancies. Besides, the inhibition a counsellor feels may hinder his/her effectiveness. Therefore, being spontaneously genuine is a welcome attitude on the part of the counsellor.
2. Let them unpack in your presence
There are counsellors who are afraid of clients unpacking
their stories in front of them. May be the dynamics is too overwhelming for the counsellor to handle and so they make the ground
rule not to exhibit the family working dynamics in the consulting
room. I would seriously question this attitude. We learn a lot when
naturally the family unfolds itself in the way they do at home. It is
safer to go by what we see than what we hear. Perhaps what we see
is the truest aspect of the family dynamics. Therefore I just observe and listen as the family comes for the first time, may be
asking a few questions to clarify the issues or what they are trying
to tell. This I found very useful in understanding couples and families. I notice who says what to whom and in what manner. This
indeed gives a clue to where the problem lies, especially the power
struggle the family is trying to adjust and the roles of persecutors,
victims and rescuers.
3. The First Conjoint Interview
The first interview is with all the members who happen to
come to meet me or when I approach the family all those who
happen to be there interested in presenting the problem. As I said
this interview gives me basic information about the problem areas
though at times I may have to revise my opinion after interviewing individuals. But in most cases the conjoint interview has been
highly beneficial. It is good to notice who talks, who does not
talk; who sits where and close to whom and distant from whom;
who dominates the session and who feels cowed down. When I
visited a family the father was almost silent nodding his head to
what his wife was telling. There were seven children in the family.
The only person who spoke most was the wife. That gave me the
understanding that most of the responsibility of the problem was
with the wife who was dominating. She would just silence any of
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119
her children talking. Even when I was giving a chance to the children to talk, she would intervene and answer for them. Later it
helped me to focus my attention on the wife who happened to be
the primary problem maker.
4. Individual interview
Just operating on what one gets impressed by the conjoint
interview may land up with difficulties. Because, in the conjoint
session some significant persons would not have spoken at all.
Without knowing what everyone has to say and without everyones
cooperation counselling will not be effective. Almost always I have
experienced the benefits of interviewing family members in counselling. Once I was counselling a couple. The man had invited me
to conduct some counselling sessions to his department where he
was working. In the evening he invited me to his house, telling
that his wife wanted counselling. When I went home, he asked his
wife to talk to me. But he maintained his presence with us. I told
him that his wife might like to talk to me privately. He flatly said
that she would not want it and so he continued to be with us. Of
course she touched upon some peripheral issues and the real issue
seemed to be that the man had developed some relationship with
the widow sister of his wife. The wife was trying to hint at this
issue, but for fear of her husband she could not fully open up. Had
I the chance to interview her I would have got the real problem
between the couple and facilitated them to solve it. There are times
when wives would tell things to me in individual interview rather
than in the conjoint interview. Therefore valuable information can
be got in individual interviews.
5. Periodical Individual and Conjoint Interviews
Once a pattern of interviewing the whole unit and the individuals is established, the counsellor can switch from one to another according to necessity. Now at this level first I may give a
chance to each one to speak individually and then get them together to sort out things for discussion, or I might have already got
an agenda to propose to the conjoint meeting, mostly drawn from
individual interviews. Thus initially I interview the whole unit to
get the first impression and then go in for individual interviews
followed by conjoint interviews. Later whenever they come, I may
start with individual interviews and land up with conjoint interviews. It is good to find out what method works for one and do
the needful.
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Conclusion
11
CONCLUSION
With humans we find that after differentiation comes integration. In the same way, in the field of family counselling we find
the first stage was marked by the proliferation of schools of
thoughts. Now it is time for an integration to take place.
Humans are quite complicated as they are thinking, feeling,
and acting creatures, who exist in a complex system of biological,
psychological, and social influences. On the one hand, any counselling should address all these dimensions. On the other hand
eclecticism may rob counselling of the intensity made possible by
strategic concentration on certain elements of experience. Effective integration should involve more than mere borrowing from
different types of counselling. Therefore integration worth the
name should draw on existing models in such a way that they can
be synthesized with a clear and consistent direction. There may
be many ways of producing integration. For example, one may
apply principles or techniques from one field to the phenomena
of another, as in the case of using psychodynamic concepts to understand family processes. One might also blend concepts and
methods from separate schools, like creating a synthesis of cognitive therapy and behavioural therapy. One may create something
new by selecting valuable ideas and techniques from a variety of
sources and connecting them with common presuppositions as in
the case of selecting samples from various schools of family counselling. One may also juxtapose different models sequentially using one for one stage and second for another stage, as in the case of
starting with one kind of counselling and ending with another.
One may try methods one after another checking which really
fits in for the particular client. Thus there could be various
approaches to integration.1
Here I would like to present the essentials of the five love
languages of Gary Chapman. 2 According to him there are five
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love languages one needs to use in love relationship. Loving is an

art, he says. If it is an art, it has to be learned. The capacity to love
is inherent but the skills of expressing and receiving love should
be learned. Let us consider the five love languages:
1. The first love language is words of affirmation. We express our
words of affirmation to another by giving verbal compliments.
There is yet another way, which is, giving encouraging words.
This is to inspire in someone courage. All of us lack courage in
many ways. If only there is someone who encourages, we will
surely accomplish things we never dreamt of. Spouses need to be
sensitive enough to look for occasions to encourage each other.
Encouragement requires empathy and seeing the world from your
spouses perspective. We must first learn what is important to
our spouse. By encouraging we do not mean pressuring the partner. On the contrary, encouragement refers to finding out the
hidden talents and facilitating them to come up. First of all, to
encourage our partner we need to know what is important for
him/her. Empathy also requires using kind words. If we are to
develop an intimate relationship, we need to know each others
desires. We need to know what the other person wants.
2. The second language is quality time. If you give quality time,
you will give someone your undivided attention. Spending quality time will mean many things like taking a walk, going out to
eat, looking at each other and talking. A central aspect of quality
time is togetherness. It does not mean mere physical proximity
but focused attention. It need not be taken to mean gazing into
each others eyes and sitting. It is doing something together and
giving our full attention to the other. What we two do together is
not that important as the focused time that we spend with each
other emotionally is. The activity we engage in is only a vehicle.
One of the many ways of expressing quality time is having a
quality conversation whereby we share our experiences, thoughts,
feelings, and desires in a friendly, uninterrupted context. Quality
conversation is different from words of affirmation. In words of
affirmation we concentrate on what we say, whereas in quality
conversation we focus on what we are hearing. Perhaps we are
trained to analyse problems and create solutions. We seem to forget that marriage is a relationship, not a project to be completed
or a problem to be solved. Quality time may require maintaining
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Conclusion
eye contact when our spouse is talking; listening for feelings;

observing body language; refusing to interrupt; and not listening
to our spouse and doing something else at the same time. One
way of doing this is to establish a daily sharing time in which
each of you will talk about three things that happened to you
that day and how you feel about them.
3. The third language is receiving gifts. To put it differently, it is
giving gifts. Gift giving is a fundamental expression of love that
transcends cultural barriers. Giving is one of the easiest love languages to learn. It is very fundamental. It is giving oneself. The
gift of self or the gift of presence is the most sought-after gift in
the world. For example, physical presence in the time of crisis is
the most powerful gift we can give if our partners primary love
language is receiving gifts.
4. The fourth language of love is acts of service. This will mean
doing things our spouse would like us to do. These will mean
hundred and one things: daily routine works, which you care to
do in order to show your love to your spouse. It is not doing
something extraordinary that matters but little things that make
a world of difference in your life. One needs to remember that in
acts of service, requests give direction to love, but demands stop
the flow of love. Nowadays in advanced countries the boundary
line between what a male and a female have to do is becoming
thinner. Therefore one could do any service irrespective of
whether it is male-appropriate or female-appropriate. In some
cultures certain services are forbidden for a male person. It does
not matter even if you go by cultural bounds or otherwise, you
can always find ways of doing needed service to your partner.
5. The fifth language of love is physical touch. When a baby is not
touched sufficiently, we are killing it psychologically. The need
for human touch can never be outdone even in our adult life.
Whether children or adults, all of us need to touch and to be
touched. In some cultures, touching is quite normal even among
adults as is conversing. In some other cultures, touching is a
taboo. People seem to associate any touch with sexual connotation. There is a difference between sexual touch and ordinary
touch but some cultures seem to interpret any touch as sexual.
Just like our stomach feels hunger for food and water, our skin
hungers for human touch. We also notice that in those cultures
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where touching is forbidden, people tend to make use of pet animals to satisfy that need. In societies where normal touch is a
taboo, child abuses abound. This is precisely what happens when
the normal is denied by cultural biases and so humans satisfy
their need to touch through deviant ways. Humans find ingenious ways of satisfying the need for human touch through disguised means. Physical touch can make or break a relationship. It
can communicate hate or love. I have observed something interesting among monkeys. The phenomenon I describe was observed
in solitary monkeys that roam about. When two of them happen
to meet, the need for touch is very strong which goes by violent
touch of pulling the hair in a mock anger. This process of touching by pulling the hair violently goes on for quite sometime after
which the two monkeys settle down fondling each other and sitting quietly enjoying the presence of each other with physical
touch. In moments of crisis we need someone to hold our hand
and touch. There are some people who are more prone to wanting touch than others. It is good to know the dominant love language of our partner and give a physical touch.
John M. Gottman speaks of seven principles for making

marriage work.3
1. The first principle is enhancing ones love map. It will mean
paying attention to the details of ones spouses life. If you have
only a sketchy sense of the others joys, likes, dislikes, fears, stresses,
then you may not be good at enhancing your love map. Emotionally intelligent couples are intimately familiar with each
others world of likes and dislikes, dreams and aspirations, joys
and sorrows. They are good at remembering the major events in
each others history, and they update their information as the
world of the spouse changes. It is not only love that comes from
knowledge but also the fortitude to withstand the threats of marriage.
2. The second principle is to nurture ones fondness and admiration. We like to stick to things that we like. If I do not cherish any
fondness or admiration for my spouse, it is unlikely that I will
stick to my spouse. It is good to remember the good qualities of
our spouse. There should be a fundamental belief that ones spouse
is worthy of honour and respect. It is worthwhile to dig out your
positive feelings towards your spouse and remember what makes
124
Conclusion
you cherish your partner. Thinking positively about ones partner is a good way.
3. The third principle is turning toward each other instead of away.
It will mean that the couple keep themselves connected with exchanges even trivial. When one is calling for attention to something, the other should at least show interest even if one does not
like it very much. Do small things together like folding laundry,
or watching TV. We often ignore others emotional needs out of
mindlessness, not malice. It is all about saying how we stay connected with our spouse emotionally in little ways. Couples could
ask each other at the end of the day when each comes back from
work (or when one of them stayed back home), how the day had
been. This step will initiate an animated conversation or atleast
one will unburden ones worries. Or it could just let the other
one unwind after a days work. Such conversation in fact reduces
stress. During such moments of conversation, one must not give
unsolicited advice. When couples share, it is not for advice, but
for the relief of sharing something burdensome. As we listen it is
good to show genuine interest, communicate our understanding,
being supportive even if we believe that the perspective of our
spouse is unreasonable. Couples may feel lonely and alone in
certain stand they take; at that moment it is good to express a we
against other attitude. One could also include expression of
affection and validation of emotion. For example: saying yes;
that is really annoying. In this context one needs to avoid criticizing the spouse and siding with the enemy when the spouse
shares some hurt feelings that he/she experienced at the hands of
others. Sentences like I am sorry your boss made you feel very
hurt, That is really unfair to treat you that way, and I understand how you should be feeling now will go a long way in making the spouse feel understood by you. In this way, you turn towards your spouse and not away from him/her.
4. The fourth principle is let your partner influence you. Couples
should treat each other with respect and honour, each will allow
the other to influence. Any decision making should be equally
shared not imposed. There could be power imbalance in couple
relationships. Therefore the one who is understood as strong
should be sensitive enough to listen to the opinion and contribution of the weaker one in decision making. In patriarchal societ-
Family Counselling
125
ies, men are considered to be stronger and so they might just

want to assert their position, in which case the wife feels neglected
and slighted. The stronger one does not share power with the
weaker one.
5. The fifth principle is solve your solvable problems. There are
problems that can be solved and there are some problems that
may require help from others. Couples need to learn to solve
problems that are solvable. Usually in a conflict resolution situation, they need to exercise certain skills. Those skills are 1. soften
your startup, 2. learn to make and receive repair attempts, 3. soothe
yourself and each other, 4. compromise, and 5. be tolerant of
each others faults
6. The sixth principle is overcome gridlock. You want to send your
child to a religious school whereas your spouse wants to send the
child to a secular school. You want to live in the country side but
your spouse wants to live in an urban area. Thus you find you are
gridlocked. Instead of trying to solve the problem, move to a
dialogue. Perhaps your gridlocked conflict will be a perpetual
issue in your marriage, but one day you will be able to talk about
it without hurting each other. May be both of you will learn to
live with the problem. Gridlocks may be signs that you have
dreams for your life that are not being addressed or respected by
the other. Acknowledging and respecting each others deepest,
most personal hopes and dreams is the key to saving and enriching ones marriage. When gridlocks occur, one could follow these
steps: 1. Become a dream detective. Very often deeply personal
dreams go unspoken or underground after marriage. When we
adjust to marriage by burying a dream, it just resurfaces in disguised form as a gridlocked conflict. 2. Work on a gridlocked
marital issue. Choose a particular gridlocked conflict to work
on. 3. Soothe each other. It helps to take time to quieten and have
a break for some soothing before attempting to slog through the
gridlock. 4. End the gridlock. It is good to make peace with the
issue by accepting the differences between both, and establishing
some kind of initial compromise that will facilitate the couple to
continue to discuss the problem amicably. 5. Say thank you. Now
it is time to thank yourself for your contribution and thank the
partner for his/her contribution. At least now you are in a position to look at your gridlock in a detached way to search for a
compromise or if possible solution.
126
Conclusion
7. The seventh principle is create shared meaning. A crucial goal

of any marriage is to create an atmosphere that encourages each
person to talk honestly about his/her convictions. The more one
speaks candidly and respectfully with each other, the more likely
will there be a blending of ones sense of meaning. Creating informal rituals when we can connect emotionally is critical in a
marriage and in families rituals like birthday celebrations, family reunions, and religious ceremonies. By making them part of
our married life, they become our rituals as well and further our
identity as a family. It is not necessary that we derive rituals from
our respective childhoods and family histories. We can create our
own. New rituals could make up for what our families are lacking. For example, if you feel that your family needs to be out
together for a picnic, you can include that in your family ritual,
every two months. Let your rituals be scripted as to who is
expected to do what, and when. Let the rituals be something you
do regularly and can look forward to. Couples and families should
have shared symbols. Another sign of shared meaning in a marriage is that our lives are surrounded by things that represent the
values and beliefs we share. Mostly these are literally objects like
any religious icons. There are also family stories that are told and
retold that bind the family.
Dr. James C. Dobson in his book Love must be Tough gives

us practical lessons to safeguard marriage. He summarized three
important conclusions: 1. Marital and premarital conflict typically
involves one partner who cares a great deal about the relationship
and the other who is much more independent and secure. 2. As
love begins to deteriorate, the vulnerable partner is inclined to panic.
Characteristic responses include grieving, lashing out, begging,
pleading, grabbing, and holding; or the reaction may be just the
opposite, involving appeasement and passivity. 3. While these
reactions are natural and understandable, they are rarely successful in repairing the damage that has occurred. In fact, such reactions are usually counter-productive, destroying the relationship
the threatened person is trying so desperately to preserve.
As time passes by, one partner begins to feel trapped. Then
there is an intense desire for the trapped individual to escape from
the marriage. For someone in the trapped syndrome, love then
Family Counselling
127
becomes an obligation. Let us explain it more clearly. When one

of the partners feels trapped in the relationship, the trapped partner, in order to deal with this sense of containment which is
restriction of freedom, gradually moves away from the partner.
But the other partner alarmed by the movement of the partner
reacts with alarm. The impulse is to pursue the moving partner
closing the gap even tighter than before. When the trapped partner all the more runs away, the panicky party in despair jumps on
the partner and clutches him/her with all the strength. This impels the trapped partner to get away somehow and escape. At that
time the panicky partner droops in loneliness wondering how
something so beautiful became so sour. On the contrary, if the
panicky partner instead of holding a suffocating lover, pulls slightly
backward, conveying freedom for the trapped partner and respect
for oneself in the process, then the trapped partner will move towards the panicky partner. Let us remember that all of us need
space to breathe.4
128
Endnotes
ENDNOTES
1
Introduction
2
Conceptual Foundations
01. Michael P. Nichols and Richard C. Schwartz. Family
Therapy: Concepts and Methods. New Jersey: Allyn and
Bacon, 1995, pp. 109-110; Edwin H. Friedman. Generation
to Generation. New York: Guilford Press, 1985, pp.
14-15, 17.
Therapy: Concepts and Methods. Op.cit., pp. 110-111;
Imelda W. Clements & Diane M. Buchanan. Family Therapy.
A Nursing Perspective. New York: John Wiley & Sons,
1982, p. 5.
03. Ibid., pp. 111-112.
Michael P. Nichols and Richard C. Schwartz. The
Essentials of Family Therapy. 2nd ed. Op.cit., pp. 6366; Edwin H. Friedman. Generation to Generation. New
York: Guilford Press, 1985, p. 23; Gwen Marram van
Servellen. Group and Family Therapy. Toronto: The
C.V. Mosby Company, 1984, pp. 19-20, 26; Scott Simon
Fehr. Introduction to Group Therapy. 2nd ed. New York:
The Haworth Press, 2003, pp. 48-49; Imelda W. Clements
& Diane M. Buchanan. Family Therapy. A Nursing
Perspective. Op.cit., p. 103; Michael P. Nichols and
Richard C. Schwartz. The Essentials of Family Therapy.
2nd ed. New York: Pearson, 2005, pp. 62-63.
Therapy: Concepts and Methods. Op.cit., pp. 116, 118;
Gwen Marram van Servellen. Group and Family Therapy.
Toronto: The C.V. Mosby Company, 1984, p. 25; Michael
P. Nichols and Richard C. Schwartz. The Essentials of
Family Therapy. 2nd ed. Op.cit., pp.70-71; Michael P.
Nichols and Richard C. Schwartz. The Essentials of
Family Therapy. 2nd ed. Op.cit., pp. 59-61.
Family Counselling
129

Alan S. Gurman & David P. Kniskern. Handbook of Family
Therapy. New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1981, pp. 48, 310315, 268.
Therapy: Concepts and Methods. Op.cit., pp.121-122;
A Nursing Perspective. Op.cit., p. 4; Alan S. Gurman
& David P. Kniskern. Handbook of Family Therapy.
Op.cit., p. 25.
08. Imelda W. Clements & Diane M. Buchanan. Family Therapy.
A Nursing Perspective. Op.cit., p. 5; Alan S. Gurman
& David P. Kniskern. Handbook of Family Therapy.
Op.cit., pp. 22-23; Michael P. Nichols and Richard C.
Schwartz. Family Therapy: Concepts and Methods.
Op.cit., pp. 122-123; Michael P. Nichols and Richard
C. Schwartz. The Essentials of Family Therapy. 2nd ed.
Op.cit., pp. 22-23.
Therapy: Concepts and Methods. Op.cit., pp. 124; Alan
S. Gurman & David P. Kniskern. Handbook of Family
Therapy. Op.cit., pp. 47-48, 191-192; Michael P.
Family Therapy. 2nd ed. Op.cit., p. 44.
3
Bacon, 1995, p. 144; Alan S. Gurman & David P. Kniskern.
Handbook of Family Therapy. Op.cit., pp. 234-240;
David C. Olsen. Integrative Family Therapy .
Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993, pp. 29-32; Murray
Bowen. Family Therapy in Clinical Practice. New York:
Jason Aronson, 1985, p. 218; Alan S. Gurman & David
P. Kniskern. Handbook of Family Therapy. Op.cit., pp.
235-236.
02. Peter Titelman (Ed.). Emotional Cutoff. New York:
THCPP, 2003, pp. 20-21,32; Alan S. Gurman & David P.
Kniskern. Handbook of Family Therapy. New York:
Brunner/Mazel, 1981, pp. 246-248; Ronald Richardson.
Family Ties that Bind. North Vancouver: Self-Counsel
Press, 1995, pp. 38-39; Michael P. Nichols and Richard
C. Schwartz. Family Therapy: Concepts and Methods.
130
Endnotes
Op.cit., pp. 144-145; Murray Bowen. Family Therapy in

Clinical Practice. New York: Jason Aronson, 1985, p.
161, 223; Alan S. Gurman & David P. Kniskern. Handbook
of Family Therapy. Op.cit., pp. 236-241; D. John
Antony. Psychotherapies in Counselling. Dindigul:
Anugraha Publications, 2003, pp. 300-301; Edwin H.
Friedman. Generation to Generation. New York: Guilford
Press, 1985, pp. 27-29; Michael P. Nichols and Richard
New York: Pearson, 2005, pp. 85-86.
03. Edwin H. Friedman. Generation to Generation. New York:
Guilford Press, 1985, pp. 35-39; Michael P. Nichols
and Richard C. Schwartz. Family Therapy: Concepts and
Methods. Op.cit., pp. 145-146; Peter Titelman (Ed.).
Emotional Cutoff. New York: THCPP, 2003, pp.32-33;
Therapy. Op.cit., pp. 241-242; Augustus Napier and
Carl Whitaker. The Family Crucible. New York: Harper
and Row, 1988, pp. 84-94; Virginia Satir. Conjoint
Family Therapy. Mountain View, CA.: Science and
Behaviour Books, 1983, pp. 55-61; Murray Bowen. Family
Therapy in Clinical Practice. New York: Jason Aronson,
1985, pp. 180-181; Michael P. Nichols and Richard C.
Schwartz. The Essentials of Family Therapy. 2nd ed.
Op.cit., pp. 71-72,86; Alan S. Gurman & Neil S. Jacobson
(Eds.). Clinical Handbook of Couple Therapy. 3rd ed.
New York: The Guilford Press, 2002, pp. 128; Ronald
Richardson. Family Ties that Bind. Op.cit., pp. 5155.
Therapy: Concepts and Methods. Op.cit., p.146; Walter
Toman. Family Constellation. 3rd ed. New York: Springer
Publishing Company, 1976, pp. 33-34; Alan S. Gurman &
David P. Kniskern. Handbook of Family Therapy. Op.cit.,
pp. 242-245; Imelda W. Clements & Diane M. Buchanan.
Family Therapy. A Nursing Perspective. Op.cit., pp.
131-134; Murray Bowen. Family Therapy in Clinical
Practice. New York: Jason Aronson, 1985, pp. 160,
203; Alan S. Gurman & David P. Kniskern. Handbook of
Family Therapy. New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1981, p.
242; D. John Antony. Psychotherapies in Counselling.
Dindigul: Anugraha Publications, 2003, p. 301; Michael
Therapy: Concepts and Methods. Op.cit., p. 146; Walter
Family Counselling
131

Publishing Company, 1976, pp. 34-35; Alan S. Gurman &
118-120, 189-191; Murray Bowen. Family Therapy in
Clinical Practice. New York: Jason Aronson, 1985, pp.
127-131; Alan S. Gurman & David P. Kniskern. Handbook
of Family Therapy. New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1981, pp.
245-246; D. John Antony. Psychotherapies in
Counselling. Dindigul: Anugraha Publications, 2003,
pp. 302; Edwin H. Friedman. Generation to Generation.
New York: Guilford Press, 1985, pp. 21-22.
Walter Toman. Family Constellation. 3rd ed. New York:
Springer Publishing Company, 1976, pp. 35-36; Alan S.
Gurman & David P. Kniskern. Handbook of Family Therapy.
Op.cit., pp. 248-249; Murray Bowen. Family Therapy in
Clinical Practice. New York: Jason Aronson, 1985, pp.
168-169, 198-200; D. John Antony. Psychotherapies in
p.302; Michael P. Nichols and Richard C. Schwartz.
The Essentials of Family Therapy. 2nd ed. Op.cit., p.
87.
07. Ronald Richardson. Family Ties that Bind. North
Vancouver: Self-Counsel Press, 1995, pp. 70-71; Walter
Publishing Company, 1976, pp. 143-152; Peter Titelman
(Ed.). Emotional Cutoff. New York: THCPP, 2003, pp.3536; Alan S. Gurman & David P. Kniskern. Handbook of
Family Therapy. Op.cit., pp. 250-251; Murray Bowen.
Family Therapy in Clinical Practice. New York: Jason
Aronson, 1985, p.169; D. John Antony. Psychotherapies
in Counselling. Dindigul: Anugraha Publications, 2003,
p. 302; Edwin H. Friedman. Generation to Generation.
New York: Guilford Press, 1985, pp. 54-57; Michael P.
Nichols and Richard C. Schwartz. Family Therapy:
Concepts and Methods. Op.cit., p. 147.
08. Ronald Richardson. Family Ties that Bind. North
Vancouver: Self-Counsel Press, 1995, p. 78; Walter
Publishing Company, 1976, pp. 160-163; Walter Toman.
Family Constellation. 3rd ed. New York: Springer
Publishing Company, 1976, pp. 153-156, 170-174, 177180; Ronald Richardson. Family Ties that Bind. North
Vancouver: Self-Counsel Press, 1995, pp. 74-77.
132
Endnotes
09. Ronald Richardson. Family Ties that Bind. Op.cit.,

pp. 78-83; Walter Toman. Family Constellation. 3rd
ed. New York: Springer Publishing Company, 1976, pp.
163-167, 156-160, 163-167, 174-177, 181-184.
188-194;
Augustus Napier and Carl Whitaker. The
Family Crucible. New York: Harper and Row, 1988, p.
83.
26-28, 167-170, 184-188.
29-31.
THCPP, 2003, pp.21-22; 1.239-241.
THCPP, 2003, pp.21-25; Alan S. Gurman & David P.
Kniskern. Handbook of Family Therapy. New York:
Brunner/Mazel, 1981, pp. 249-250; 6.303; Michael P.
Family Therapy. 2nd ed. Op.cit., p. 87; Alan S. Gurman
& Neil S. Jacobson (Eds.). Clinical Handbook of Couple
Therapy. 3rd ed. New York: The Guilford Press, 2002,
pp. 128-129; Ronald Richardson. Family Ties that Bind.
North Vancouver: Self-Counsel Press, 1995, p. 33;
Michael P. Nichols and Richard C. Schwartz. Family
Therapy: Concepts and Methods. Op.cit., p. 148.
Therapy: Concepts and Methods. Op.cit., p. 148; Peter
Titelman (Ed.). Emotional Cutoff. New York: THCPP,
2003, p.36; Alan S. Gurman & David P. Kniskern. Handbook
of Family Therapy. Op.cit., pp. 251-252;
D. John
Anugraha Publications, 2003, p. 303; Michael P. Nichols
and Richard C. Schwartz. The Essentials of Family
Therapy. 2nd ed. Op.cit., pp. 87-88.
Essentials of Family Therapy. 2nd ed. Op.cit., pp. 8889.
Family Counselling
133

pp. 90-105; D. John Antony. Psychotherapies in
pp. 303-304; Alan S. Gurman & Neil S. Jacobson (Eds.).
Clinical Handbook of Couple Therapy. 3rd ed. Op.cit.,
pp. 131-133; Michael P. Nichols and Richard C. Schwartz.
The Essentials of Family Therapy. 2nd ed. Op.cit., pp.
91.
18. Murray Bowen. Family Therapy in Clinical Practice.
New York: Jason Aronson, 1985, pp. 232-233.
Therapy: Concepts and Methods. Op.cit., pp. 173-174.
4
Experiential Family Counselling of Virginia Satir and
Carl Witaker
Bacon, 1995, pp.177-178; Michael P. Nichols and Richard
Op.cit., pp. 147-150.
Essentials of Family Therapy. 2nd ed. Op.cit., pp.
150-151.
03. D. John Antony. Psychotherapies in Counselling.
Dindigul: Anugraha Publications, 2003, pp. 306-307;
Therapy. New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1981, pp. 190-191.
A Nursing Perspective. Op.cit., pp. 157,162; D. John
Anugraha Publications, 2003, p. 307; Virginia Satir.
Conjoint Family Therapy. Mountain View, CA.: Science
and Behaviour Books, 1983, pp. 63-90; Virginia Satir.
The New Peoplemaking. Mountain View, CA.: Science and
Behaviour Books, 1988, pp. 51-79; Imelda W. Clements
& Diane M. Buchanan. Family Therapy. A Nursing
Perspective. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1982, p.
95; Alan S. Gurman & David P. Kniskern. Handbook of
Family Therapy. Op.cit., pp. 194-195; Michael P.
134
Endnotes
05. Virginia Satir. Conjoint Family Therapy. Mountain

View, CA.: Science and Behaviour Books, 1983, pp. 3537; Imelda W. Clements & Diane M. Buchanan. Family
Therapy. A Nursing Perspective. Op.cit., pp. 157161; Alan S. Gurman & David P. Kniskern. Handbook of
Family Therapy. Op.cit., p. 25.
06. Virginia Satir. The New Peoplemaking. Mountain View,
CA.: Science and Behaviour Books, 1988, pp. 80-84 ;
A Nursing Perspective. Op.cit., pp. 94-95.
Virginia Satir et al. Helping Families to Change. New
York: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1978, pp. 42-43; Virginia
Satir. The New Peoplemaking. Mountain View, CA.:
Science and Behaviour Books, 1988, p. 85.
08. Ronald Richardson. Family Ties that Bind. Op.cit., p.
30; Virginia Satir et al. Helping Families to Change.
New York: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1978, pp. 43-44; D.
John Antony. Psychotherapies in Counselling. Dindigul:
Anugraha Publications, 2003, p. 308; Virginia Satir.
The New Peoplemaking. Mountain View, CA.: Science and
Behaviour Books, 1988, p. 87.
Dindigul: Anugraha Publications, 2003, pp. 308;
Virginia Satir et al. Helping Families to Change. New
York: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1978, pp. 44-45; Virginia
Satir. The New Peoplemaking. Mountain View, CA.:
Science and Behaviour Books, 1988, p. 89.
Dindigul: Anugraha Publications, 2003, p. 308; Virginia
Satir et al. Helping Families to Change. New York:
Jason Aronson, Inc., 1978, p. 46; Virginia Satir. The
New Peoplemaking. Mountain View, CA.: Science and
Behaviour Books, 1988, p. 91.
Dindigul: Anugraha Publications, 2003, p.312; Michael
P. Nichols and Richard C. Schwartz. Family Therapy:
Concepts and Methods. Op.cit., p. 190.
Dindigul: Anugraha Publications, 2003, p. 308; Alan
Therapy. New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1981, p. 40,138,486;
Family Counselling
135

153-158.
Dindigul: Anugraha Publications, 2003, p. 309; Salvador
Minuchin and H. Charles Fishman. Family Therapy
Techniques. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981,
pp. 142-145; Michael P. Nichols and Richard C. Schwartz.
158-161.
136
Endnotes

172-174.
Therapy: Concepts and Methods. Op.cit., pp. 225-235.

Bacon, 1995, pp. 205-206; Scott Simon Fehr.
Introduction to Group Therapy. 2nd ed. New York: The
Haworth Press, 2003, pp. 62-64; Michael P. Nichols
Therapy. 2nd ed. New York: Pearson, 2005, p. 167.
01. Salvador Minuchin. Families and Family Therapy.

Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974, p. 9; Alan
Therapy. New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1981, pp. 310-311;
Essentials of Family Therapy. 2nd ed. New York: Pearson,
2005, pp. 127-129; Michael P. Nichols and Richard C.
Schwartz. Family Therapy: Concepts and Methods. New
Jersey: Allyn and Bacon, 1995, p. 241; David C. Olsen.
Integrative Family Therapy. Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 1993, pp. 22-25; Imelda W. Clements & Diane M.
Buchanan. Family Therapy. A Nursing Perspective.
Op.cit., p. 60.

Therapy: Concepts and Methods. Op.cit., p. 206-207;
167-169.
Therapy: Concepts and Methods. Op.cit., p. 208; Michael
David C. Olsen. Integrative Family Therapy .
Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993, pp. 32-34; Michael
171-172.
02. Alan S. Gurman & David P. Kniskern. Handbook of Family

Therapy. Op.cit., pp. 311-313.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974, pp. 5152; Michael P. Nichols and Richard C. Schwartz. The
129-130; Michael P. Nichols and Richard C. Schwartz.
Family Therapy: Concepts and Methods. Op.cit., p.
Dindigul: Anugraha Publications, 2003, p. 314.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974, pp. 5253, 56-60; Michael P. Nichols and Richard C. Schwartz.
245;
Gwen Marram van Servellen. Group and Family
Therapy. Toronto: The C.V. Mosby Company, 1984, p.
22; Naomi I. Brill. Working with People. 2nd ed. New
York: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1978, pp. 82-85; Imelda
W. Clements & Diane M. Buchanan. Family Therapy. A
Nursing Perspective. Op.cit., pp. 60-61; D. John
Family Counselling
137

Anugraha Publications, 2003, p. 314; Michael P. Nichols
Therapy. 2nd ed. Op.cit., p. 130.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974, pp. 5354; Michael P. Nichols and Richard C. Schwartz. Family
Therapy: Concepts and Methods. Op.cit., p. 245; Naomi
I. Brill. Working with People. 2nd ed. New York: J.B.
Lippincott Company, 1978, pp. 85-87; W. Robert Beavers.
Successful Marriage: A Family Systems Approach to
Couples Therapy. New York: W.W. Norton, 1985, pp. 4851,92-94,177-180; Imelda W. Clements & Diane M.
Buchanan. Family Therapy. A Nursing Perspective.
Op.cit., pp. 61-63; Salvador Minuchin and H. Charles
Fishman. Family Therapy Techniques. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1981, pp. 146-10; Alan S. Gurman &
p. 315; Michael P. Nichols and Richard C. Schwartz.
130-131.
Salvador Minuchin. Families and Family Therapy.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974, pp. 5456; Imelda W. Clements & Diane M. Buchanan. Family
Therapy. A Nursing Perspective. Op.cit., pp. 139143.
Therapy: Concepts and Methods. Op.cit., p. 246; Imelda
W. Clements & Diane M. Buchanan. Family Therapy. A
Nursing Perspective. Op.cit., pp. 134-137; Ronald
Richardson. Family Ties that Bind. North Vancouver:
Self-Counsel Press, 1995, pp. 40-42; Salvador Minuchin.
Families and Family Therapy. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1974, pp. 54-56.
Salvador Minuchin. Families and Family Therapy.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974, pp. 5456; W. Robert Beavers. Successful Marriage: A Family
Systems Approach to Couples Therapy. New York: W.W.
Norton, 1985, pp. 78-79.
138
Endnotes

Therapy. Op.cit., pp. 313-315; Imelda W. Clements &
Diane M. Buchanan. Family Therapy. A Nursing
Perspective. Op.cit., p. 63; Michael P. Nichols and
2nd ed. Op.cit., pp. 131-132.
A Nursing Perspective. Op.cit., pp. 64-65; Michael P.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974, pp. 1415.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974, pp. 111115, 123-125; Imelda W. Clements & Diane M. Buchanan.
of Family Therapy. Op.cit., pp. 330-331; Michael P.
Family Therapy. 2nd ed. Op.cit., p. 136; Michael P.
Nichols and Richard C. Schwartz. Family Therapy:
Concepts and Methods. Op.cit., pp. 257-258; Salvador
Techniques. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981,
pp. 315-316.
Therapy: Concepts and Methods. Op.cit., p. 258; D.
Anugraha Publications, 2003, pp. 316; Michael P.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974, pp. 129130; Michael P. Nichols and Richard C. Schwartz. The
Family Counselling
139

A Nursing Perspective. Op.cit., pp. 327-328; D. John
Anugraha Publications, 2003, p. 316-317; Michael P.
Family Therapy. 2nd ed. Op.cit., pp. 138-139; Salvador
Minuchin. Families and Family Therapy. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1974, pp. 140-143.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974, pp. 143147; Imelda W. Clements & Diane M. Buchanan. Family
Therapy. A Nursing Perspective. Op.cit., pp. 328330; Michael P. Nichols and Richard C. Schwartz. The
Essentials of Family Therapy. 2nd ed. Op.cit., p. 140;
Michael P. Nichols and Richard C. Schwartz. Family
D. John Antony. Psychotherapies in Counselling.
Dindigul: Anugraha Publications, 2003, pp. 317.
A Nursing Perspective. Op.cit., pp. 330-331; Michael
Family Therapy. 2nd ed. Op.cit., pp. 140-141; Michael
P. Nichols and Richard C. Schwartz. Family Therapy:
Concepts and Methods. Op.cit., pp. 263-265; Salvador
Techniques. Op.cit., pp. 161-190; D. John Antony.
Psychotherapies in Counselling. Dindigul: Anugraha
Publications, 2003, p. 317.
Salvador Minuchin and H. Charles Fishman. Family
Therapy Techniques. Op.cit., pp. 64-72; D. John Antony.
Psychotherapies in Counselling. Dindigul: Anugraha
Publications, 2003, pp. 317-318; Michael P. Nichols
Therapy. 2nd ed. Op.cit., p. 141-142.
140
Endnotes
Bacon, 1995, pp. 271-272; David C. Olsen. Integrative

Family Therapy. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993,
The Essentials of Family Therapy. 2nd ed. New York:
Pearson, 2005, p. 189; Alan S. Gurman & Neil S.
Jacobson (Eds.). Clinical Handbook of Couple Therapy.
3rd ed. New York: The Guilford Press, 2002, pp. 26-27.
02. Michael P. Nichols and Richard C. Schwartz. The
Family Therapy: Concepts and Methods. Op.cit., pp.
272-274.
Therapy: Concepts and Methods. Op.cit., p. 276; D.
Anugraha Publications, 2003, p. 151.
A Nursing Perspective. Op.cit., pp. 84-85; D. John
Anugraha Publications, 2003, p. 147, 149; Michael P.
192-193.

Family Therapy: Concepts and Methods. Op.cit., pp.
286-290, 292; Scott Simon Fehr. Introduction to Group
Therapy. 2nd ed. New York: The Haworth Press, 2003,
pp. 59-61.


Therapy. Op.cit., pp. 556-589; Michael P. Nichols and
Family Counselling
141

2nd ed. Op.cit., pp. 198-202; Michael P. Nichols and
Richard C. Schwartz. Family Therapy: Concepts and
Methods. Op.cit., pp. 295-297.
202-203; Scott Simon Fehr. Introduction to Group
Therapy. 2nd ed. New York: The Haworth Press, 2003,
pp. 51-53.
of Family Therapy. Op.cit., pp. 592-624.
8
Strategic Family Counselling of Jay Haley and Cloe
Madanes
Therapy. New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1981, p. 361.
Bacon, 1995, pp. 355-356; Ann L. Whall. Family Therapy
Theory for Nursing. Four Approaches. Connecticut:
Appleton-Century-Crofts/Norwalk, 1986, pp. 53-55.
2nd ed. New York: Pearson, 2005, pp. 107-108.
05.Alan S. Gurman & David P. Kniskern. Handbook of Family
Therapy. New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1981, p. 364; Michael
06. W. Robert Beavers. Successful Marriage: A Family
Systems Approach to Couples Therapy. New York: W.W.
Norton, 1985, pp. 152-155; Virginia Satir. The New
Peoplemaking. Mountain View, CA.: Science and Behaviour
Books, 1988, pp. 305-310; Alan S. Gurman & David P.
Kniskern. Handbook of Family Therapy. Op.cit., p.
365; Salvador Minuchin and H. Charles Fishman. Family
Therapy Techniques. Op.cit., pp. 20-27.
142
Endnotes

A Nursing Perspective. Op.cit., pp. 115-118, 191194, 211-215, 123-126, 209-215; Ronald Richardson.
Family Ties that Bind. North Vancouver: Self-Counsel
Press, 1995, pp. 60-66; Alan S. Gurman & David P.
Kniskern. Handbook of Family Therapy. Op.cit., p.
365.
Therapy. Op.cit., pp. 372-373.
Therapy. Op.cit., pp. 374-375; Imelda W. Clements &
Diane M. Buchanan. Family Therapy. A Nursing
Perspective. Op.cit., pp. 317-322; Salvador Minuchin
and H. Charles Fishman. Family Therapy Techniques.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981, pp. 244261; D. John Antony. Psychotherapies in Counselling.
Family Therapy. 2nd ed. Op.cit., pp. 104-105; Michael
Family Therapy. 2nd ed. New York: Pearson, 2005, pp.
110,114.
2nd ed. Op.cit., pp. 117-118.
Dindigul: Anugraha Publications, 2003, p. 322; Salvador
Techniques. Op.cit., pp. 73-77; Michael P. Nichols
Therapy. 2nd ed. Op.cit., pp. 113.
Dindigul: Anugraha Publications, 2003, pp. 321-322.
9
Bacon, 1995, pp. 315-316.
Family Counselling
143

Family Therapy. 2nd ed. New York: Pearson, 2005, pp.
212-213.
Essentials of Family Therapy. 2nd ed. Op.cit., p. 213.
Essentials of Family Therapy. 2nd ed. Op.cit., pp.6466.
215-216.
Alan S. Gurman & Neil S. Jacobson (Eds.). Clinical
Handbook of Couple Therapy. 3rd ed. New York: The
Guilford Press, 2002, pp. 308-333.
217-218; Alan S. Gurman & Neil S. Jacobson (Eds.).
Clinical Handbook of Couple Therapy. 3rd ed. Op.cit.,
pp. 335-364.
144
Endnotes

218-223.
10
Ones Own Method
11
Conclusion
Bacon, 1995, pp. 423-424.
02. Gary Chapman. The Five Love Languages. Chicago:
Northfield Publishing, 2004, pp. 39-56,59 -78,81-95,
97-113, 115-130.
03. John M. Gottman. The Seven Principles for Making
Marriage Work. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1999,
pp. 47-77, 79-97 157-185, 217-241, 243-258.
04. James C. Dobson. Love Must Be Touch. Nashville: Word
Publishing, 1996, pp. 25-33.
Family Counselling
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02

D. John Antony, O.F.M.Cap., 2005

D. John Antony, O.F.M.Cap.

Other Books by the Author:

THE DYNAMICS OF THE FAMILY

I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to:

5. Family Projection Process

6. Multigenerational Transmission Process

7. Basic Types of Sibling Position

1) The Oldest Child

(1) Oldest Sister of Sisters

(2) Oldest Sister of Brothers

(3) Oldest Brother of Brothers

(4) Oldest Brother of Sisters

2) The Youngest Child

(1) Youngest Sister of Sisters

2) Systems Thinking in Family Process

(2) Youngest Sister of Brothers

(3) Youngest Brother of Brothers

(4) Youngest Brother of Sisters

3) The Middle Child

2) Functionalism in Family Counselling

4) The Only Child

3) General Systems Theory (GST)

(1) Male Only Child

(2) Female Only Child

5) From Cybernetics to Structure

10. Societal Emotional Process

6) Virginia Satirs Humanizing Effect

11. Normal Family Development

7) Bowen and Differentiation of Self

12. Treatment Techniques

8) Family Life Cycle of Evelyn Duvall

(1) Circular Causality

2) The Therapy Triangle

6) Multiple Family Therapy

4. Nuclear Family Emotional Process

3. Functional vs. Dysfunctional

4. Defensive Stances in coping with Stress

1) Freudian Drive Psychology

3) Object Relations Theory

3. Normal Family Development

4. Development of Behaviour Disorders

5. The Goals of Therapy

(1) Rigid Boundaries

(2) Diffuse Boundaries

(3) Clear Boundaries

2. Normal Family Development

1) Joining and Accommodating

2) Working with Interaction

4) Highlighting and Modifying Interactions

7) Challenging the Familys Assumptions

3. Development of Behaviour Disorders

Current Status of Family Counselling

1) Behavioural Parent Training

2) Behavioural Couples Counselling

4) Treatment of Sexual Dysfunction

4. Collaborative, Conversational Approaches

5. The Hermeneutic Tradition

9. The Feminists Family Counselling