Structural Family Therapy: what it is, characteristics and how it works

Structural family therapy emerged in order to solve the functioning and communication problems that some unstructured families with whom Salvador Minuchin worked.

This intervention model tries to solve the problems of some people, from an approach that focuses on the factors of family functioning that favor their maintenance.

This article will briefly expose the foundations and functioning of structural family therapy., which is framed within the models of systemic family therapy.

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What is Structural Family Therapy?

This model of family therapy began to be applied by Minuchin during the first stage of him living in New York. York, when he worked in an institution with young people who had committed crimes and whose families were unstructured.

Also during his stage residing in Philadelphia he continued to work with unstructured and low-income families, applying his family therapy approach and that is when he began collaborating with Jay Hayley, one of the pioneers of therapy strategic; which is why his approach has common concepts with family structural therapy.

The main objective of structural family therapy is to solve the problems that prevent the proper functioning of a family. For this, the therapist seeks to promote a structural change in the family system, so that all its members in together they can respond in a functional and adaptive way to the demands of the stage of the life cycle for which they are going.

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The structure of the family seen from this systemic approach

Family structure is made up of the group of patterns of interrelation between family members, and to analyze this structure, the following patterns are analyzed: coalitions, alliances, subsystems and limits.

1. Subsystem

A subsystem consists of the union of two or more members of the family who have a greater closeness due to some special characteristic that maintains that union (p. (e.g. family members who love sport and play it together).

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2. alliance

An alliance implies the closeness between two or more people in the family, organizing a subsystem with a positive objective (p. eg, the father and mother of the family help each other in order to pull the car so that their children do not lack for anything).

3. Coalition

A coalition It occurs when two members of the family, or even more, come together, going against a third member (p. (eg, when the older one argues with the middle sister, the little sister usually side with the middle sister).

When it comes to a coalition between family members belonging to a different generation, it is called a “perverse triangle” (p. (e.g., the eldest son is always on his mother's side when she is in an argument with her father).

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4. Limits

Limits They comprise the group of norms that are in charge of regulating which members can be part of a family subsystem and what would be the role they should play in that case.

There are three kinds of limits that can exist within the family structure.

First, the "fuzzy limits", which are those that allow all members to share most of the information, that is, that it is They count everything and all of them are in their right to be aware of everything that concerns the other members of the family.

Another way to set limits in the family is with “rigid limits”, In which case members share little information with each other and, in which case, family members hardly support each other emotionally.

Finally, there would be the "clear limits", which will comprise a midpoint between the other two types of limits. In this case there is a fluid exchange of information but without going overboard, so that the freedom of the members and emotional support is provided to whoever needs it at any time precise.

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Power distribution

From family structural therapy and strategic therapy, the vision is that the family must have clearly established who should be in charge of various tasks so that the family system can function properly.

In this case, the vision of structural therapy is very normative, since they postulate that there has to be a subsystem formed by the parents that must be very cohesive and be responsible for making decisions about the various aspects of family organization to implement functional patterns in their interrelations.

What's more, the children, as they grow up, must gain some authority over the little ones (p. (e.g., the older child should take care of the younger child when the parents are working on the weekend).

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Dysfunctional family

From the structural family approach, a dysfunctional family is known as one whose structure does not adapt to changes and that also does not allow its members to show support among themselves or the independence that each one needs.

These problems usually occur, on the one hand, in families with "fuzzy boundaries", which are too agglutinated and do not allow each of its members to have a small plot of intimacy and independence; on the other hand, in families with “rigid limits”, which are disaggregated, and in which case the members find little emotional support from the rest of the members and there is little communication among them.

Therefore, these types of families would have greater difficulties in adapting to changes and crises that could arise for different reasons.

Dysfunction in the family can also be caused by some “intergenerational coalition or perverse triangle” among its members., because they distort the hierarchical power structure within the family (eg, when the young child aligns himself with his grandmother against his mother)

"Triangulation" is another dysfunctional family pathology, which usually occurs when two members of the family, each on their own, seek for a third to ally with them and turn against the other (p. For example, in the case of divorced parents, when a parent tries to make her child be her ally, against her other parent; the other parent doing the same).

As we can see, when in a family system there is an unstable hierarchy and a distribution of responsibilities set unclearly, the result is usually that of a family dysfunctional.

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Therapeutic process of this family therapy model

In structural family therapy the therapist is very "directive"In such a way that he is in charge of ordering what the family members should do and is also very “active”, so he is in charge of developing situations of change for the family.

Structural family therapy is made up of three phases that will be discussed in this section.

1. Union and accommodation

The first phase is known as “joining” or union and accommodation, and consists of seeking a good relationship with the family with whom you are going to deal. To achieve this objective, the psychologist talks with each of its members in order to understand different points of view and also to develop a climate in which they feel they can trust he.

2. Assessment of the structure of the family system

The second phase deals with the evaluation of the family structure and is carried out through two methods.

The first method would be "direct exploration", by means of questions that seek to understand the moment of the life cycle in which the family is and to what extent it could pose a problem; It also seeks to collect information about the parents' families of origin, about alliances, limits and family hierarchy.

The second method is the "observation of interactions" between family members. It is used by the therapist from an impartial position in order to analyze the interactions that arise spontaneously in therapy between the members. of the family and even, on occasions, brings up conflictive issues in order to know the way in which its members behave in this type of situation. contexts.

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3. Intervention

In this phase, change plans are carried out through different techniques that will be detailed below.

3.1 Boundary drawing

This technique is used in order to set limits to a subsystem that is preventing any member of the family from communicating. (p. (g., asking the therapist to a parent to let his son express her point of view) and can also prevent some members from speaking on behalf of others, allowing everyone to express their opinion.

3.2. Working with the hierarchy

It is used in order to mark limits between some subsystems and thus avoid any other member from getting in the way., so that a subsystem can acquire the responsibility that corresponds to it with respect to the rest (p. (e.g., reinstate the fact that children must respect the responsibility and authority that parents should have with respect to them).

3.3. Work with problem sequences

One of the main functions of this technique is for the family to learn that it has other more adaptive functioning alternatives than the ones that are causing problems among its members.

3.4. I work with beliefs

It is a technique that the therapist uses in order to change negative views of family members for more optimistic ones.

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3.5. The use of language to facilitate changes

This tool is very powerful for the therapist, since it helps them at certain times to achieve changes in the family system (p. g., changing their tone of voice in certain situations in order to enhance the emotions of family members).

Psychologists who use the family structural model start from a positive vision of the family, so they have the idea that all families have alternative modes of action that would help to solve the problem and, its search and subsequent development within the family, is the objective of structural therapy family.