One of the most common family problems is a weak boundary between subsystems. A woman making several calls a day from work to instruct her teenagers on how to dress for school, what to say when they turn in h

According to Minuchin, each family has its own unique map or patterns of behavior (Minuchin, 1974). Change can take place, but to accomplish this goal, an initial assessment of family boundaries is necessary. Both individual and subsystem boundaries should be assessed. These boundaries establish the relative individuality or autonomy of family members. In Minuchin's concept of enmeshment, boundaries and personal space are weak and change rapidly. In Minuchins's concept of disengagement, family members have rigid boundaries and communication between subsystems is poor.

The C. family was exposed to a comparatively brief therapeutic process. During this time the therapist dealt with anger, one-way, incomplete communication and disengagement of the couple and enmeshment of the mother and children. Their therapy is continuing. Hopefully the dramatization of their problems and the restructuring techniques utilized will assist the couple to accomplish the long term goal of structural therapy of changing dysfunctional family structures such as inappropriate coalitions, enmeshments, and disengagements. The C. family was assisted to see that they can think, feel, and act differently to achieve more effective family communication and improve their family environment.

In his text, Families and Family Therapy (Minuchin, 1974) Minuchin taught family therapists to see what they were looking at. Through the lens of structural family theory, previously puzzling interactions suddenly appeared in focus. Where others saw only chaos and cruelty, Minuchin helped people to understand that families are structured in "subsystems" with "boundaries," their members shuffling to steps they do not see. In 1962 Minuchin formed a productive professional realtionship with Jay Haley, who was then in the famous Palo Alto symposium. In 1965 Munuchin became the director of the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic, which eventually became the world's leading center for family therapy and training. At the Phiadelphia Clinic, Haley and Minuchin developed a training program for members of the local black community as paraprofessional family therapists in an effort to more effectively related to the urban blacks and Latinos in the surrounding community.

A good clinician will refer the client to AA, consider hospitalization, assess for suicidal intent, advise a physical, ask about weapons in the home, and work on both family and individual levels with interventions aimed at interactions (arguments, nagging, money problems, abuse) that presently maintain the alcoholism. A typical situation as described by Neil Jacobson in 1995, an un-intense family with a cool emotional atmosphere unconsciously selects a member to turn up the heat; brother and sister start fighting. This turns into an argument between the parents, the drama escalates, and then, before it gets too hot, a child who plays the role of family ambassador calms everybody down. In that family, the bias, the emotional level setting, is too low. Many drug and alcohol counselors know that when one member of the family stops drinking or using, the family will subtly try to push him back into his old vices, not because they want him sick, but because families, like other organisms, naturally resist changes that might further destabilize the system.

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Approximate Word count = 4486
Approximate Pages = 18 (250 words per page double spaced)