Ever wondered what general system theory has to do with circular causality and structural family therapy? These slides represent the most clarity I could come up with regarding these important ideas.

1. General Family Systems
Theory & Structural
Family Therapy
Jane F. Gilgun, PhD, LICSW
Professor, School of Social Work
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities USA

2. Topics
• General Family Systems Theory
• Circular causality
• Ecosystems & Culture
• Structural Family Therapy

3. Family Systems Theory
• Definition of system: units that interact and
mutually influence each other
• Families: “unity of interacting personalities”
• Families are persons who interact with each
other and mutually influence each other;
• Definition of family: persons related by
blood, legal ties such as adoption or
marriage or mutual agreement
• Enduring relationships; commitment

4. Family Systems Theory
• We live our lives in interactional contexts
(Hardy)
• Re-orients how we think about the world
• Interactional terms
• A affects B and B affects A
• Bidirectionality
• Mutual influence
• Reciprocity
• Circular causality
• Non-productive & frustrating interactions are family
systems issues

5. Family Systems Theory
• Family therapy works with systems of interactions
• Example: When parents are not family leaders, this
results in children not following rules and violating
boundaries that in turn affects parents’ leadership
and so on
• Events in one person’s life affects another
• Effects of incest—inside family
• Father loses job—outside event affects family
• Older child bullies younger child

6. Patterns of Interactions
• Who is in charge?
• Where is the power in families & groups?
• Who is left out?
• Who is allied with whom?
• What are the rules of interaction?
• What types of interactions?
• Chaotic?
• Enmeshed?
• Disengaged?
• Balanced?

7. Family Systems/
Circular Causality
• She is depressed because her partner shows no
interest; her partner shows no interest because she
is depressed—becomes self-perpetuating.
• Metaphor is a “hamster wheel”
• “family dance” is the family’s patterns of circular
interactions/causality
• Definition & Demonstration of Circular Causality:
Jacob Spillman video at 1.52:
https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=2z3EhBqvrPI

8. Ecosystems & Culture
• Circular influences between culture &
individuals
• How individuals enact culture is particular &
yet contains cultural themes
• People born in other counties
• Traditional gender roles may be up-ended
• Often have experienced complex trauma
• Family ties may have changed
• Send money home
• Typically work longer hours than others
• Typically have lower salaries

9. Macrosystems Issues in
Families of Color in US
• Poverty common
• Unemployment
• Some seek other sources of income
• Health & Mental Health Issues
• Historical trauma
• Gender issues
• Some males adopt “cool pose”
• Some women adopt their own version of cool pose
• Language issues
• Words activate images, have meaning and impact

10. People of Color in US
• Sources of support & identity & sense of
belonging
• Everyone wants to experience possibilities to
achieve personal goals
• Dignity & worth foundational
• Family & extended family
• Community efforts: building communities

11. People of Color in US
• Organizations that support child and family
development: Northside Achievement Zone
• Sports—schools and community
• Churches
• Gangs especially for young people who are fearful and
discouraged
• Lack of opportunity can have serious consequences
• Young Somali men who become freedom fighters/terrorists

12. Structural Family Therapy
• Parents are in charge/Family hierarchy
• Key Ideas
• Family rules: ex: older children can interrupt & ignore
younger children
• Patterns of Interactions
• Non-productive & frustrating interactions are
family systems issues
• General Goal: Effective Family Organization
& Processes
• Therapists’ Role: Active

13. Structural Family Therapy
• Grounded in family systems theory
• Developed by Minuchin and colleagues for
• poor families of color with
• organizational difficulties
• Seeks to help families reorganize so that
• Parents are in charge
• Boundaries are clear & flexible
• Healthy patterns of interaction are the goals
• Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shbX4ww
zA_s

14. Components of Family
Organization
• Family Hierarchy
• Parents have more power than children; develop
“rules” & reward following of “rules”
• Boundaries
• Balanced
• Diffuse
• Rigid
• Alignment
• Power

15. Principles from Minuchin
Center on Family Therapy
• strength-based, outcome oriented treatment
modality based on ecosystemic principles:
• Context organizes us. Our behaviors are a function of
our relations with others. The structural therapist
focuses on what is taking place among people, rather
than on individual psyches.
• The family is the primary context, the “matrix of
identity” where we develop our selves as we interact
with spouses, parents, children, and other family
members. The family is in constant transformation,
adapting to an ever changing social environment.

16. Principles from Minuchin
Center on Family Therapy
• Family's structure
• recurrent patterns of interaction that its members develop
over time, as they accommodate to each other
• A well functioning family
• Defined not by the absence of stress or conflict,
• but by how effectively members handle them
• Therapist helps family
• To identify and mobilize underutilized strengths to
• actualize of its own resources

17. Foundation of
• Brief strategic family therapy
• Multisystems family therapy
• & probably most of the others

18. Basic Ideas
• Brief treatment
• Behavior problems experienced by one
member of the family system are understood
as stemming from the family’s patterns of
transactions
• Example: A parent who allows an older child to
be overbearing & hurtful to younger children
• The younger child or children may be the focus
of parental concern

19. Basic Ideas 2
• Three subsystems
• parental
• parent-child
• sibling
• Seek to help families to develop clear roles and
boundaries in family subsystems

20. Basic Ideas 3
• Boundaries—are they flexible?
• Balanced—turn taking, respect personal space
• Rigid—keep others out: isolated & disengaged
• Diffuse—not clearly defined to family enmeshment
& high reactivity and even chaos
• Example of diffuse: waking in on others in
bathroom; rummaging through personal effects of
others; not listening, interrupting, yelling, name-calling;
• Rigid: not sharing person things; silent treatments;
not knowing much about others in family

21. Procedures
• Joining
• a process by which the therapist creates a
new subsystem within the family group
• Enactments
• Interact in session what happens at home
• Service provider sees and experiences the patterns
of interaction in the sessions

22. Joining
• Goal: establish trust
• Notice family “style”
• How they interact
• Words they use
• Family affect—low key, loud, mixed
• Allow yourself to be part of the family system but
also the person charged with facilitating change:
keep your analytic stance
• Do not ally with any family member
• Technical term: Mimesis

23. Joining 2
• Explain how the therapy works
• I will ask you to try to new things with me present
• I will ask you to try new things at home and then
when we are together again we’ll do a check-in
about them
• How I do things, no one is blamed
• I want to help you work together as a family
• Ask them if this is okay with them
• Ask them to try it and see how it works for them

24. Enactments
• Have families talk to each other about an issue that they
had been describing
• Can then suggest another way of interacting
• Example
• In the enactment, family members interrupt each
other

25. Enactments 2
• You see that frustrates the person being interrupted
and the interrupter may feel superior but also
frustrated
• How about a no-interrupt rule?
• Have them practice
• Homework
• Have them note whether interruptions occur at home
and how persons respond to the interruptions

26. Enactments 3
• The interruptions stop but no one responds to what the
person said but instead brings up another topic
• Ask if they’d like to feel as if someone heard what they say
• Explain one part of active listening
• Have them practice in session
• Homework
• Have them note whether anyone appears to hear them at home
• In Session
• Help them to interact in these new ways

27. Reframing
• A different way of looking at/understanding something
such as a persons’ behavior or how someone labels a
behavior
• Involves seeing something from another point of view,
usually more favorable and focused on strengths
• Might help family members get unstuck from rigid
patterns of thinking
• The reframe must fit with families’ worldviews
• Example
• “Mary is too sensitive”
• “Do you mean she responds well to praise?”

28. Example of Reframing
• Example: helping family members not
scapegoat but to see behaviors of an
individual as part of a system
• Family member: “Robbie is angry all the
time”
• Therapist: “I wonder if this happens
when he feels stuck by something that is
happening inside the family”

29. Illustrations of SFT
from Research
• Reciprocity/circularity
• Between 40 and 70% of children whose mothers
experience mental health problems meet criteria for a
psychiatric disorder
• This is more evidence for Importance of family work
• Parents often see linear causality
• Don’t see connections between their issues & their
children’s
• Think if children’s behaviors improve, they will feel &
function better

30. Findings from a Research
Project
• Mothers depression symptomology
improved
• No improvement for children
• Problem
• Where were therapists’ reports on
changes in family interactions that they
witnessed in sessions?

31. Number of Sessions Important
• Present study: average of 5.6 family
sessions.
• Every 3-4 weeks (weak dosage)
• Clinicians had caseloads of 80-90!!!
• Higher than 4.3 in routine treatment settings
• 13-17 sessions are typically required in
efficacy trials (Hansen et al., 2002).

32. Summary: Seeing SFT
• Principles
• Family diagrams
• Enactments
• Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPW0UZd9gQ4