Question

In family therapy, the “client” is the whole family. Describe how family therapy would proceed without relieving individual family members of their responsibility for their own behavior. Describe the differences between structural family therapy and strategic family therapy.

Answer 1

Families in our society are defined as unit which consists of many people with hierarchies of roles who live together. Different family therapies work in different way. For example- Structural family therapy – In this therapy, the structure of family is being understood, identifies the functions of each member and then re-orders the structure as an intervention without relieving the individual family members. In each family therapy, client is the family and inteventions are made to maintain the hierarchy in the family with their individuality.

Structural family therapy is the therapy which is based on the principle that by bringing the change within the structure, problem will be sorted, whereas in the strategic family therapy, by chaining the relational strategies problem will be sorted. In structure family therapy, therapist look or focus on the family structure and present problem, whereas in the strategic family therapy only problem is focused.