Reflections of Systems Therapists

In my practice as a family therapist, I’ve been under the impression that my knowledge regarding the family life cycle has been helpful in providing treatment.  I thought that my knowledge regarding families with adolescent stage, for example, was helpful in understanding and intervening in family issues involving an adolescent.  Recently, however, I became aware of the fact that we could no longer define the family as anything else but a relationship between at least two people.  Given the growing awareness regarding the diversity of familial structures and processes, it would be fair to say that families need not necessarily be united by things such as love, commitment, genetics, living arrangements, etc.  As a result, a relationship between two people, if they call it a family, is enough evidence of a family.  As the defining characteristics of a family are contested, elaborated, and expanded upon, we are left with a family life cycle application that is deficient.  The family, as it is redefined, is no longer constricted to following the cycles of marriage, bearing and rearing children, launching children, and becoming an empty nest.  Family therapists and researchers have attempted to keep up with the diversity in family structures and processes by adding cycles such as divorce and remarriage, but they have failed to understand that the family cycle requires a simplification to the least common denominator – to processes applicable to any type of family.

I have tried to identify these denominators, or processes by thinking of every type of family structure of which I was aware and their processes.  I discarded the processes that were not inherent to all kinds of families.  Although, my procedures were not very scientific, I feel I have come up with something very valid.  The first process I identified, in any type of family, involves negotiation and contracting.  The family negotiates roles, rules, and tasks for that particular relationship.  The second process involves the encounter with stressors.  The family maintains its initial contract (structure and processes) until it experiences stressors.  Not all stressors prompt the restructuring of the family, but some do.  We cannot delineate which stressors in particular will be strong enough to compel a restructuring of the family, because families have different levels of tolerance, or breaking points, for stressor.  But we can say that the stressors that will force a family to restructure itself will be one of the following:

• An addition or deletion of a family member
• A change in worldview for one or more of the family of the members
• A change in roles for one or more of the family members
• A change in tasks for one or more of the family members
• A change in the internal structure of one or more of the family members

When the family encounters some of the above stressors, and we can expect it will, the family will have to renegotiate their initial contract regarding roles, rules, and tasks.  An addition or deletion of a member may include marriage, death, divorce, another live in member, adoption, birth, migration, etc.  A change in worldview may include a change in goals, priorities, and functions.  A change in tasks may include a new or loss of employment, a gain or reduction in income, childbirth, etc.  A change in the internal structure of a family member may include mental or physical illness.  Although I categorize these stressors, I understand them to be in interaction with each other.   A change in tasks may induce a change in roles and vice versa, for example.

To summarize, the family life cycle, as I understand it today, can be simplified to the following processes:

1. Negotiation of relationship
2. Stressors
3. Renegotiation of relationship

The simplification of the family life cycle to the above three processes is effective as we can apply it to any relationship development and helps to identify when we can expect problems in a family.

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When the term “I” is used, it does not represent the single unit of the body which writes these words, but rather a conglomerate of “I’s” within this body which compel this body to write.  There is no “I” as it is understood habitually; this body cannot say that it has a choice in writing these words, or that it can determine what will be written. What this body writes belongs to the numerous people and ideas which live and engage within and with this body. Read full post…

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In the Western world—and by that I mean the U.S. and northwestern Europe—advocacy has become modus operandi and modus vivendi for those who aspire toward cultural competence. In the mental health field, broadly defined, advocacy has gained the status of an essential ingredient of culturally competent practice. Read full post…

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I remember my first class on systems theory; it convinced me that I wanted to be a family therapist. I was blown away, not to say healed, by the idea that I was not entirely to be blamed for the way my life had evolved. Up to that point, I had been educated to think that I was responsible, that it was my fault if things went badly, that I had all the power to make my life shine, that I could have everything if I just put my mind to it. Of course, life handed me blow after blow exemplifying the exact opposite and it stripped me of any belief or regard for myself. So, for a day, I was liberated when I listened to the professor explain systems theory. Unfortunately, the liberation did not last long. Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s thoughts were soon forgotten by my professors, supervisors, and the MFT field in general. The MFT field is as near sighted as the rest of the therapeutic field, the only difference being that the individual has been replaced by the family as the identified culprit. The MFT field, although it advocates for systemic thinking, remains constrained within a particular entity and fails to be truly systemic.

I am disappointed in the end, and hurt, because I feel I have to fight a never ending battle against the notion that we should individualize and compartmentalize so that we can lay blame and fault. Although we believe in the effect of systems we continue to hold on to the belief that the individual or the family is separate from the system because they can decide to act, think, or feel differently. My question is how can the individual or family act, think, or feel differently if the system stays the same? If we truly understand what Ludwig von Bertalanffy was providing, we must wonder how behavior can change if the system stays the same? When Bertalanffy talked about systems, he was referring to more than just the family or community. We have failed to move beyond the family and the community to more global systems such as economic structures, political thought and processes, global inequalities, etc. Furthermore, we have failed to understand the notion that we cannot separate entities as they are part of the whole, we cannot look at a family without looking at how it is determined by its external world and vice-versa.

I was feeling sorry for myself, or defeated, as I felt I was battling the ever so powerful system experts. But I have had a moment of enlightenment. My thought is that I cannot be if I am part of that system, or rather, my perception of a battle is simply my contribution to the system. I am left to contemplate that maybe I am not crazy or a fool for writing these words, because if I am truly part of the whole, my thoughts belong to the system, they do not belong to me and my thoughts are needed in some way. So, for today, my disappointment is dissipated and I gain some strength in continuing to interchange with what feels like the Berlin wall.

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Therapists pride themselves on an ability to think systemically. This means the capacity to see the whole—to perceive and understand the connectedness of it all. Metaphorically speaking, systems thinking enables us to see the forest and not to get stuck on the individual trees. Over the past 40 years, the notion of systems has gained wide popularity in the US. We now have systems managers, systems analysts, and systems operators; every day on the news we hear about the healthcare system, the political system, and the prison system. And, in therapy, we talk about social systems such as the family, the community, and wider social system.

Yet, despite the pervasiveness of systems talk and systems labels, systems thinking has remained elusive . Ludwig von Bertalanffy, the original developer of the general systems theory, wrote in 1969 that the mechanistic analytical approach to understanding reality is “reinforced by the analytical preoccupation of the Western European culture and languages. The basic assumption of our traditions and the persistent implications of the language we use almost compel us to approach everything we study as composed of separate, discrete parts or factors which we must try to isolate and identify as potent causes” (p. 16). This tendency to focus on the parts and to neglect the whole is evident in many systems approaches to problem solving. For instance, the human rights movement has over the past decade shifted its approach from a focus on individual political prisoners to the prison systems. What has yet to happen is a realization that a prison system cannot be abstracted from the larger social system in a given country, which cannot be abstracted from the system of nations. And, systems that exist today cannot be abstracted from history–from the systems that existed yesterday, a decade ago, centuries ago. Similarly, in family systems therapy, we conceptualize family as an open system that exists in an environment, but we neglect to think of that environment as a system in its own right. And, we “forget” that families are but a small part within larger social systems. Systems thinking does not pertain only to the system that we are focusing on such as the prison system for human rights activists or the family system for family therapists. Systems thinking entails an understanding of the whole world as a system, an attempt to understand the relationships among its multiple interconnected parts

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Therapeutic work with families demands an analysis of contextual factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, and social class in relationship to societal systems of power, privilege, and oppression.  A broad understanding of these dynamics, however, is inadequate to inform our work with families whose social capital in certain domains limit available life choices, social influence, and material resources. 

A technique for mapping social capital  is helpful in considering how families gain and/or lose social capital through participation in multiple contexts. An example of a map of social capital is provided below.

Map of Social Capital

A detailed description of how social capital maps are constructed and used in therapy is available in a peer-reviewed article that will be published in January 2010 in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy.

Garcia, M. & McDowell, T. (In Press).  The Mapping of Social Capital:  Contextual approach.  Journal of Marital and Family Therapy.

Click here to read a draft of the Mapping Social Capital paper.

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