MFT Exam - Structural Family Therapy

Structural Family Therapy: Increasing the emotional intensity of the system to encourage structural change.

Structural Family Therapy: Individuals, subsystems, and families are separated from one another by boundaries. A boundary is a hypothetical line of demarcation that serves to protect a family and its subsystems.

Structural Family Therapy: Any intervention in which therapists reinforce appropriate boundaries and diffuse inappropriate boundaries by adapting the interactional patterns of the family’s structure.

Structural Family Therapy: May be independent or isolated.

Structural Family Therapy: When two family members join to create a coalition against one or several other family members.

Structural Family Therapy: A balanced relationship between two individuals that often results in effective teamwork. The relationship may not be symmetrical—that is, equal parts—but nonetheless balanced.

Structural Family Therapy: The family’s capacity to resolve conflict and negotiate effective and balanced solutions.

Structural Family Therapy: Offers the family alternative perspectives and views on how they interact with one another.

Structural Family Therapy: Offers the family alternative ways of perceiving the role of the symptom in relation to the family’s structure.

Structural Family Therapy: Receive affection and nurturance within the family system but may risk autonomy and outside relationships.

Structural Family Therapy: The physical structure of the family as determined by the system’s rules, boundaries, and interactional patterns.

Structural Family Therapy: The therapist can achieve intensity by increasing the affective component of an interaction, by increasing the length of a dialogue or by repeating the same message in different interactions through the use of tone, volume, and pacing.

Structural Family Therapy: An intentional maneuver by the therapist to establish a therapeutic relationship with the family system. The therapist will adapt to the family’s communication pattern and other mannerisms to create a comfortable therapeutic space.

Structural Family Therapy: An intentional maneuver by the therapist to join and accommodate with the family by replicating their body language, use of expressive language, mannerisms, and other observable behaviors to create a comfortable, trusting therapeutic space.

Structural Family Therapists are continually stepping in and out of the family, raising intensity, and unbalancing the system through swift and strategic interventions.

Structural Family Therapy: Boundaries that are permeable and permit fluid contact with other subsystems. May be prone to enmeshment.

Structural Family Therapy: Having the family experiment with new ways of behaving and interacting, as instructed by the therapist, in the here-and-now of the therapeutic encounter.

Structural Family Therapy: The period of assessment in Structural Family Therapy when the therapist hypothesizes about the structure of the family while remaining curious about its actual structure.

Structural Family Therapy: A clear boundary between the parental subsystem and the children establishes the parents in leadership positions. It allows the parents and children to interact, but supports the couple in a separate relationship, with time to enjoy the mature activities of recreation and pleasure. Healthy families have clear generational, hierarchical boundaries that allow parents to maintain parental roles and children to maintain child roles.

Structural Family Therapy: Overly restrictive boundaries that permit little contact with outside subsystems, often resulting in disengagement.

Structural Family Therapy: This changes the direction of interactions. Therapists avoid telling families what they are doing wrong; rather, they point out what they are doing right and express confidence in the family’s competence.

Structural Family Therapy: therapist’s intentional emphasizing of an individual’s reaction (body language) or statement, allowing them to become aware of their responses and reflect upon their meanings.

Structural Family Therapy: Similar to enactments, except these behaviors are spontaneous as opposed to being directed by the therapist.

Structural Family Therapy: As a means of assessment, a therapist will create a Structural Family Map of the hypothesized family structure.

Structural Family Therapy: Individuals, dyads, triads, and groups form subsystems or units within the family that perform certain functions.

Structural Family Therapy, developed by Salvador Minuchin, is a classical family therapy model that emphasizes family organization and hierarchy. The therapist engages in joining, often requiring all family members, to map family interactions and observe subsystems and boundaries. Healthy families have clear generational boundaries, with parents leading the parental subsystem and children occupying distinct roles. Therapy is short- to mid-term (10–20 sessions) and aims to strengthen subsystems, clarify roles, and restructure interactions. Key concepts include boundaries (clear, diffuse, rigid, or enmeshed), coalitions, hierarchy, complementarity, and affective intensity. Interventions involve boundary making, challenging family assumptions and symptoms, enactments, mimesis, and shaping competence. The therapist actively intervenes and restructures patterns through planning, punctuation, and spontaneous behavioral sequences, promoting functional organization and lasting change.