Relationship Counselling for Children, Young People and Families

Kathryn Geldard, David Geldard

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781446244746
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy
• Index: Psychology

"If you need one book that?s crammed with clinically excellent, genuinely well informed and useful ideas for working with family relationships in all their permutations, this is undoubtedly it" - Professor Colin Feltham, Sheffield Hallam University

"This is easy to read and has a clear layout. Counselling MSc students may find it an interesting introduction to the topic" -

Times Higher Education Magazine, May 2009

This book is a practical skills-based introduction to relationship counselling. It covers couple counselling for parents, whole-family counselling and counselling for children and young people with regard to their relationships with siblings, peers and parents. The text also includes:

oan introduction to relationship counselling theory and concepts

odiscussion of the importance of relying on a clearly defined theory of change

oways to address parenting issues

oan exploration of confidentiality, disclosing inappropriate behaviour and personal safety.

Kathryn Geldard and David Geldard present an integrative model of relationship counselling which combines skills and strategies from a number of approaches. Their practical guide integrates individual and subgroup counselling with whole-family counselling, providing much-needed material on methods and approaches for communicating with children and young people.

The book will be invaluable to new relationship counsellors learning the skills required in order to bring about change, and will be a useful reference book for experienced counsellors.

Part 1

Overview of Relationship Counselling

Chapter 1 Established Models of Relationship Counselling

Chapter 2 The CACHO Model of Integrative Relationship Counselling

Chapter 3 Use of a Co-therapist and/or Reflecting Team

Chapter 4 Relationship Counselling Skills

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In this part of the book we will begin by discussing a number of well-known, established models of relationship counselling which generally come under the umbrella of family therapy. We will explain why we believe that family therapy is most effective if integrated with individual counselling and/or subgroup counselling. In particular, we will describe our own integrative relationship counselling model, called the CACHO model. We will also discuss the advantages of using a co-therapist and/or reflecting team, and those counselling skills which are particularly suitable for relationship counselling.

1

Established Models of Relationship Counselling

Relationship counselling wasn’t considered as an option for working with clients until the 1950s. Before that time all counselling work was carried out with individuals and relationships were only considered in terms of their past impact on the individual (Street, 2006). Interest in relationship counselling began with the work of Gregory Bateson in Palo Alto, California. He investigated communication processes in families and, in collaboration with others, examined the effect of the family system on family members diagnosed with schizophrenia (Bateson et al., 1956). Following on from this work, some British psychodynamic counsellors began to see clients conjointly rather than individually (Nichols and Schwartz, 2007). Since then a number of different approaches to relationship counselling have been developed.

In this book, we will promote the use of a particular integrative approach to relationship counselling that we have called the CACHO model. Before discussing this model (in Chapter 2), we will review a number of significant relationship counselling models that have been developed and which contribute to the CACHO model.

The majority of family therapy approaches have as their foundation the notion that families operate as systems. Notable exceptions to the systemic approaches to family therapy are those approaches that are based on constructivist theory. Consequently, before describing a number of significant relationship counselling models, we will discuss systems theory and constructivist theory.

Systems Theory

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System theory describes a family as a system which includes both the individuals in the family and the way these individuals function together (Dattilio, 1998). Further, the family system is made up of smaller systems called subsystems. Typically, subsystems within the family include the parental subsystem, the spousal subsystem, and the sibling subsystem. In any family, there are likely to be other subsystems as a result of factors such as gender, attachments, alliances, and coalitions. Additionally, a family as a group can be seen as a subsystem of a number of larger systems. For example, the family is a subsystem of the community in which the family lives. Also, the family will relate to a number of other systems, such as the school system, the work system, and the health system.

Families are systems comprising interactive
subsystems

There are boundaries surrounding every system and subsystem and the properties of these boundaries are important in understanding how the system functions. Most of these boundaries are semi-permeable; that is to say some things can pass through them while others cannot. In families, boundaries are invisible barriers which perform a number of functions, including regulating the amount of contact with others. Generally speaking, boundaries are useful in safeguarding the separateness and autonomy of the family and its subsystems.

Homoeostasis

Homoeostasis is an important concept related to family systems theory. Homoeostasis is a process that enables a system to maintain itself in a state of dynamic balance. However, the way balance within a family system is maintained can sometimes be problematic even though homoeostasis has a stabilizing influence on the family. For example, imagine that a family has come to counselling believing that an emotionally disturbed child is always causing tension between the parents. It may emerge that in order to avoid focusing on tension in their own relationship the parents are focusing their attention on the child who draws attention to herself by acting out. As a consequence, homoeostasis in the system enables the parents to maintain a stable but stressful relationship with each other but in this instance at the cost of the child’s emotional well-being.

The effect of change on a system

The one central principle agreed upon by family therapy practitioners regardless of their particular approach is that change in one part of a family system is likely to cause responses from other parts of the system. These responses can sometimes be in the form of resistance to change, as the family will naturally tend to seek homoeostasis rather than allow the system to temporarily go out of balance before seeking a new homoeostasis.

Homoeostasis can be a restraint to change

Constructivist Theory

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As discussed previously, not all family therapy approaches are grounded in systemic theory. The constructivist family therapy approaches, such as narrative therapy and solution oriented therapy, believe that focusing on systemic issues is unimportant. They contend that it is more important to take account of each individual family member’s perceptions of the family and to discover how the family as a whole makes meaning of their family’s experience of the problem. However, Lowe (2004) does suggest that in practice a considerable degree of overlap exists between counsellors trained in systemic approaches and constructive family therapists.

Whereas systems theory contributes to family counselling by enabling us to see how people’s lives are shaped by the interchanges with those around them, constructivism emphasizes that individuals have their own subjective experience of reality which gives meaning to the way their families function. Constructivism invites us to look beyond behaviour to the ways each individual family member perceives, interprets, and constructs their experience of living in the family.

Established Models of Family Therapy

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We have selected for discussion those models of relationship counselling that provide concepts and strategies which can readily be incorporated into an integrated model of counselling, such as the CACHO model described in Chapter 2.

The following approaches will be discussed:

• Multigenerational family therapy
• Strategic family therapy
• Experiential family therapy
• Structural family therapy
• Constructive family therapy

Multigenerational Family Therapy

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Murray Bowen was one of the early pioneers in family therapy although he was more concerned with theory than developing techniques. This was evident in his work with families, where he focused on helping the family to develop insights (Bowen, 1978). His theory evolved from psychoanalytic principles and practices and is sometimes referred to as multigenerational, transgenerational, or intergenerational family therapy.

A brief outline of Bowen’s theory and concepts follows.

Differentiation of self

Central to Bowen’s theory was the emphasis he placed on the importance of each family member differentiating. He described differentiation as both an intrapsychic and interpersonal concept.

The intrapsychic concept of differentiation of self involved the psychological separation of the individual’s intellect from their emotions, so that they were able to respond in a reasoned way without automatically responding in an emotionally reactive way. The interpersonal concept of differentiation of self refers to the ability of an individual to separate emotionally from others and become independent as an individual.

Multigenerational transmission processes

Bowen believed that unhelpful family dynamics from a previous generation are transmitted from one generation to the next. He suggested that individuals tend to repeat in their marital choices and other significant relationships patterns of relating learnt in their families of origin and that they pass similar patterns on to their children. Consequently, he believed that the only effective way to resolve current family problems was to change the individual’s interactions with their family of origin.

An example of a multigenerational transmission process is the suggestion that people who are enmeshed with their family of origin tend to marry others with whom they can become enmeshed, resulting in two undifferentiated individuals seeking and finding each other and becoming a couple. This is a situation that Bowen perceived as undesirable.

Emotional cut-off

Bowen insisted that adults must resolve their emotional attachment to their families of origin. However, he did not believe that a satisfactory solution was to attempt to differentiate themselves from their family of origin by seeking geographic separation or by the use of psychological barriers such as not talking to their parents. Even though this might resemble a differentiation process and freedom in the form of emotional cut-off, according to Bowen such behaviour did not indicate true differentiation and emancipation, but was a flight of extreme emotional distancing in an attempt to break emotional ties (Nichols and Schwartz, 2007).

Triangulation

Bowen recognized that anxiety can easily develop within intimate relationships. He suggested that two people in such a situation might recruit a third person into the relationship, thereby reducing their anxiety and gaining stability in the relationship. This is called triangulation and will be discussed further in Chapter 6. He believed that the more poorly people within the family were differentiated, the more intense and insistent triangulation efforts would be. Further, he suggested that the least well differentiated person in the family was particularly vulnerable to being drawn into a triangle to reduce the tension between others.

Using genograms with families

Bowen developed a graphic way of investigating the beginnings of the presenting problem. Called genograms, he used diagrams to map out the family over at least three generations (genograms will be discussed more fully in Chapter 7). When using genograms in Bowenian family therapy, the intention was to modify the influence of historical and predisposing factors arising from ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Introduction
• Part 1 Overview of Relationship Counselling
• Part 2 Relationship Counselling for the Family
• Part 3 Relationship Counselling for the Child
• Part 4 Relationship Counselling for Young People
• Part 5 Relationship Counselling for Parents
• References
• Index