Helen Buckman Family Subsystem

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the household, etc.” (p. 356). In addition, Frank’s father kicked him out of the house when he was 15 years old. This left an impression on him that raising children was a burden or a prison that he could never get away from. This set the stage for the type of relationship he has with his wife and children. Therefore, he worked continuously so he would not have to be attentive to his wife or children. For example, in the movie, The Parenthood, he says to Gil (the oldest son) that he hated him when they thought that he had polio as a child. He complained that it would force him to show affection towards his son which was something he could not do. The legacy of working hard and not being attentive to your family is what Frank handed down to his children. Freire (2000) states it like this “we carry with us the memory of many fabrics, a self soaked in our history” (p. 31).

In Helen’s case she married a man who had the same characteristics of her father. A man that would not be attentive to the family and in a sense abandons them not only physically but emotionally. She also was influenced by Frank’s work ethics for her work hard to achieve a position of bank manager. Also she instilled that same characteristic in her children for Julie had received high SAT scores. However, the relationship she experienced with Frank is strained and it has prompted her to be more empathic with her children than her father was. She delayed get involve with another person so that she can focus her attention on her children’s problems. Therefore, when Helen try to redefine her relationship with her children she “experience a resurfacing of emotions related to unresolved issues” with her father (McGoldrick, Carter, & Garcia-Preto, 2011, p. 243).

One of the family’s weaknesses is of their inability to distribute an appropriate amount of time between their family and work. Frank’s failure to give any attention to his children when they were kids has caused them to go overboard in parenting their own children. This has resulted in making matters worse. McGoldrick, Gerson, & Petry (2008) found such repetitive patterns can be “repeated over several generations” (p. 20). However, the family’s strengths are their resilience and creativity has been enabling them to resolve their problems. Resilience in the way Helen used Todd to give advice to Garry about sensitive issues he would not normally speak to a woman about. Simon, Murphy, & Smith (2005) defined it as “a family demonstrating a positive response to an adverse situation and emerging from the situation feeling more confident, stronger, and more developed than before the adverse situation.”

Brief Strategic Family Therapy & Solution-Focused Therapy

Brief strategic Family Therapy (BSFT) could possibly be a model for counseling Helen’s family situation because it focuses on the family contextual and ecological influential sources that shapes and develops her children’s way of thinking, feeling, and behaving. BSFT considers that “although the family is the primary context of human growth and development, the family itself is also part of a larger social system and like a child is influenced by her/his family—the family is influenced by the large social system in which it exists” (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). The therapist would target Helen, Garry, and Julie’s interaction with Edward’s (her ex-husband) estranged relationship with the family to assess the maladaptive family structure. As a result of being a problem-focused model the focus would be on the lack of interaction Gary and Julie’s has had with the raising of the children as the cause of their behavior. For example, the continual pattern of Garry withdrawing to his padlocked room and carrying around a mysterious brown paper bag. Finally, by strategically highlighting positive aspects of the family’s strengths the therapist makes possible an environment that fosters a parent/ child connection.

In counseling Helen’s family using Solution-Focused Family therapy (SFT) the assumption is that the family becomes experts in applying resources to construct a solution to the situation. The therapist would help the family “do something different by changing their interactive behaviors or their interpretation of behaviors and situations so that a solution can be achieved” (de Shazer et al., 1986). Through language and interaction Garry and Julie has created certain meanings to the reason their father left their mother. Therefore, the therapist would, “through language, change the meanings that people have for events, behaviors, feelings, and thoughts” (Reiter, 2004). The counselor will take a “not knowing” stance with the family and concentrate on directing them towards solutions to dilemma. de Shazer et al. (2007) found that “the therapist will follow the client’s lead, but takes an optimistic viewpoint, guiding the session away from rehashing the problem over and over again.” The SFT therapist can use language, questions, compliments, homework, and exception findings to help Helen’s family develop a scenario of the possible solutions. For example, the therapist can ask Garry a scaling question like, “from 1 to 10 how would you rate how angry you were when your parent’s got a divorce,” as a guide to measuring future progress. Becvar & Becvar (2009) stated that “a scaling question defines a problem (for example depression) in terms of a gradient and measures it in degrees” (p. 259). In addition it will reveal their resources they can use to accomplish their goals. Such as when Helen used Todd to talk to Garry about his obsession with porn was natural for his age.

Bowen Family Systems

Murray Bowen, a prominent early pioneer in family therapy, based his concept on the intergenerational communication between family members. His concern was of the client’s differentiation of themselves from “the family of origin as well as with the internal separation of intellectual and emotional functioning” (Becvar & Becvar, 2009, p. 36). The concept of “differentiation of self” has two aspects to the process: (a) the separation of oneself from others; and (b) the separation of the feeling process from the intellectual process. Bowen (1985) described differentiations as “the ability to balance two life forces; the need for togetherness and the need for autonomy.” Bowen felt that individuals who are undifferentiated were less flexible and emotional entangled with others from previous generations. Another concept of his approach is that the family is an emotional system which includes a nuclear family, those living or decease, and regardless of whether they reside somewhere else. According to Becvar & Becvar (2009) Bowen felt that