SOCW 674 Social Work And Families Lecture No. Ten

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SOCW 674 Social Work And Families Lecture No. Ten

• The Structural Model
• Structural Family Therapy includes
• Family Rules, Roles, Coalitions, Subsystems,
  Boundaries, Wholeness, Organization
• Structural Family Therapy was originated and
  developed by Salvador Minuchin MD

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Structural family therapy

• Structural family therapy approaches a preference
  for a contextual rather than an individual focus
  on problems and solutions. Its uniqueness
  results from its use of spatial and
  organizational metaphors, both in describing
  problems and identifying solutions, and its
  insistence on active therapist direction (
  Colapinto,1991 ).

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Structural family therapy

• Structural family therapy presents with the
  major thesis that an individuals symptoms are
  best understood and rooted in the context of
  family transaction patterns, that a change in the
  family organization or structure must take place
  before the symptoms are relieved, and that the
  therapist must provide a directive leadership
  role in changing the structure or context in
  which the symptom is embedded.

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Structural family therapists emphasize

• the wholeness of the family system
• the influence of the familys hierarchal
  organization
• the interdependent functioning of its subsystems

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Minuchin ( 1984)

• Minuchin ( 1984) views families as going through
  their life cycles seeking to maintain a delicate
  balance between stability and change the more
  functional the family, the more open to change
  during periods of family transitions, and the
  more willing to modify its structure as changing
  conditions demand.

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Minuchin served as an Army Doctor

• Minuchin served as an Army Doctor for eighteen
  months in the war with the Arab nations. Minuchin
  began psychoanalytic training at William Alanson
  White Institute ( where Sullivans interpersonal
  psychiatry ideas held sway ), eventually he
  became the intake psychiatrist at the Wiltwyck
  School, a residential school for delinquent
  adolescents outside New York City. Inspired by
  Don Jackson, Minuchin began to look beyond the
  individual children, primarily low-income
  African-American and Puerto-Rican youngsters from
  New Yorks inner city, to focus upon and
  examining the family predicaments. Because these
  families often had multiple problems and
  disconnected family structures, Minuchin and his
  therapeutic team started developing a theory and
  set of special intervention techniques working
  with these underorganized poor families.

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Minuchin and his associates

• Minuchin and his associates proceeded to devise
  many brief, concrete, action-oriented, ands
  problem solving intervention procedures to
  effect context change by restructuring the family

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Minuchin eventually

• Minuchin eventually took on the Directorship of
  the Philadelphia Child Guidance Center. To assist
  with training he brought in Social Worker
  Braulio Montalvo from Wiltwyck and also recruited
  Jay Haley from Palo Alto. The clinic grew to
  having three hundred on its staff and became
  affiliated with Childrens Hospital on the
  University Of Pennsylvania campus. The clinic had
  the major distinction of being the first clinic
  in the united States where poor minority families
  represented a majority of the clients served. In
  1974 Minuchin published Families And Family
  Therapy, an elaboration of ideas regarding
  concerning change in families through structural
  family therapy.

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Minuchin

• Minuchin stepped down from the Philadelphia
  Child Guidance Center in 1975,
• He spent his proferssional time teaching,
  consulting, supervising, writing and
  demonstrating his dramatic techniques in front of
  professional audiences around the world. In 1981
  and until 1996 he lead a small group called
  Family studies ( now remamed the Minuchin Center
  For The Family ) in New York City , offering
  consultative services to community organizations,
  particularly those dealing with poor families (
  Miuchin, Colapinto Minuchin, 1998) Minuchin now
  has retired to Florida, but continues to lecture
  around the world.

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Other leading figures

• Other leading figures contributing to structural
  family therapy include Psyciatrist Charles
  Fishman ( 1993), Social Worker Harry Aponte (
  1999), Psychologist Marion Lindblad-Goldberg (
  Lindblad-Goldberg, Dore Stern, 1998 ) all of
  Philadelphia, have contributed to advancing the
  structural viewpoint through offering family
  therapy training, typically with economically
  needy families.

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Marianne Walters

• Marianne Walters, a Social worker in
  Washington,D.C. is best known for her
  groundbreaking work she and her associates (
  Walters, Carter,Papp Silverstein, 1989 )
  produced as part of the long-running Womens
  Project, employing the lens of gender to examine
  family relationships.

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In Psychosomatic Families

• In Psychosomatic Families, Minuchin wrote that
  families of children that manifest severe
  psychosomatic symptoms are characterized by
  certain transactional problems that encourage
  somatization. Emmeshment is common, subsystems
  function poorly, and boundaries between family
  members are too diffuse to allow for individual
  autonomy. A psychosomatic family was found to be
  overprotective, inhibiting the child from
  developing a sense of independence, competence or
  interesting activities outside the safety of the
  family.

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Structuralists

• Structuralists are interested in how the
  components of a system interact, how balance and
  homeostatis is achieved, how family feedback
  mechanisms operate, how dysafunctional
  communication patterns develop. And so forth.
  Consistent with Minuchins background in child
  psychiatry , he influenced his associates to
  observe how families cope with developmental
  tasks as the family matures, and particularly how
  families, as complex systems, make adaptive
  changes during periods of transition.
  Structuralists pay attention to family
  transaction patterns because they offer clues to
  the family structure, the permeability of the
  family subsystems boundaries, and the existence
  of alignments or coalitions-all of which
  ultimately affect the familys ability to achieve
  a delicate balance between stability and change.
  Before an individuals symptoms can be reduced or
  extinguished, according to this model, structural
  changes must first occur within the family.

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Family Structure

• A familys structure is the invisible or covert
  set of functional demands or codes that organizes
  the way family members interact with one another.
  ( Minuchin, 1974) In essence, the structure
  represents the sum of the operational rules the
  family has evolved for carrying out its important
  functions. It provides a frame work for
  understanding those consistent, repetitive, and
  enduring patterns that reveal how a particular
  family organizes itself in order to maintain its
  stability and under a changing set of
  environmental conditions., to seek adaptive
  changes.

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Typically

• Typically, once established, such patterns are
  self perpetuating and resistant to change. They
  are unlikely to change until a familys changing
  circumstances cause tensions and imbalance within
  the system.
• A familys transactional patterns regulate
  the behavior of its members, and are maintained
  by two sets of constraints generic or universal
  rules, and idiosyncratic or individualized rules
  ( Minuchin 1974). With regard to the former,
  structuralists contend that all well-functioning
  families should be hierarchically organized, with
  the parents exercising more authority and power
  than the children, and the older children having
  more responsibilities as well as more privileges
  that their younger siblings.

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In addition,

• In addition, there must be complementarity of
  functions- the husband and wife, for example,
  operate as a team and accept their
  interdependency. The degree to which the needs
  and abilities of both spouses dovetail and
  reciprocal role relations provide satisfaction
  are key factors in harmonious family functioning.
  In some cases, family balance is achieved by
  different family members being assigned
  complementary roles or functions (good child-bad
  child tender mother-tough father). Thus
  complementarity or reciprocity between family
  roles provides a generic restraint on family
  structure, allowing the family to carry out its
  tasks while maintaining family equilibrium.
  Complementarity takes the form of teamwork in
  well-functioning families. Idiosyncratic
  constraints apply to specific families and to
  invoke the mutual presumptions of particular
  family members regarding their behavior towards
  one another.

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Some feminists

• Some feminists take exception to Minuchins
  insistence of family hierarchies. Luepnitz (
  1988) argues that Minuchin bases many of his
  ideas regarding family organization on the work
  of the influential functional sociologist Talcott
  Parsons ( Parson And Bales, 1955), who saw family
  life neatly organized according to gender roles,
  family functions and hierarchical power. Parsons
  maintained his adaptation to society requires
  that husbands perform an instrumental role
  (e.g. making managerial decisions) in the family,
  and that wives perform expressive roles (
  caring for the familys emotional needs ).
  Hare-Mustin ( 1984) believes Minuchin himself
  models the male executive functions while
  working with families, in effect demanding that
  the father resume control of the family and exert
  leadership much as Minuchin leads and directs the
  therapeutic session.

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Colapinto ( 1991 )

• Colapinto ( 1991) contended that the stereotypic
  division of instrumental vs. expressive roles is
  not held up as an ideal by Minuchin, but rather
  that Minuchin believes that all families need
  some kind of structure, some form of hierarchy,
  and some degree of differentiation between
  subsystems. Thus, a family will try to maintain
• Preferred patterns, its present structure-as long
  as possible. While alternative patterns may be
  considered. Any deviation from established rules
  that goes too far too fast will be met with
  resistance, as the family seeks to reestablish
  equilibrium. On the other hand, the family must
  be able to change and adapt to changing
  circumstances ( a child grows into a young adult
  mother goes to work outside the home grandmother
  comes to live with them ). It must have a
  sufficient range of patterns (including
  alternatives to call upon whenever necessary) and
  must be flexible enough to mobilize these new
  patterns in the face of impending change, if
  members are to continue to exist as a family
  unit.

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The family

• The family must be able to transform itself in
  ways that meet new circumstances, while at the
  same time taking care not to lose the continuity
  that provides a frame of reference for its
  members.

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Family Subsystems

• Complementarity of roles ( Ackermans influence
  again ) , a child has to act like a son so his
  father can act like a father, but he may take
  executive powers when he is alone with his
  younger brother.

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Subsystems

• Subsystems are defined by interpersonal
  boundaries and rules for membership in effect,
  they regulate the amount of contact with other
  subsystems. Such boundaries determine who
  participates and what roles those participants
  will have in dealing with one another and with
  outsiders who are not included in the subsystem.
  They may be besed on temporary alliances ( mother
  and daughter go shopping together on Saturday
  afternoon ) and may have rules concerning
  exclusion ( fathers and brothers are unwelcome ).
  Or they may be more enduring ( based on
  generational differences in roles and interests
  between between parents and children )with
  clearly defined boundaries separating the two
  generations ( one watches public television
  documentaries, the other MTV ). Subsystem
  organization within a family provides valuable
  training in developing a sense of self, in the
  process of honing interpersonal skills at
  different levels. The strength and durability of
  the spousal subsystem in particular offers a key
  regarding family stability. A parental subsystem
  that is grappling with new responsibilities,
  complementarity of roles becomes essential.

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The sibling subsystem

• The sibling subsystem offers the first
  experience of being part of a peer group and
  learning to support, cooperate and protect (
  along with compete, fight with and negotiate
  differences ). Together, the children comprising
  the subsystem learn to deal with the parental
  subsystem in order to work out relationship
  changes commensurate with the developmental
  changes that they are going through. In a
  well-functioning family, all three subsystems
  operate in an integral way to protect the
  differentiation, and thus the integrity of the
  family system.

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Boundary Permeability.

• Boundaries within a family system vary in their
  flexibility and permeability, and that degree of
  accessibility helps determine the nature and
  frequency of contact between family members.
  Clearly defined boundaries between subsystems
  within a family help maintain separateness and at
  the same time emphasize belongingness to the
  over-all family system.
• Excessive boundaries or inflexible
  boundaries lead to impermeable barriers between
  subsystems. In this case, the worlds of parents
  and children- the generational hierarchy- are
  separate and distinct the members of neither
  system are willing or able to enter into the
  others world.
• Diffuse boundaries are excessively blurred and
  indistinct, and thus easily intruded upon by
  other family members.
• In well-functioning families, clear
  boundaries give each member a sense of I-ness
  along with a group sense of we or us.

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That is,

• That is, each member retains his or her
  individuality but not at the expense of losing
  the felling of belonging to the family. Most
  family systems fall somewhere along on the
  continuum between enmeshment (diffuse boundaries)
  and disengagement (rigid boundaries). ( Minuchin,
  1967). Most families are neither totally emmeshed
  nor totally disengaged, although they may contain
  emmeshed or disengaged subsystems.

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Emmeshment

• Emmeshment refers to an extreme form of
  proximity and intensity in family interactions in
  which members are over concerned and over
  involved in each others lives. Belonging to the
  family dominates all experiences at the expense
  of each members self development.. Whatever is
  happening to one family member reverberates
  throughout the system a child sneezes, his
  sister runs for the tissues, his mother reaches
  for the thermometer, and his father becomes
  anxious about sickness in the family.

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Subsystem boundaries

• Subsystem boundaries in emmeshed families are
  poorly differentiated, weak and easily crossed.
  Children may act like parents, and parental
  control may be ineffective. Excessive sharing and
  togetherness leads to a lack of separateness,
  members, overly alert and responsive to signs of
  distress, intrude on each others thoughts and
  feelings. Members of emmeshed families place too
  high a value on family cohesiveness.
• When an individual family member is under
  stress, the emmeshed family responds with
  excessive speed and intensity, while the
  disengaged family hardly seems to look up, offer
  emotional support, or even respond at all. As
  Minuchin (1974) illustrates, the parent in an
  emmeshed family may become enormously upset if a
  child does not eat dessert, while in a disengaged
  family they may feel unconcerned about the
  childs hatred of school.

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Alignments, Power And Coalitions

• Alignments are defined by the way the family
  members join together or oppose one another in
  carrying out a family activity.
• Power within a family has to do with both
  authority ( who is the decision maker )and
  responsibility ( who carries out the decision ).
  Thus, Alignments refer to the emotional or
  psychological connections with one another.
  Power, on the other hand, speaks to the relative
  influence of each family member on an operations
  outcome.
• Aponte and Van Deusin ( 1981) believes that
  every instance of a family transaction makes a
  statement about boundaries, alignments and power.
  The boundaries of subsystem are the rules
  defining who participates and what roles they
  will play in the transactions or operations
  necessary to carry out a particular function.

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Certain alignments

• Certain alignments are considered by
  structuralists to be dysfunctional. In what
  Minuchin ( 1974) calls triangulation, each parent
  demands the child ally with him or her against
  the other parent. Whenever the child sides with
  one parent, however, the other views the
  alignment as an attack or betrayal and, in such a
  dysfunctional structure, the child is in a no-win
  situation. Every movement the child makes causes
  one or the other parent to feel ganged up on and
  assailed. Because the problems fail to be worked
  out between the parents, a third person is
  brought in ( similar to Bowens concept of
  triangles) and becomes a part of the process
  taking place.

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Coalitions are alliances

• Coalitions are alliances between specific family
  members against a third member. A stable
  condition is a fixed and inflexible union (such
  as mother and son) that becomes a dominant part
  of the familys everyday functioning. A detouring
  condition is one in which the pair hold a third
  family member responsible for their difficulties
  or conflicts with one another, thus decreasing
  the stress on themselves or their relationship.

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Structuralists

• Structuralists believe that power resulting from
  a strong parental alignment is often beneficial
  to child rearing and limit setting. On the other
  hand, coalitions between a parent and child
  against the other parent can have an undermining
  effect on family functioning. Detouring, while it
  may give others the impression of family harmony,
  may often be destructive to maintaining clear
  boundaries.

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Structuralists believe

• Structuralists believe that for parents to
  achieve a desired outcome in the family
• There must be
• Clearly defined generational boundaries so that
  parents together form a subsystem with executive
  power.
• Alignments between the parents on key issues,
  such as discipline.
• -Rules related to power and authority, indicating
  which of the parents will prevail if they
  disagree and whether the parents are capable of
  carrying out their wishes when they do agree.

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Family Dysfunction

• Rosenberg ( 1983) summarizes the structural
  position when he concludes that when a family
  runs into difficulty, one can assume that it is
  operating within a dysfunctional structure. A
  dysfunctional family by definition has failed to
  fulfill its purposes of nurturing the growth of
  its members ( Colapinto,1991) In the Wiltwyck
  families ( Minucin, 1967 ) typically burdened by
  severe external stressors brought about by
  poverty, five dysfunctional family structures
  were differentiated (a) emmeshed families,(b)
  disengaged families (c) families with a
  peripheral male( d) families with noninvolved
  parents and ( e )families with juvenile parents.
  A sense of feeling overwhelmed and helpless was
  common to these families, often led by single
  mothers, who struggled to control or guide their
  delinquent children.

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Disengagement or emmeshment

• Disengagement or emmeshment-avoiding contact
  with one another or continuously bickering-were
  both directed at circumventing change, thus
  failing to achieve conflict resolution.
  Overprotection of the sick child by the entire
  family helped cover up underlying family
  conflicts and tended to discourage the
  development of a sense of competence, maturity,
  or self-reliance on the part of the symptomatic
  child.
• Minuchin ( 1974) reserves the label of
  pathological for those families who, when faced
  with a stressful situation, increase the rigidity
  of their transactional patterns and boundaries,
  thus preventing any further exploration of
  alternatives.
• Aponte and DiCesare ( 2000 ) demonstrate that
  ( a ) poor families, including those living in
  chaotic slums , can benefit from family therapy
  and (b) examining a familys structure, including
  those families that have become fragmented to
  underorganized can be a powerful means for
  treating family dysfunction. The model recognizes
  the influence of social factors in family
  functioning and in working through the
  communitys larger systems.

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Therapeutic Goals

• ( Prochaska Norcross, 1999 ) These authors
  argue that changing a familys structure calls
  for changing its rules for dealing with one
  another, and that in turn involves changing the
  systems rigid or diffuse boundaries to achieve
  greater boundary charity.
• The major therapeutic thrust of structural
  family therapy is to actively and directly
  challenge the familys patterns of interactions,
  forcing the members to look beyond the symptoms
  of the identified patient in order to view all
  of their behavior within the context of family
  structures ( the covert rules that govern the
  familys interactional patterns ).

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The structural family therapists task

• The structural family therapists task is to
  disentangle the pair from their automatic yoked
  reactions, and in the process help each partner
  discover his or her individuality, power and
  responsibility. For structuralists, the most
  effective way to later dysfunctional behavior and
  eliminate symptoms is to change the familys
  transactional patterns that maintain them.
• Joining And Accommodating
• Assessing family interactions
• Monitoring family dysfunctional sets
• Restructuring transactional patterns

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As a therapist, Minuchin ( 1974 )

• As a therapist, Minuchin ( 1974) describes
  himself as acting like a distant relative,
  joining a family system and respectfully
  accommodating to its style. As the therapist
  links with the family and begins to understand
  family themes and family myths, to sense a
  members pain at being excluded or scapegoated,
  to distinguish which persons have open
  communication pathways between them and which
  closed, he or she is beginning to obtain a
  picture of the family hierarchial structure,
  subsystems operations, boundaries and coalitions

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Mimesis ( Greek for copy )

• Mimesis ( Greek for copy ) refers to the process
  of joining the family by imitating the manner,
  style, affective range, or content of its
  communications in order to solidify the
  therapeutic alliance with them.

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Joining, then

• Joining, then, lets the family know that the
  therapist, a nonpermanent but concerned member,
  understands and is working with and for them in a
  common search for alternative ways of dealing
  with what has likely become a family impasse. In
  the process, the structural therapist is
  encouraging the family to feel secure enough to
  explore other, more effective ways of interacting
  and solving problems together. Acknowledging
  their areas of pain or stress, the therapist lets
  family members know that he or she will respond
  to them with sensitivity, and that it is safe for
  them to confront the distressing-and thus
  previously avoided-issues.

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Affiliating

• Affiliating with the family, the therapist might
  make confirming statements regarding what is
  positive about each family member this technique
  helps build self-esteem and may also allow other
  family members to see that person in a new light.
• Through this technique, and as a result,
  the individual may more readily acknowledge the
  dysfunctional behavior rather than denying it or
  becoming defensive. By identifying the
  dysfunction as interpersonal, the family is being
  prepared to think of their transactions
• In circular terms (instead of what were probably
  previous linear explanations) and to attend to
  the complementarity of family relations.

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Assessing Family Interactions

• Structuralists are interested in how flexibly
  the family adapts to developmental changes as
  well as unexpected situational crises, and how
  well-and how easily-family members join together
  to resolve conflict.
• The main purpose of assessment for
  structuralists is not so much to diagnose family
  weakness as it is to develop a road map for
  entering the family, adjust to its customary
  style of dealing with problems, and once inside
  plan restructuring interventions.

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Assessment is an integral and ongoing part

• Assessment is an integral and ongoing part of
  structural family therapy. Immediately upon
  joining the family- sometimes before meeting
  them, based on intake sheet information- the
  therapist is forming hypotheses about the
  familys structural arrangement. What part of the
  system appears to be underfunctioning ? Why, and
  how badly, has the system broken down ? Why now
  ? Which family interactive patterns seem
  especially problematic ?

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Having joined the family

• Having joined the family, structuralists are
  likely to want to learn about coalitions,
  affiliations, then nature of family conflict, and
  the ways in which this family resolves conflict..
  One technique is to direct their attention to the
  familys current organization, which they diagram
  in graphic form in order to map out relationship
  patterns within the family. Just as Bowenian
  family systems therapists, consistent with a
  transgenerational theory, utilize genograms to
  chart family relationships extending back at
  least three generations, structuralists use
  family diagramming to depict a familys current
  transactional patterns. While the Bowenians seek
  clues regarding the familys intergenerational
  influences, the structuralists concern themselves
  with conveying information, through lines and
  spatial arrangements, about the familys current
  organizational structure, boundaries and
  behavioral sequences.

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Structuralists

• Structuralists make use of a simple pictorial
  device called a structural map to formulate
  hypotheses about those areas where the family
  functions well and other areas where dysfunction
  may be occurring. Used as an assessment device,
  Family mapping often helps provide an ongoing
  schema for understanding complex family
  interactive patterns

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Minuchin and Fishman ( 1981)

• Minuchin and Fishman ( 1981) point out that
  family maps reveal coalitions, affiliations,
  explicit and implicit conflicts, and the ways
  family members group themselves in conflict
  resolution. It identifies family members who
  operate as detourers of conflict and family
  members who function as switchboards. The map
  charts the nurturers, the healers and the
  scapegoaters. Its delineation of the boundaries
  between subsystems indicates what movement there
  is and suggests possible areas of strength and
  dysfunction.

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Monitoring Family Dysfunctional Sets

• Boundary making represents san effort to create
  greater psychological distance between the
  emmeshed mother and daughter, and by bringing the
  marginalized father closer, to begin to modify
  the familys customary transactional patterns.

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The therapist

• The therapist also uses the technique of
  unbalancing- attempting to change the hierarchial
  relationship between members of the parental
  subsystem and by having the father take on an
  expanded role in the family. In unbalancing the
  goal is to change the hierarchial relationships
  of the members of a subsystem ( Minuchin
  Fishman,1981).

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Through tracking

• Through tracking, the structural therapist
  adopts symbols of the familys life gathered from
  members communication (such as life themes,
  values, significant family events ) and
  deliberately uses them in conversation with the
  family. Minuchin ( 1974) calls this leading by
  following, Tracking a particular family theme
  may also reveal clues to the family structure.
• An enactment is a staged effort by the
  therapist to bring an outside family conflict
  into the session so that the family members can
  demonstrate how they deal with it.

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Structuralists

• Structuralists deliberately take on a decisive
  role with families, since they view the therapist
  , rather than any techniques or interpretations
  or prescriptions, as the ultimate instrument of
  change ( Colapinto,1991). Therapeutically, they
  actively challenge the rigid, repetitive
  transactional patterns by which some families
  unsuccessfully attempt to organize themselves and
  cope with stress, and then, by deliberately
  unfreezing these patterns and unbalancing the
  system, create an opportunity for the family to
  structurally reorganize. Generally, this
  therapeutic effort involves a push for clearer
  boundaries, increased flexibility in family
  interactions, particularly at transition points
  in family life, and most important, modification
  of the dysfunctional structure.

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Restructuring Transactional Patterns

• Structuralists assume that any family seeking
  treatment is experiencing some stress that has
  overlosaded the systems adaptive and coping
  mechanisms, handicapping the optimum functioning
  of its members in the process.
• Reframing changes the original meaning of an
  event or situation, placing it in a new context
  in which an equally plausible explanation is
  possible. The ideas is to relabel what occurs in
  order to provide a more constructive perspective
  , thereby altering the way the event or situation
  is viewed.

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Structural interventions

• Structural interventions frequently increase the
  stress (another restructuring technique) on the
  family system, creating a family crisis that
  unbalances homeostasis. It also opens the way for
  transformation of the family structure. The
  family now has to face chronically avoided
  conflict. In an emmeshed family system for
  example, members often believe that the family as
  a whole can neither withstand change nor adapt to
  it consequently the system demands that certain
  members change ( develop symptoms ) in order to
  maintain the dysfunctional homeostasis.

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Minuchin

• Minuchin intervenes with a family where the
  adolescent daughter suffers from anorexia
  nervosa. By reframing, he helps the family see
  that the symptoms of the disorder
• Are a response to family dysfunction, not simply
  the adolescent girls defiant behavior.
• All of the family members are locked into a
  futile pattern of interaction that has become the
  center of their lives each member has a stake in
  maintaining the disorder.
• Structural family therapy helps each person in
  the family to recognize the syndrome and take
  responsibility for contributing to it. By
  creating a family crisis, Minuchin forces the
  family to change the system, substituting more
  functional interactions. Changing the family
  organization eliminates the potentially fatal
  symptom. As the family members begin to
  experience themselves and each other differently,
  the stage is set for new transactional patterns
  to emerge.

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In summary Structuralists will emphasize

• Defining the problem as a systems one to which
  each member, including the child , is
  contributing.
• The emphasis is upon strengthening the spousal
  subsystem, encouraging their loyalty to one
  another and their common purpose and family
  identity.
• Consolidate parental authority and unity in
  regard to the child without her experiencing loss
  of her biological mother.
• 4. Help reduce loyalty conflicts for the child
  and adults.
• Keep the married system an open system with
  permeable boundaries, so that the child not only
  derives a sense of security from the home where
  she lives but also retains membership in her
  other household.
• Help family members tolerate differences among
  themselves or from some ideal intact family
  model.
• Encourage the development of new rules, behavior
  patterns and family traditions.

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