Prevention in family services : approaches to family wellness / edited by David R. Mace.
- Date:
- [1983], ©1983
Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Credit: Prevention in family services : approaches to family wellness / edited by David R. Mace. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![Guldner [237] family system: the individual cycle of each family member; the marital stage; and the family cycle. All of these must be recognized and understood when working with any part of the family system. Although Harry and Bertha and their family had come to gain new awareness and skills for coping as an adolescent stage family, the therapist must not ignore what is happening to individual and marital stages of development within the family system. The Dells will be looked at in more detail later in this chapter. The point to be made now is the recognition that transition points within any of the family life cycles can be a fruitful time for growth-promoting therpy. (4) Well-family interviews as a means of promoting family growth. It will take a lot of time and public relations to enable families in a community to recognize the value of having regular family life check-ups, much as they might have family physical examinations. There are few families that do not ask the question from time to time How are we doing as a family? As noted earlier, few families use their informal support systems to talk with friends or other families and get feedback. Even fewer families seek formal therapeutic feed¬ back about their family functioning. However, when it is done families find it a source of strength and comfort; it can create a range of choices for growth. Well-family interviews may be done as a single session. The family is interviewed as a unit and the therapist highlights its strengths and provides information that reduces confusion. The therapist also enables the family members to see the range of choices they have which enhances differentness. The differences within the family can then be dealt with as strengths. As confusion goes down and choices go up, this produces a process that leads to competency building within the family system. The changes that the family members make through this process of awareness will more likely be growth promoting than growth restricting. There are times during a well-family session when the family and therapist define an area where the family would like to enhance their attitudinal, behavioral, or communicational repertoire. A maximum of two sessions may be scheduled to focus on this clearly defined task. This is followed by a session three to six months later that enables the therapist to assure that the changes have become integrated and are beneficial to the family rather than creatingdysfunction. Each family](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18037604_0240.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
