Cynthia Evon Banks Murray
Argosy University – Inland Empire
PC6022 – Family Therapy Counseling
August 14, 2014
James Cephas, PsyD
The Descendants – A Clinical Competency Review
This paper will perform a biopsychosocial assessment of the King family, ascertain which family therapy theory would lead to the best outcome, and develop an effective treatment plan.
Reason for Referral
The King family of Honolulu, Hawaii is made up of husband/father, Matthew – age 50, and wife/mother, Elizabeth – age 50. They have two daughters, Alex – age 17 and Scottie – age 10. The King family has come into therapy because of Alex and Scottie’s increasingly troubled behaviors that escalate after their mother …show more content…
Murray Bowen. The fundamental premise of FST that differentiates it from traditional psychology is the family is the basic unit of emotional functioning made up of interconnected and interdependent individuals. Any change in the emotional functioning of one member of the family/emotional unit is predictably and automatically compensated for by changes in the emotional functioning of other members of that family/emotional unit.
According to Bowen, a family is a system in which each member has a role to play, rules to respect, and responses to each other based on relationship agreements. Within the boundaries of the system, patterns develop as certain family member 's behavior is caused by and causes other family member 's behaviors in predictable ways. Maintaining the same pattern of behaviors within a system may lead to balance in the family system, but also to dysfunction because of the inability to maintain the new equilibrium over a long period of time (GenoPro.com, 2014).
Differential Diagnoses/Actual …show more content…
In the family projection process, the fixed triangle is evident where parents in a nuclear family focus anxiety on a child and the child develops problems. Parents then usually attempt to get the child to change or they ask an expert to "fix" the child. However when parents can instead manage their own anxiety and resolve their own relationship issues, the functioning of the child automatically improves (Vermont Center for Family Studies, 2014).
Emotional cutoff. Having significant implications for the functioning of future generations, this is where family members discontinue emotional contact with each other. Because the emotional family unit is severed in such a way that anxiety has fewer places to be absorbed in the extended family system, chronic anxiety increases. People look for other relationships to substitute for the cut off relationship which unfortunately leaves people vulnerable to symptoms. (Vermont Center for Family Studies, 2014).
Multigenerational transmission process. This concept describes patterns of emotional process through multiple generations. (Vermont Center for Family Studies,