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What are Boundaries?
Emotional barriers that protect and enhance the integrity of individuals, subsystems, and families.
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Name and describe the three types of boundaries.
- 1) Rigid (strict or conservative rules and patterns)
- 2) Diffuse (inconsistent boundaries)
- 3) Flexible (most healthy)
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Genogram
Schematic diagram of family systems that uses squares for representing males, circles for females, horizontal lines for marriages and vertical lines for children.
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Process
how memebers of a family or group relate; in contrast to content, which is what they talk about.
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Structure
Recurrent patterns of interaction that define and stabilize the shape of a relationship
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Triangle
A three person system: according to Bowen, the smallest unit of human relations.(has a stabilizing unit by speaking with another person).
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Circular Causality
The idea that actions are related through a series of recursive loops or repeating cycles (ex: feedback loop)
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Cybernetics
the study of control precesses in systems, especially analysis of the flow of information in closed systems.
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Desengagement
psychological isolation that results from overly rigid boundaries around individuals and subsystemsin a family.
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Emmeshment
Loss of autonomy due to a blurring of psychological boundaries. (Diffuse, because you can't determine where one person stops and the other begins ex: think of rubber band ball).
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feedback
- The return of a potion of the output of a system, especially when used to maintain the output within predetermined limits (negative feedback) or to signal a need to modify the system (positive feedback). Ex: think in medical terms when something is positive it means there has been a change like a positive pregnancy test.
- Positive feedback: change has occurred somewhere
- Negative feedback: NO change has occurred
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function of a system
the idea that symptoms are often ways to distract or otherwise protect family members from threatening conflicts. "What is it doing for you?", "how would your life be different if it wasn't there?"
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homeostasis
a balanced steady state of equilibrium.
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process/content
Distinction between how members of a family or group relate (process) and what they talk about (content).
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Reframing
Relabeling a family's description of behavior to make it more amenable to therapeutic change; for example: describing someone as "discouraged" rather than "depressed".
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Social constructionism
like constructionism, challenges the notion of an objective basis for knowledge. Knowledge and meanign are shaped by culturally shared assumptions. (very post modern thinking)
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