1. Discuss the early leaders. Salvador Minuchin is potentially the most influencial person in Marriage and Family Counseling ever. He has done a lot and also written a lot. He started in the 1960s, and along with Jay Haley and a few others, developed Structural Family Therapy in 1969. He wrote Families and Family Therapy, and it was a very, very popular book. It is still in print today, and it is still commonly used. He was a child psychiatrist, but he found that he had to bring in the whole family to really be effective. Without the family, sometimes the child would not improve at all, and sometimes, the child would even get worse. He worked with Holocaust victims and also with inner-city, low income people. Marriage and Family Counseling worked with a lot of those who did not fit into the common mold of other form of counseling. Structural Family Therapy begins by watching the family to see how the family interacts. When there are often repeated patterns or clear patterns, then that is called a structure. The counselor watches how the family organizes itself around the structure. The nature of Family Structure is determined by emotional boundaries (according to Minuchin). To him, a problem arises in a family when the family structure fails to adapt to new situations and environments, and this approach to counseling looks at how old structures are being used in unhealthy ways.

The last early leader is Virginia Satir. She was part of the Palo Alto group. She was also a part of the Human Potential Movement, which was a branch of humanistic movement of the 1960s which focused on health and possibilities of humans. Her therapy concentrated on communications, expressing feelings, and fostering mutual acceptance and warmth.

2. Discuss some important definitions.

Pseudo-hostility is a self-rescuing operation of the family system. A false hostility used to maintain equilibrium and cover deeper problems. The relationship between Carolyn and Claudia in "The Family Crucible" is an example because their relationship was not the real problem.

Undifferentiated Ego Mass (also fusion-low differentiation) is emotion and intellect which have not become separate from the family. This is enmeshment, and that might have been part of Claudia's problem. She could not get away.

Prescribing the symptom is a technique used in family therapy whereby the family acts out problems with the hope that the family will be unable to comply, or become more aware of the unhealthy family sequences. An example is when a very hostile family is told to fight 20 times. They are so caught offguard that they cannot fight at all, and then, they see the absurdity of their situation.

Operational Mourning is a technique used in family therapy when there is unfinished business from the past which interferes with the ability to fully experience the present. The family keeps bringing up the past, and they need to grieve as a part of letting go. For this reason, the counselor sets up a mock time for mourning and letting go.

Metacommunications are non-verbal signals which alter or add to communications. This can also include body language, and it can even be the inflection of one's voice.

Rubber Fence is partial compliance or pseudo-compliance. Lyman Wynn later used this term for families which allow minimal contact with the surrounding community. This is the same as the family halfway doing what they are asked to do.

Marriage Schism is the failure of a couple to accomodate each other. They fail to support each other.

Marital Skew is the pathological way that marriage partners relate where one partner is dominant and the other is passive. This is a very unhealthy situation. Couples should strive for symmetry.

Position A-to-Z is a way of classifying therapists, where "A" is more psychodynamic and "Z" is more family-oriented. This expression was more 1950s and 1960s than current.

Pseudo-mutuality is a term used by Wynn for a facade of family harmony that characterizes schizophrenic and even Christian families. We pretend that everything is great when it really is not. This behavior is also the same as putting on a mask. However, society perpetuates this kind of behavior because we ask how someone is but do not really want the whole gory detail.

				Tom of Bethany

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