Family Counseling
The Jones family willingly sought family therapy to help them through a crisis with the Jones family's young son. As counseling was not imposed, from the outside, this should make the therapeutic process easier and more constructive. However, there might be a great deal of initial resistance upon the rest of the Joneses to talking about the other underlying family issues and coping mechanism in need of being addressed to find a long-term, holistic solution to the family's conflicts, and economic and psychological needs.
Because therapy but was solicited by the family to address a specific family member and issue, the strategic model of family intervention might seem most appropriate to the family -- get the boy back in school and off the streets, get the boy a job so he doesn't end up in violation of his parole and back in the juvenile detention center, they might cry, with some justification. (Goldenberg & Goldenberg 86) But it should become clear, upon further examination and probing upon the family counselor's part that the entire Jones family structure is problematic, as it exists, and is showing signs of stress and strain that extend beyond the son's immediate problems and acting-out.
These family strains are not...
They do seem to show a lack of functionality based upon class, and poverty. Constructivist or structural models that focus on the individual alone would seem to be inapplicable here, as all family members have issues separate from fissures in the general family structure. But socially oriented philosophies that treat the problems the family as part of a larger social network of ills do not take into consideration the difficulty of peer adjustment of the young Jones daughter, or the health problems of the Jones mother.
Instead, along the lines of postmodern theories of family counseling intervention, each family member must learn to rewrite his or her own life narrative in a more effective way. Postmodern counseling's focus on personal narrative shaping and goal setting is an empowering way for this family to escape some of the traps of isolation and depression that contribute to the Jones' current circumstances. The counselor might suggest that each family member needs to reach out into the larger community for support in different ways. Clearly the son needs to find an occupation in school or in employment that provides his day with structure and the…
