Structural Family Therapy (SFT): Study for CA MFT Licensing Exam

Created Structural Family Therapy (SFT)

Charting the relationships between family members, or between subsets of family

Structure of the family, including its various substructures

The therapist actually enters, or "joins", with the family system as a catalyst for positive change

- An invisible set of functional demands that persistently organizes the interaction of the family
- Important rules for a therapist to study include coalitions, boundaries, and power hierarchies between subsystems

1) Extra-familial
2) Idiosyncratic
3) Developmental

1) Enmeshment
2) Semi-diffuse permeability
3) Rigidity

The ability to adapt to various stressors

The clarity and appropriateness of its subsystem boundaries

1) Mixed subsystems
- i.e. coalitions
2) Improper power hierarchies
- i.e. an older child being brought in to the parental subsystem to replace a physically or emotionally absent spouse

Gradual; digestible

- One-way mirror technique
- To teach those family members on the viewing side of the mirror to move from being an enmeshed participant to being an evaluation observer
- Therapist joins family member(s) in the viewing room and points out the patterns of transaction occurring on the other side of the mirror

Through its transactions, a family establishes a set of rules for its daily functioning, and these rules form its “structure.”

A system that operates through transactional patterns

Transactional patterns in the family