Epistemology

Systemic epistemology was a sharp contrast w/ the traditional psychotherapeutic perspective that individual pathology and treaits are the basis for problems. Individuals no longer treated primarily as independent entities responsible for both origin and cure for problems.

This expansive idea violated 4 general propositions that grounded traditional mental health care:

1. Focus of study is the individual

2. Individuals assumed to possess characteristics and traits, both learned and unlearned, that endure and represent predispositions to act and that can be isolated and influenced in a therapeutic context

3. Causes can be clearly defined, and symptoms and conditions can be treated directly through a therapeutic relationship

4. One person can affect change in a second person only to the degree that the first person influences the traits and characteristics or the psychological conditions (internal/external) of the second person

1. Relationships represent focus of study

2. Relationships can be isolated for study & defined, but only w/ understanding that this isolation/definition are relative to observer and his/her system of reference

3. Causation is circular (nonlinear) w/in confines of specified relationships of significance

4. Therapeutic change occurs through social relationship

The ________ focuses on the individual client, who is viewed as able to be assessed and treated, where interventions attend primarily to the client rather than to social/cultural factors that might be affecting the client.

The ________ was based primarily on a relational-ecological perspective, focusing on components or members of a system.

• Psychological Worldview
• Systemic Worldview

a) Holism: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts

b) Antilinearity: linear thinking is an epistemological mistake, attempting to identify specific sequences of causation in a linear fashion

While the ecological framework of systemic epistemology became foundational in the professional worldview of MFTs, it encountered challenge and revision, reflecting a type of professional dissonance.

2 examples of this process, reflecting the dynamic nature of revising a worldview, are represented in the:

1. Feminist Critique
2. Self in the System

Commentary on the development of a profession that embraces a precept of equality in a social and cultural heritage of inequality, often to the point of oppression. Within specific family units, entrenched cultural traditions promote inequality with expectations of privilege for men.

• Calls upon family therapists to "recognize gender as a central organizing feature of family life and to challenge traditional ways of working which ignore, and therefore reinforce,  gender-based power imbalances."

Feminist Critique

The feminist critique is a position that is "political" in that...

and also ethical in that approaches to gender w/in MFT raise issues that are ethical in nature, such as: (3)

...it refers to those processes maintaining or changing power relations w/in any social or interpersonal system.

1. Beneficence
2. Justice
3. Autonomy

1. It often employs circular causality to present violence as serving a functional role in the maintenance of the family system

2. As it relates to social and cultural context, in a patriarchal society seen as limiting the choices women can make related to possible life roles, their ability to be causal agents is limited

Family as a System

Object Relations Theory

Internal Objects

Applied to family therapy, object relations theorists posit that dysfunctional patterns of behavior among family members are maintained by the internal object relations of family members. Through a process of  ________, the images of certain internal objects are projected onto other family members.

Projective Identification

Ecology of Therapy

1. Layers of Values
2. Forms of Power

3 layers of values that influence contemporary mental health care:

1. Institutional Values
2. Personal Values
3. Professional Values

Various organizations affect therapists in their work with couples and families, including: (6)

a) Legal Systems

b) Managed Care Systems

c) Practice Settings

d) Medical Systems

e) Regulatory Bodies (e.g. licensure boards)

f) Delivery & Management Systems (e.g. tech-based systems)

Values of a system which typically involve codifying rules, standards of procedures, and even hierarchical recognition of professional and non-professional representatives; influence practitioners when they become an affiliate or representative.

Institutional Values

Values in which each of us has a worldview that is strongly influenced by acculturation, where we develop our identity to answer question “who am I?” by emphasizing or de-emphasizing characteristics and qualities we have come to embrace as significant or reject as unimportant.

• reflect our notions about right-wrong or good-bad distinctions
• sig aspects develop before becoming MFTs
• sig foundational elements for relationships w/ clients, peers, and institutions

Personal Values

Values which reflect knowledge and experiences acquired through relationships with other professionals related to ethical propriety, accepted practices, legal constraints, and even therapeutic tradition.

Professional Values

A professional worldview emerges in much the same way as does a personal worldview, where both are: (3)

1.  strongly influenced in mentoring relationships

2. continually developing as MFTs are faced w/ professional and social issues that require renewed examination of their personal and professional

3. emerge and develop based on shared values especially toward clients, professional peers, and self-policing

Values are demonstrated in our attempts to influence others or affect situations to gain outcomes that support our values. We act using various forms of power to convey our values and to influence others: (3)

1. Legitimate Power

2. Referent Power

3. Expert Power

Form of power found in hierarchical structures; those in positions of employment, management, or enforcement can exercise such power to require certain behaviors of subordinates in that hierarchy.

Exists in governmental, legal, and commercial systems in which the institutional values of standardization and conformity are required through reward, advancement, threat, intimidation, or even force.

Legitimate Power

Form of power to influence that is non-coercive and highly personalized; the most personal and compelling means of influence. Grounded in qualities such as admiration, attractiveness, or veneration, and conferred by observers rather than imposed. 

Referent Power

Form of power in which the capacity to influence is based on experience, knowledge skills, and competence; Granted by others who are convinced that those who hold such a role in their lives are knowledgeable, skilled, reliable, and trustworthy.

Can promote confidence of others in one’s judgment and abilities, and is the basis for a therapist’s credibility w/ clients and peers.

Expert Power

The sources of power often converge with layers of value as couplets, which is unique for each person, particularly in their effect on personal acculturation and worldview.

For example, legitimate power often supports ________. Similarly, referent power can strongly influence ________.

• Institutional Values
• Personal Values

Process which occurs after one has developed a worldview based on personal acculturation, involving the effect of professional values-expert power couplet on one’s existing worldview.

Professional Acculturation