Family and Systemic Therapies 345family and wider networks and agencies such as other relatives and
friends, school, and social services.
Example
Linear causality: a depressed mother has produced a dependent son by
failing to get him to leave home, and an uncontrolled daughter by
supervising her inadequately.
Circular causality: a mother is unhappy because her husband stays at
work for much of the time. She turns to her 18-year-old son for com-
panionship, so excluding her 15-year-old daughter. The son feels her
loneliness and stays at home to be with her, and so puts off leaving home
and going to college, and becomes increasingly withdrawn. The mother
blames the father for being away so much and withholds sexual favours;
she becomes depressed. The ensuing coldness between the parents leads
the daughter into a series of superficial relationships, in which she seeks
but never finds the comfort and warmth lacking at home.
Implication: behaviour is as much determined by the interactional con-
text in which it occurs as by the intrapsychic or emotional processes of
any individual person. Failure to recognise this will impair the chances
of improving the functioning of the referred individual, and may well
pathologise them unnecessarily.
Terms used in family and systems therapy
Family system. An entity whose component members influence each
other, with relationships organised by family rules.
Subsystem. For example, husband–wife dyad; mother–child, father–child;
parents–children; males–females, etc.
Family rules. These regulate and stabilise how the family functions as a
unit. Many may be covert: ‘If you complain to mother, it puts up her
blood pressure’, ‘We never discuss money’, ‘Boys don’t show feelings’.
Dysfunctional families may follow dysfunctional rules, and helping them
become aware of these during therapy may enable them to replace them
with more useful ones.
Homeostasis. This term has been brought to family functioning from phys-
iology. It suggests that there are beliefs and behavioural mechanisms
that keep relationships controlled within a relatively narrow range. For
example, a threat to father’s authority by a child’s misbehaviour may
trigger a look or counterthreat to bring the child into line, which in turn
will lead to the child making a small adjustment of his or her behaviour,
and so on. The codes to effect thisfeedback loopmay be quite subtle and
private. In times of transition due to changed circumstances or family
life-cycle adjustments (see below) these old homeostatic responses may
fail and get out of control; sterile, ineffectual patterns may become
endlessly repeated. Recognising this can help families develop new,
healthier patterns of communication and behaviour.
Family life-cycle framework. This is a further way in which family and
systems therapy recognises that external forces influence family and