Managing Family Conflicts of Halfway House Residents

Abstract

This is a working guide for a technique for the initial interview in marital therapy. There is a discussion of the seating arrangement and the opening. The therapist lays out ground rules and suggests a theoretical framework for the couple. Each partner is asked to do a self-assessment scale aimed at assessing his or her desire to stay in the marriage. This is followed by a discussion of family behavior. The session is terminated with homework for each of the partners, and a therapeutic contract is made. Nonsystematic feedback suggests the technique is useful.Aponte, H. J., Organizing Treatment Around the Family's Problems and Their Structural Bases, Psychiat. Quart., 48, 209-222, 1974. This is a theoretical article based on the author's clinical work in a child guidance clinic (which has a "family orientation" rather than a "psycho-analytic" orientation). The symptoms of the child are reactions to pathology in the family constellation. Techniques of treatment include getting the family to agree on the problem, identifying the participants to which the problem is related, and making pledges to work on changing the structural base of the problem. Several case examples are presented in support of the usefulness of the model. Counts, R. M., Further Thoughts on Family Therapy, Contemp. Psychoanal., 10, 496-501, 1974.

Managing the difficult patient in the community residence

“…A frequent observation made by those who work with the families of the seriously mentally ill are pathological patterns of interaction (Lidz, 1973;Wynne and others, 1958). Community residences, helping patients to separate from their families or providing surrogate families for those who have none, frequently find that they become a party to these patterns (Dailey and Wellish, 1974). That is, one can think of halfway houses as being halfway not only between hospital and community but also between family and independent living.…”