Reconstructing a Sense of Relational Agency in Family Therapy

Abstract

The concept of agency is relevant in family therapy. As family therapists we approach each family member as a full agent, which means that what each person thinks and feels, makes sense, and that each person contributes in a significant way to the construction of a relationship. A person's sense of relational agency is constructed in relationships through processes of relational influence. Thus, agency is a relational construct and is dependent on bidirectional transactions in a relationship. A person's sense of relational agency refers to the sense a person has about having an influence on another person, that this influence is significant for the other, makes a difference for the other, and contributes to the construction of the relationship. Many family members who enter therapy have lost their sense of relational agency. In this paper we discuss ideas how to reconstruct family members' sense of relational agency in therapeutic practice.

Why some children from poor families do well—an in-depth analysis of positive deviance cases in Singapore

“…Action refers to a person's capacity to have an effect on other people and the environment by acting or refraining from acting. Such partition of the construct of agency is purely for analytical purpose because, in practice, these components are experienced in an interdependent embodied way (De Mol, Reijmers, Verhofstadt, & Kuczynski, 2018;Kuczynski & De Mol, 2015).…”

“…In addition, people's sense of agency is inherently relational, because how they act and perceive themselves as agents depends on the social relationship contexts in which they exercise their agency (De Mol et al, 2018). The constructs of isolated versus connected agents offered by SRT helps examine the nature of relationship contexts in which the PD children are embedded.…”

“…This was evident both in the way they motivated themselves to work hard as well as in the strategies they used to spend money within their means. The PD children believed that by achieving good academic results they were able to add something meaningful for their mothers, for themselves, and for the relationship (De Mol & Buysse, 2008;De Mol et al, 2018).…”

The Neuroaffective Triangle and Organising Intervention as a Conceptual Framework for Family Therapy

“…For an intervention to succeed, the therapist's agency is immensely important, as it needs special skills concerning intersubjectivity to create a working alliance with vulnerable clients (De Mol et al., ; Seikkula et al., ). Through the therapeutic working alliance and empathic attunement with the client, the therapist attempts to activate attachment processes, modulate anxiety, and stress levels and create an optimum biochemical environment to promote neural plasticity, which is important in the case with Sarah and her parents (Cozolino, ).…”

“…On account of the complexity of family therapy, it can be helpful to assess the role of the therapist in each family intervention before commencing the sessions (De Mol, Reijmers, Verhofstadt, & Kuczynski, ; Mustaffa, Ghanbaripanah, & Ahmad, ; Seikkula et al., ; Walsh, ). In the NADP approach the focus is the neuroaffective triangle, where all three aspects in the triangle above are interdependent: NADP can be used to understand the family dynamics behind symptoms and mental dysregulation, to make the case analysis, and to guide the choice of methods and tools.…”