Required Text:

Goldenberg, H. & Goldenberg, I. (2017) Family Therapy: An Overview, Cengage. ISBN: 1111828806, 9781111828806..

Please select Box 11.4 (both are Thinking Like a Clinician) and answer the questions about the case studies.

Strategic Family Therapy

The Beyers family has come for therapy. Bill and Maria are the parents, and Veronica and Justine are their two teenage daughters, ages 16 and 14, respectively.

BILL: I guess we’ve come to see you because we fight all the time. We don’t have any good times together anymore.

MARIA: (interrupting) Baloney! We’re in trouble because we don’t have any money. Period. Bill refuses to get a job even though he has an MBA. We should be well off. Instead, we live off of the money my father left us—and that’s going fast. If Bill would just develop a little backbone and get a job, we’d all be fine.

(You notice that Bill withdraws, and Veronica rolls her eyes as her mother talks.)

MARIA: I make what little money we earn, and to do it I have to work 10 hours a day. When I get home, no one has done a thing to help the family. Bill is playing computer games like a 12-year-old, and the girls are text messaging everyone in creation.

The other night I refused to cook dinner and took myself out to a restaurant. They could all starve as far as I am concerned.

Of course, I don’t want things to be like this, but what am I supposed to do, give in every single day of my life? Frankly,

I am married to a coward, and the girls are spoiled brats. No one cares about me at all.

BILL: That’s not true, Maria. We all care about you very much.

MARIA: Yeah, well, talk is cheap. Prove it. Go get a job.

BILL: I am trying, but in this market there isn’t much out there. You know I send out my resume to someone practically every day.

VERONICA: I am so tired of listening to this same old battle. Mom says Dad’s a wuss, and Dad tries to calm her down. (Turning to her

parents): Why don’t you get a divorce already? You obviously don’t love each other anymore.

MARIA: See what I mean? She is such a brat. Of course I love Bill. We’re just going through a tough time.

VERONICA: Yeah, for about a century.

(You notice that Justine has remained silent throughout.)  

1. Clarify the specific nature of the Beyers’s problem.

2. What interactive behavior maintains the problem you identified?

3. Identify any misguided solutions that the family itself proposes to solve its own problems.

4. Identify a goal of treatment. Create a case plan.

5. What is one therapeutic double bind you might offer to disrupt established patterns?

6. What homework might you assign to the family for the next session?