Structural Family Therapy Case Summary

A structural family therapist would focus on the family system when working with Hernandez family. Their family subsystem is considered as conflictually enmeshed relationship between parents and children, and having the close relationship between primary couple. AF has enmeshed relationship with her entire family as well. The structural therapist would more focus on how the quality of relationship affects power structure. Hierarchy is one of the most important considerations for working with the family and in this case, AF is the one who is more involved with children’s lives and problematic, while AM is less involved with them. Hierarchy between AF and children is effective, while AM is more insufficient and mostly follow AF’s direction. The …show more content…
The overall therapeutic goals for the Structural family therapy would be to have clear and normal boundaries between parents and children. The parents’ subsystem will hold the most power in the family hierarchy, which in this case, they have it. The children’s boundaries with each other will be clear. Also the boundaries between parents and children will be clear. However, the therapist would focus on system change only as much as any aspect of the system did not adapt to family life cycle changes. Structural family therapist would use various interventions to work with this family. For instance, for unbalancing the current structure, the therapist will utilize enactment between AM and CF in front of CM in order to block enmeshed behavior between CM and CF. based on Structural family therapy, the therapist should be aware of the client’s boundary between the self and other. They work to create change in their clients’ boundaries with others. In Hernandez family, they need to reframe their boundaries with each other in order to communicate with each other with lesser