Family Systems Chpt 1

Front 1

System

Back 1

A set of interacting units or component parts that together make up a whole arrangement or organization.

Front 2

Define a family

Back 2

-an emotional system made up of interconnected relationships
-may include people living together or apart
-related through biology, marriage, adoption, foster family, or choice
-may include people living or deceased
-people related by a shared emotional bond with a shared past, present, or future.

Front 3

Types of families

Back 3

Look at pp for chpt. 1,2,&4, slide#3.

Front 4

Nuclear family

Back 4

a family composed of a husband, wife, and their offspring, living together as a family unit.

Front 5

stepfamily

Back 5

a linked family system created by the marriage of two persons, one or both of whom has been previously married, in which one or more children from the earlier marriage(s) live with the remarried couple.

Front 6

Alpha error

Back 6

The tendency to exaggerate the differences between groups.

Front 7

Beta error

Back 7

The tendency to minimize the differences between groups.

Front 8

resilience

Back 8

The ability to maintain stability and rebound in response to loss or trauma. The resiliency construct challenges the family therapist to attend to the family's resources that can be mobilized to deal with a present crisis or adversity (as opposed to a deficit-focusing model directed at detecting what's wrong with the family).

Front 9

linear causality

Back 9

the view that a nonreciprocal relationship exists between events in a sequence, so that one event causes the next event, but not vice versa

Front 10

circular causality

Back 10

the view that causality is nonlinear, occurring instead within a relationship context and through a network of interacting loops; any cause is thus seen as an effect of a prior cause, as in the interactions within families.

Front 11

first-order cybernetics

Back 11

a view from outside the system of the feedback loops and homeostatic mechanisms that transpire within a system.

Front 12

second-order cybernetics

Back 12

a view of an observing system in which the therapist, rather than attempting to describe the system by being an outside observer, is part off what is being observed and treated.

Front 13

positive feedback

Back 13

the flow of information from the output of a system back into the system in order to amplify deviation from the state of equilibrium, thus leadingg to instability and change.

Front 14

negative feedback

Back 14

the flow of corrective information from the output of a system back into the system in order to attenuate deviation and keep the system functioning within prescribed limits.