Broken Family Psychology

A Day Late and A Dollar Short In this film, a mother tries to reunite her broken family before she dies due to her chronic asthma illness. Viola, the mother, finds this to be a difficult task as she goes through the process of bringing her children and husband together again. There is infidelity in her relationship with her husband and there is much tension within the relationships of her children. Each of the children are grown and have families of their own, and seem to deal with a different battle of their individually. Unfortunately, Viola dies before the family can come together and put their difference aside. However, Viola leaves letters to her children and husband, in which they would read the letters to the person that it pertains to express her love to her family in a way that she wasn’t able to tell them while she was alive. This alleviated some of the tension, but the movie ended …show more content…
With the family being as large as it is a co-therapist may be needed in this process. It is important to always begin with joining or therapeutic alliance. Gaining the trust of the clients earlier on in the process will enhance the effectiveness of therapy. Once therapeutic alliance or joining has been established, the next step is identifying subsystems, patterns of behaviors, and detrimental processes. The family has several subsystems within it. However, I will just focus on Viola, Cecil, Charlene, Janelle, Paris, and Lewis in which are the mother, father, and the four children. The subsystems consisting of these family members would be spouses, parental, and siblings. Even though there are problems within the families of the children, the hope of Viola is to bring her children and husband back together. It is apparent that the conflict of the family has caused problems in the families of the children in which patterns are continuing to be passed into the next