The Meecham Family In The Great Santini By Pat Conroy

As a potential counselor, working with a family will be one of my biggest challenges in my premature career. Treating a family entails many factors such as learning their family system(s), culture/ethnic background, communication patterns and identifying any emotional themes among other important elements. Within this process, it is vital to hear all the voices of each family member to find out the concerns, issues or problems each one bring to the family dynamic. However, applying these elements in a family therapy session may look different for every family that seeks treatment. However, it is important to bear in mind that a family therapy session may be the only place, where each family member can have a voice and speak freely. In the case of the Meecham family from the novel “The Great Santini” by Pat Conroy, it would be ideal to treat the family as a whole; however, conducting an individual session with each family member before commencing the family session would be appropriate, due to emotional/physical abuse and the fear of being disloyal to their own family.
Bearing in mind the circumstances, working with this family would have its challenges due to the father’s strong presence (alpha male) and the mother’s Southern culture. It would be challenging to earn Bull’s trust to treat his family as a whole, considering a female …show more content…
Within his strengths, he exploited them to express his love and care towards his family. Along with these characteristics, Bull also demonstrated his weaknesses such as hostility, anger, violence, insecurity, low self-esteem and ineffective communication patterns. With exploring and gaining insight of Bull’s thought process, he would be diagnosed with an attachment disorder (avoidant behavior), PTSD with narcissistic