our clients.
If you have no other way to begin, consider saying, “I would like to get to know a little bit about each of you. What would be important for me to know?” Later you might also ask, “What did each of you hope would happen in our work together?” Such a start focuses the process on engagement and collaboration. It begins with an exploration of people and relationships and highlights the wishes and hopes that are often hidden in complaints and problems. It also tends to generate new information and allows family members to consider different perspectives. A collaborative relationship with clients may include the feedback of families as part of one’s own supervision. In the last 5 minutes of a session, I often ask families about what has worked for them: “How did this session go for you today? What was helpful? What is still missing for you?”
No matter how directive family practitioners have been during their careers, many of them become increasingly collaborative as they age (Aponte, 1994; Hoffman, 2002; S. Minuchin & Zeig, 2005a; Selvini, 1988). They become more patient in their approach. Their timing is more precise, and interventions seem to arrive in a style that is more easily received. Their work extends the capacity for joining throughout the session. If you want an effective process with which to get started, a collaborative stance will serve you well.
Be Careful With Advice
Families that are suffering often come to counseling seeking a quick solution to their problems. They are hoping that a wise counselor will give them some advice or direction that will change their lives and make things better. Such a wish can be very seductive to a new family practitioner. After all, many of us approach this work with the hope that we can help people, make a difference in their relationships, and set them on a course that will lead to greater harmony and happiness.
The paradox is that advice, when it is useful at all, is more easily accepted when it comes from someone who is older and has the kind of life experiences that suggest wisdom—and these are the very people who are less prone to dispensing advice. I am not saying that advice should never be given: This chapter is loaded with advice. Nor am I saying that suggestions and directives are inappropriate. They all have their place depending on the models from which you choose to work. This is just a caution: When you are first getting started, be careful with interventions based on giving advice. Giving advice is not the same as counseling.
Have a Life of Your Own
Couples and family counseling is intense relational work. It is easy to get absorbed in the problems and lives of the families we see. We feel responsible for them, and at the same time, we know that they are the ones who must cope with and handle the challenges they face. If we get lost in our work, we may begin to take our work home with us: This is a sure way to experience professional burnout. The most effective family practitioners I know have lives of their own. They may have their own families and be raising their own children, but they are also interested in his tory, culture, music, art, or theater, to name a few possibilities. They may exercise or play sports. They may read, write poetry, collect stamps, cook, or have hobbies. They may belong to a church, engage in politics, or coach a little league team. In short, they have lives of their own. More important, they seek to live enriched lives.
Relational practitioners, like other members of the helping professions, cannot divorce who they are from what they do. Who we are and the relationships we form are two of the most important aspects of therapy. How we choose to live has a great deal to do with the kinds of personal and interpersonal support we bring to our work. It is important to ask yourself periodically whether you are living the way you want to live. Do you have more interests than your work? Are the relationships you have with family and friends meaningful? Are you contributing to your community and society in ways that fit you? Do you experience growth and development in your own life? Your life and your work can be recursive, each affecting and supporting the other and providing balance to your life and the experience of being grounded when you work.
Toward a Foundation for Integration
What I suggest in this book is that each theory or model brings certain perspectives to the practice of family counseling. One way to create a foundation for the integration of these models is to look at what we can learn by developing perspectives, assessments, and interventions across the various approaches. In 1992, Breunlin et al. (1997) introduced the concept of metaframeworks as a method for transcending the various approaches to family therapy. This model was recently updated by Pinsof and associates (2018). They identified five pillars to integrative systemic therapy and seven metaframeworks that are treated as core perspectives. I address this model more thoroughly in Chapter 18 on integration. For now, I simply want to note the seven perspectives or lenses that inform their model:
1 Organization of systems
2 Developmental processes (in individuals, families, and macrosystems)
3 Cultural perspectives
4 Mind as an avenue into internal experiences
5 Gender perspectives
6 Biology, wellness, and mental health
7 Spiritual perspective
I like to think of each metaframework as a different lens through which I can meet, learn about, and come to understand a family. With these seven lenses, Pinsof and associates (2018) provide a means of assessing families across models and developing multiple avenues for intervention in their “blueprint for therapy” (pp. 79–98). I recommend that you head to Chapter 18 on integration and read the description of each of the seven lenses provided there. You can read the chapter in detail later on.
As you read the theory chapters in this book (Part 2), think about what the various models might contribute to each of the seven lenses. I occasionally note certain contributions to these perspectives in the theory chapters, but you may discover contributions I have not mentioned. In my own work, the five pillars and seven lenses provide me with richer understandings and family descriptions than I would have using only one perspective. At various times, I use some lenses more than others. In most cases, the family members and the issues presented just seem to fit one subset of perspectives better. It is not uncommon, however, for me to consider all seven lenses at least initially. Any or all of them may have meaningful applications during the therapy process. As Pinsof et al. (2018) noted, there is a recursiveness to these perspectives, with each lens influencing and being influenced by the rest. The advantage of using these lenses in family practice is that they provide multiple perspectives for assessment as well as means for tailoring therapeutic interventions to the specific needs of the family (Carlson et al., 2005; H. Goldenberg & Goldenberg, 2002; I. Goldenberg et al., 2017). I believe that the seven metaframeworks provide a foundation for integrating most of the approaches that make up this book.
Gender and Multicultural Lenses
Because the early years of family counseling almost completely ignored the lenses of gender and culture, I believe that it is important to highlight these perspectives here. Like other institutions and practices in society, family counseling has all too often reflected and supported the dominant value system, ignoring the effects of oppression based on class, race, ethnicity, gender and gender identity, health/ability, religion, and sexual and affectional orientation. The very definition of family in the United States is based on a nuclear, middle-class family that is White, of mixed-European cultures, Protestant, healthy and able, and heterosexual; the father is an “absent” breadwinner and the mother stays at home raising two children (preferably
