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A Method for Organising the Clinical Description of Family Interaction: The “Family Interaction Summary Format”
Author(s) -
Loader Peter,
Burck Charlotte,
Kinston Warren,
Bentovim Ar
Publication year - 1981
Publication title -
australian journal of family therapy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1467-8438
pISSN - 0156-8779
DOI - 10.1002/j.1467-8438.1981.tb00053.x
Subject(s) - family therapy , context (archaeology) , psychology , idiosyncrasy , genogram , psychotherapist , developmental psychology , social psychology , history , archaeology , finance , economics
Family Therapy emphasises the family as the basic unit of study and treatment for psychological problems. Family Therapists view the symptoms of an individual as predominantly meaningful within the context of his family relational system, and place emphasis on interactional processes occurring between family members. As part of any psychiatric assessment, a systematic written description of family functioning, brief or lengthy depending on the circumstances, is required. Clinicians' descriptions suffer excessively from idiosyncrasy and incompleteness. Review of the literature revealed the lack of an accepted systematic method for describing family interaction. The Family Interaction Summary Format was devised to fill this gap. This paper describes the logic of the Format and is a guide to its use.