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Beyond Bipolar Thinking: Patterns of Conflict as a Focus for Diagnosis and Intervention
Author(s) -
SIMON FRITZ B.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
family process
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.011
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1545-5300
pISSN - 0014-7370
DOI - 10.1111/j.1545-5300.1998.00215.x
Subject(s) - schema (genetic algorithms) , typology , psychology , negation , observational study , ambivalence , attribution , family therapy , grasp , intervention (counseling) , bipolar disorder , social psychology , developmental psychology , psychotherapist , psychiatry , mood , sociology , medicine , computer science , pathology , machine learning , anthropology , programming language
Most family typologies in the history of family therapy organized the observation according to bipolar scales. The implied assumption of such models is that the attribution of the one observational characteristic is inevitably bound to the negation of its opposite characteristic. This article presents a formal observational schema that has the possibility to grasp contradictory, conflicting characteristics. Using this schema, one can develop a clinically relevant family typology, making distinctions between different patterns of interaction by which conflicts and antagonistic tendencies in families are organized. Clinical observation and experience suggests that one can distinguish families with members with psychosomatic, manic‐depressive, and schizophrenic symptoms by the way they overcome conflicts and ambivalence.