Attachment And Family Therapy by Crittenden Patricia

Author:Crittenden, Patricia
Format: epub
Publisher: Open International Publishing Limited
Published: 2014-09-05T16:00:00+00:00

The family. The Ruggles family consisted of Joe and Jenni and their sons Rupert (aged 6 years) and Rob (aged 5 years) (see Figure 5.1). Although Rupert was the focus, in fact, the family was strife-ridden, with fighting between Rupert and his brother, struggles around every family decision, and hours of battling around homework each night.

Rupert was easily frustrated, with many ‘meltdowns’ each day, and interpersonal problems at school (but his grades were okay). His parents were distressed and overwhelmed by trying to keep Rupert happy and reasonably calm. Unlike Hakim’s ‘intrusions of forbidden negative affect’ (see Chapter 3), Rupert’s apparent loss of control began with mild negative affect that quickly escalated to intense negative affect, but then temporarily subsided when his immediate demands were satisfied. Negative affect was not inhibited: to the contrary, it characterized Rupert and generated interpersonal contingencies.

The many diagnoses that Rupert had received (ADHD, conduct disorder, learning disability, and depression) confused the parents. Medication had been recommended, but the Ruggles wanted a coherent explanation before agreeing to it.

A multi-modal assessment

The assessment had three components: neuropsychological, family-of-origin for the parents, and structural. The neuropsychological component was begun first, but its results were the last to become available. Consequently, assessment and treatment overlapped in time. This commonly occurs and permits therapists and family members to slowly develop and refine their understanding of the family issues.

Family-of-origin work. Each parent was separately given an interview about their childhood, focusing on their own experience of being parented, sibling relationships and how these connected to choice of each other as marital partners.

Joe was the youngest child in his childhood family and was used to others knowing more and making the decisions; he just wanted to please them and be accepted. His father had been away from home quite a bit and, when he was around, he dispensed the discipline. Joe remembered admiring his father, but not feeling close to him. His mother had been available, but she had deferred to his father when it came to discipline, ‘Wait till your father gets home.’ However, he remembered playing with her and he thought that Jenni was in some ways like his mother with their children. He explained that he had wanted to be a different kind of father, one who was not frightening to his children. On the other hand, Jenni was assertive and involved more in managing the children’s behaviour than his mother had been and he welcomed that.

Jenni was the oldest girl in her childhood family and was used to being in charge; she was the family achiever. Her parents had separated when she was 3 and she had seen little of her father thereafter. Her mother had raised her and her brother until her step-father entered the family when she was 8. At first, she had liked him, but later she began to resent his taking over; she remembered wanting to get back to how it had been before he arrived. Asked to think how this had influenced her ideas

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