hi guys welcome back to my channel and if you're new welcome to my channel my name is Stephanie Yates Anya Bwile, Steph Anya for short and I'm a licensed associate marriage and family therapist this video today is for my fellow therapists or those who are in the process of becoming marriage and family therapists we'll be doing another model review today we're going to be reviewing Jay Haley's strategic family therapy if you're curious stay tuned As always, I want to thank you all for making suggestions and requests for me when it comes to these models or any types of videos. It really helps me know what you all are wanting to see on the channel. So, big shout out to those who have specifically requested strategic therapy and to those who answered this poll letting me know that strategic is your model of choice.
But don't worry, we will be getting to the rest of the models, you guys. I am really working on it, but I want the videos. to be thorough and have high quality for you so let me know the next model that i should cover in the comments if you like these kind of videos and you find these helpful please give me a thumbs up so that i know you're wanting more of them it helps me be able to plan for the channel and give you guys the videos that you're really wanting to see okay so let's jump right in as usual i like to start by talking a little bit about the theorist who create the models the primary creator for strategic family therapy is Jay Haley.
Jay Haley is hugely significant in the marriage and family therapy community and the history of family therapy as a whole. He was part of the MRI group, the mental research institute, that if you have had any training whatsoever in marriage and family therapy you have definitely heard of this group. Something interesting that I saw about Haley is that he actually went to Stanford to study communication early on in his career.
So that lets you know that he has a background in communication and that is actually an emphasis of the strategic model. Jay Haley worked with all the big dogs that you will hear about in family therapy. He worked on the Bateson project. Like I said, he worked at the Mental Research Institute that you'll always hear about.
And this is one of those things where I could say a lot about MRI and the Mental Research Institute, but it's kind of too much to talk about in a video focused on strategic therapy. So if you want me to talk about MRI, be sure to let me know that in the comments as well. While he was working at MRI, he worked along other pioneers like John Weekland, Don Jackson, Salvador Mnuchin, who we talk about in our structural family therapy video if you haven't seen that one. be sure to check it out. I'll put it in the cards if you can see that and I'll try to remember to put it in the description box but you guys know I'm really bad about that.
If you ever see a video where I said I was going to put something in the description box and I didn't, be sure to let me know. And ultimately after working at MRI, he ended up working with his wife Chloe Maddens. I'm not sure of how to pronounce her name but... they work together and help develop strategic family therapy.
So without further ado, let's jump right into what that model is. So the main things I want you to remember about strategic family therapy is where it gets its name from. So the reason that he calls it strategic is because this model is a foundation of brief therapy, right? So his whole thing was about being able to help a client. quickly see results of therapy.
So he didn't focus a lot on insight as you'll see with a lot of other models. He definitely focused on symptom relief. So he was trying to do whatever he could to see whatever symptoms the client was complaining about to see those reduced significantly.
That is the focus of strategic therapy. It's not like psychodynamic theory for example where it's very important to see what's being repressed or understanding how their mind works. unpacking their dreams things like that was not a focus and strategic therapy he wants to know what problems are you experiencing and then he thinks about okay now how can we fix those problems right as quick as possible so that's why it's called strategic therapy this model is one of the first models of family therapy was developed in the 60s and he'd been working in family therapy and helping develop it through the late 50s into the early 60s.
So this is going to be one of those models where, as we've talked about before, it's a classic model, a traditional model, which I like to think of in terms of, okay, if it's a classic model, they probably view the therapist in the room as an expert. And so they believe it's possible for a therapist to be unbiased, and they all had... very specific understandings of what a healthy family would look like. So as opposed to post modern models that we talk about in like my video for narrative family therapy and other videos to come.
Postmodern models are characterized by social constructionism, meaning that we all live different realities and truths. Our experiences, our communities, all shape the way we see the world and what we experience. But these classic or traditional models really view the therapist is like an authority or expert or teacher.
They have the determination of what health looks like within a family or within a person. So now that we have that overview out of the way, let's jump into the nitty-gritty of this model. Let's talk about the main concepts, let's talk about the view of the problem, the goal of therapy, and let's talk about the techniques that Haley would use to achieve those goals. One of the most important relationships that Haley developed at MRI is Milsen Erickson who is well known for his hypnosis techniques.
As well as using paradoxical interventions. We'll talk a little bit more about paradoxical interventions when we talk about the techniques used in Haley's model. As we talked about earlier, Haley studied communication at Stanford and it is definitely a core component of his model.
Haley viewed communication really as a source of power. Haley thought of power as basically a person's ability to determine the nature or structure of their relationship with another person and as we saw in minutian's model structural therapy like i said they did know each other and work together for a while there aren't a lot of similarities between the models in haley's strategic family therapy he thought that parents of course should have more power than children when we're looking at the family hierarchy When we talk of some of the main concepts of the strategic model, one of the first main concepts is that of circular causality. And if you saw my video, What is Marriage and Family Therapy? And I've talked about it in other videos as well.
Circular causality is the understanding that we can't look for one root cause for all the family issues, right? And that's typically what we do. We look for a reason, a thing, a person to blame.
for the problems and in marriage and family therapy we normally refer to that person as the identified patient. That's the person that the family is blaming all of the issues on or the event that the family blames all of the issues on. But circular causality instead looks for a disruptive or maladaptive pattern. that exist between family members that contributes to the dysfunction.
So sure you might have a child acting out and that could be a source of a lot of tension in the family but maybe the child is acting out because the parents are always arguing and fighting. So the parents always argue and fight it leads to the child acting out then parents come together to discipline the child. which maybe for the child is a benefit to see their parents working together, then the parents end up ultimately disagreeing, arguing again, child acts out, right?
So at any point in that circle, we're seeing there's actually a maladaptive pattern happening within the family. The only issue is not just the child acting out, there's actually a system and roles that everyone is playing that contributes to the dysfunction within the family. So strategic family therapy is recognized as one of the models that really first kind of introduced that concept and we'll see circular causality being a concept that is emphasized in many marriage and family therapy models. The next main concept that we want to talk about is the concept of first and second order change.
This is a concept that I get questions about all the time. Most systemic models are looking to create second order change. So first order change is where there is a change in the system but it's think of it as like a superficial change that doesn't really impact the rules of the family. So let's go back to our example of the conflicting parents then we see a child acting out the parents come back together and then they're arguing again right. So you could view those parents coming together and working as a team to discipline that child as okay We're in therapy, now they're working together, they're not arguing anymore, everything, the problem is fixed.
But if we really pay attention, that's already a part of the rules and the pattern within the family. We need to continue seeing the family so that we can see if they end up getting back into a place of arguing and having a lot of conflict. We need to monitor that part of the system as well. We can't just see that they're getting along for a few weeks and say, okay, everything's fixed, everything is better. Because when we are just meeting a family, that might already be a well-established pattern that they have developed.
That's an example of first order change. There's going to be symptom relief for a while while the parents are getting along and the child is not acting. out but once they get back to that next stage where they are once again conflicting we need to figure out what's happening in between there so that we can understand the rules of the family and help to disrupt those rules second order change is where we are changing the fundamental rules of the system this is where we can see lasting change and it's really hard to accomplish and it's really hard to know if you've done it But if we can understand, for example, what's happening between mom and dad when they are working as a team to take care of the child, and then when they end up conflicting and arguing again, and that child's acting out because they know subconsciously that their parents only get along when they're disciplining them, then we can understand a little bit more about how to change those rules.
And the way you do it is really helping to establish new perspectives between both people. So if we can use some sort of techniques or interventions that will be targeted at those parents behaviors, we need to understand more about the family rules so we can target the specific behaviors that are creating this cycle within the family. We'll get more to how to do that when we move into the interventions or techniques of this model, but the most important thing to remember between first order and second order change is that first order is more superficial where we might see a change but it's not lasting because the rules are the same right maybe you have a couple of people switch but the same two roles are being performed that create the dysfunction we want to do is change the rules all together within the family for areas that are bringing about dysfunction and that is second order change. It's confusing I know but hopefully as we get into the techniques it'll make a bit more sense.
So now let's talk about how he views the problem. So a symptom according to strategic family therapy is an attempt to create power when all other strategies to create power and define a relationship have failed right. So that child acting out for example that is that child using a strategy or tactic.
to exert some control over their family dynamic, right? They control a bit of their parents' relationship with them and they can actually help control the parents' relationship because they team together to help discipline them. So that is a symptom. And what strategic family therapy is hoping to do, the goal is to relieve the symptoms.
The focus is not on inside and learning more about your hopes and dreams. as we see with other models, but it is more focused on how can we relieve the symptoms that the family is experiencing. In this case, it would be probably mom and dad arguing, as well as the child lashing out or misbehaving.
So with that being the main therapy goal, relieving the symptoms, the way that Haley proposes that we do this is by altering the family's transactions and organization, thinking about the hierarchy. and any boundaries that might not be properly serving the family at this point. This is where it starts sounding pretty similar to structural family therapy because you'll remember in that video one of the main things we talked about are the boundaries between family members and how there is a certain balance between how rigid they are and how flexible they are to be perfect for the family.
So strategic is similar and that it's trying to address any behaviors that might be indicative of a poor hierarchy and boundaries within the family. Now we're going to jump into the techniques of Haley's model. This is what really separates Haley's model from Mnuchin's model.
So strategic and structural, like I said they have a lot of similarities. They both talk about boundaries, they both talk about the family hierarchy, but when we get down to the interventions and techniques between these two models they are very different. So we're going to talk about that. first about how Haley envisions the process of therapy going because he believes that the first session has a huge impact on how the treatment goes because there are four essential parts to that session that he likes to address. So first you have the social stage.
During this stage of the first session the therapist is more observant. They are seeing how the family naturally interacts and they want to make sure that each family member is participating. The second part is the problem stage and this is pretty simple.
The therapist wants to know what brings the family into therapy. The third stage is the interaction stage. I think of this as kind of a combination of the first two stages because the therapist is observing the family talking about the problem, interacting with one another and seeing how they view the problem and maybe even any differences. and how they view the problem.
This can be very informational for the therapist to pick up on and pay attention to. And then the last step is goal setting. And this is where we really get into the strategic part of the strategic model. This is where the therapist actually works with the family to define what the treatment goals are.
They actually sign a contract to say this is what we're gonna work on and a plan for how they're going to accomplish it. And this is where... the therapist will assign a directive or think of it as a task or sometimes we'll say homework for the family to complete outside of the session at home.
With the strategic model being such an early model, I really like that Haley wanted to work in collaboration with the family whereas a lot of the other models it was a bit more focused on the therapist's view of the problem and the therapist took on a lot of responsibility for fixing those problems. Haley works a bit more in collaboration and actually trusts the clients to do some of the work at home. And as a collaborative therapist myself, post-modern collaborative therapist, it is very important.
I mean, we only see our clients once, maybe twice a week. And so it's nice to know that your family or your client... is doing a lot of work outside of the session where that's where a vast majority of their real life is happening. So the goal setting part is a critical aspect of those first four stages in the first session. And it is important to talk a little bit about the therapist's role because even though the therapist is including the family in the strategic model as we'll see with most of the traditional classic models, the therapist is like taking charge, right?
They're assigning homework to the family. They are observing the family. They are not viewing themselves as a part of the unit. They view themselves as separate from the unit and affecting change. So I don't want there to be any confusion just because there is some collaboration.
This is still very different from what we'll see with the postmodern models. A directive is usually something pretty straightforward and usually it's something that the family can clearly see is in direct alignment with the problem that they've presented. So you're going to say something like, let's say in our example where we have the kid acting out and the parents always conflicting, we'll say something like, whenever the child gets in trouble, only one of you is allowed to go in and talk with the child at that time. So even though you think, well, it's good for the child to see the parents working together, if we have suspicions that the child might be using acting out and misbehaving as a form of control to see their parents working together. let's test it out and experiment to see if those behaviors that they know that they're not going to lead to seeing their parents together necessarily, if we see any sort of change in the family dynamics.
So that's what I mean when we say we're targeting the behaviors to see how can we address those family roles that we're looking to change. Another type of intervention that the strategic family therapy model is very well known for are paradoxical. interventions or directives where basically we're prescribing the opposite to the family. You do want to be very careful with this and it's one of those things where I would say if you are a student therapist you might want to stay away from this unless you're you know definitely consulting with your supervisor letting them know what you're intending to do because you could ultimately put the families at risk if you're not clear on why. you are prescribing the opposite or how you plan to help the family bounce back or rebound from prescribing the opposite.
So an example of a paradoxical intervention prescribing the symptom. This is a very simple thing to understand if you have a couple who is always arguing you tell them every day at 7 o'clock I want you to argue. You're asking them to do more of the thing that they're telling you they want to change.
and we're doing that so we can help them see that they actually have some control over how often this is happening. The parents might actually end up being more hostile, it might lead to a physical fight. So that's why I say you need to be very, very careful when you are prescribing paradoxical interventions because they can be really tricky to rebound from.
You need to be really clear and certain that you're going to be able to help them see the problem through a different lens and actually improve. through this intervention and our ultimate goal for something like this would be seeing them just not want to do it you know we tell them argue every day at seven o'clock 7 p.m rolls around and they're like i really don't want to argue like we're having a good day i'm enjoying you and that is a success right because the whole goal remember is to relieve the symptoms so if we tell them hey do more of this and that actually makes them abandon it altogether that is a success but again be very careful another technique and strategic family therapy that I absolutely love our ordeals this is where we pair an unpleasant task with the symptom right so if the parents are always arguing and the kid is always misbehaving then maybe we say whenever the parents argue they have to buy each other a gift over $100 whenever the kid misbehaves he has to babysit his sister, something that they don't want to do. By assigning these ordeals, you're basically saying, okay, sure, sure, you can continue doing the symptomatic behavior, but you're going to have to also do the things you don't wanna do every time you do that.
It's kind of like the swear jar, right? Okay, you curse, but you've gotta put some money into this jar, you're losing money. because you said something you shouldn't have said.
That's really what an ordeal is. Some other interventions or techniques used in this model are things like restraining, like telling the family members not to change, saying, you guys are always arguing, he's always misbehaving, but the last thing you wanna do is stop something that's already working well, right? That's obviously not true and it's almost sarcastic.
Just another type of paradoxical intervention. And you're, telling them to do something that you really don't want them to do. So by telling them you shouldn't change whatever you do, do not stop arguing, do not stop misbehaving, again they might recognize their power to actually be able to stop doing these things in rebellion of the tasks that you are recommending to them.
Positioning is when you are exaggerating the severity of a symptom. So you might say something like, yeah when you guys are arguing because you hate each other, and they're like, wait, we don't hate each other. right so you are exaggerating it so they can actually see that maybe it's not as big as they're making it seem reframing which is something we already talked about in the narrative family therapy video reframing is something you'll see pretty much in most therapy models regardless of marriage and family therapy you take a symptom and you try to view it as more positive So for example, if we talk about a child that's misbehaving, let's say their misbehavior is writing on the walls, right? We might say, it's so amazing that your child feels comfortable enough to express their self creatively in your home.
This is their safe space where they can do these things and allow their mind to process their thoughts in these drawings that they're putting in your home, right? So they don't see it as such a terrible thing. You know, that is It can be viewed as paradoxical if you don't really believe it, but I like to think of reframing as being genuine and authentic and looking at something differently. Like if you have the overbearing mother, for example, you know, I see a lot of mother-daughter dyads.
I talked about in my MFT Q&A video that being one of my preferred populations, you know, to see that overbearing mother behavior as while your mom seems very concerned about your well-being, pays a lot of attention to you and cares about what's happening in your safety. So just relabeling something that could be viewed as a problem is actually maybe a benefit or reward. So these are all some more specific examples of paradoxical interventions.
So that is our overview of strategic family therapy. I hope you found it useful. I hope questions that you had were answered.
If you have other questions, please feel free to put those in the comments below. If you did find it useful, I ask that you please like this video. Ask that you subscribe to my channel if you'd like to see more content like this.
And you can find me on Facebook if you'd like to or Instagram. Again, my name is Stephanie A. Tanya Fule. Stephanie for short. Thank you for watching all the way until the end of the video.
That really helps me. I appreciate you.