Abstract
Within the context of family therapy a discursive social constructionist approach was utilized. This illustrated how parents drew upon culturally understood notions of mental health in order to situate the family’s issues within the identified child. Three core analytic issues were identified. First, it was found that parents attributed blame with the identified child. Second, they made direct appeals to the truthfulness of their accounts. Third, the therapist worked to reframe the difficulties as family problems. Thus, through an application of the discursive action model of Edwards and Potter (1992) the social actions and performative nature of family interactions were bound up with parental accountability and therapists moved to refocus the family in a way that maintained therapeutic alliances by offering praise, empathizing, and talking about “feelings.” In this way, a social constructionist, discursive account provided a mechanism for exploring how families interact within the therapeutic space and how child mental health is better understood as a negotiated, rather than fixed concept.
Highlights
It is well known that the core aim of family therapy is to facilitate the resolution of the difficulties experienced by families by focusing on the relationship between the individual positioned as having the problem and significant members of the family (Carr, 2012)
By examining actual family therapeutic interactions and focusing on language, we aim to demonstrate some of the ways in which parents display their ‘good parenting’ within a systemic therapy environment and explore how blame is managed
One of the strategies used by parents was to demonstrate to the therapist that they acted in ways that were in the best interests of their child, which typically involved some level of parental sacrifice and all four families considered how they self-sacrificed for their children
Summary
It is well known that the core aim of family therapy is to facilitate the resolution of the difficulties experienced by families by focusing on the relationship between the individual positioned as having the problem and significant members of the family (Carr, 2012). Aims to facilitate change in the functioning of the family system and requires the cooperation and effort of all family members (Barker and Chang, 2013) This ethos and process of referral to family therapy may leave parents feeling inadvertently criticised and inherently blamed for their problems. For some this process can call into question their parenting position, raising questions about their abilities and their belief that they are doing what is best for their child This is further compounded by the process of family therapy whereby the therapist guides the family toward a more flexible understanding of their difficulties with a negotiation of responsibility (Bowen et al, 2002), while balancing the views and perspectives of all parties that may be in conflict (Sheridan et al, 2010). A challenge for therapists, is to work with parents in a way that helps move their position from blaming the child, to one whereby they involve the whole family
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