Structural family therapy, by Harry Aponte, was developed from working with minority groups; these are families from the minority groups, blacks in the late sixties. The model focuses on addressing the distinctive feature in all the families included a family structure that was often characterized as chaotic and unorganized.
Aponte describes the model as an active form of therapy that entails working with populations that include devastated communities and families from the social issue confronting them (Aponte, 2010). Structural therapy involves a structural study that encompasses paying attention to the families' structure and understanding the articulation of the structures in the basic relations between people (Perron, 2019). According to Aponte's Structural Family Therapy, the structure of a family contains a basic framework within which one can relate the human level to the human beings who are present, thus relate or enter a relationship with the humans present by interacting with them.
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Aponte’s model of family therapy differs from McGoldrick’s' in several ways. According to McGoldrick, family therapy is ideal for understanding certain problems attached to an individual by studying the entire large family system ( McGoldrick, 2020 ). One fundamental difference between the two therapies is that Aponte's model focuses on studying a family system from a personal and engaging perspective and relating the structure to the existing challenges. On the other hand, McGoldrick views family therapy from a patient's point of view; it entails identifying and observing a patient's reaction while assessing and treating psychological disorders and relating this to the larger family network ( McGoldrick, 2006 ). Secondly, Aponte incorporates devastates families from issues confronting them to develop his model. At the same time, McGoldrick studies patients while operating in a clinic and their continual reactions in the presence and absence of visiting family members.
Structural family therapy employs assumptions like everyone has a spiritual self in which they can learn through the model how to connect with. A spiritual self helps the therapist establish a connection and a platform to work with the family structure. Secondly, another assumption is that everyone possesses inner forces that one should be able to connect with and know what to work on.
References
Aponte, H. (2010). Structural Family Therapy with Harry Aponte [Ebook] (2nd ed.). Psychotherapy.net. Retrieved 7 October 2020, from https://www.psychotherapy.net/data/uploads/511939e631627.pdf .
McGoldrick, M. (2020). The Legacy of Unresolved Loss: A Family Systems Approach [Video]. Retrieved 7 October 2020, from https://www.psychotherapy.net/video/mcgoldrick- family-systems.
McGoldrick, M. (2006). Monica McGoldrick on Family Therapy [In person]. https://www.psychotherapy.net/interview/monica-mcgoldrick
Perron N.C.D. (2019) Training Structural Family Therapists. In: Lebow J.L., Chambers A.L., Breunlin D.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49425-8_660
