Reflection On The Raichand Family

Intervention #3: Process Questions

Each family member was asked a series of questions aimed at toning down emotion and fostering objective reflection. These questions were used to help manage and neutralize the triangles. The aim is to calm anxiety and most importantly gaining access to information on how the family perceives the problem and how the mechanisms driving the problem operate. It process questions, decrease anxiety, make people involved think better and more clearly and also this clarity would help them understand themselves and be conscious about what’s happening in the household.

Questions were asked that encouraged awareness, for example:

[To Nandini]: I know you've become an expert at being the emotional support for your husband,

Family roles and the theme of class system were identified. Yashwardhan seemed to be frozen in time. He firmly believed in the “Raichand” royalty framework which should have evolved with the times but had not. The schools that the children in the Raichand family studied, to who they marry, the lavish parties, the invitees, the clear role demarcation with strong dignity of labor shows that the mindset had not evolved. Though externally they appeared a happy family, there were strong undercurrents due to the “dictatorship” attitude of Yashwardhan. They are carried out around structural alterations in key triangles. The target is to help family members become aware of systems processes and learn to recognize their own role in them. (Nichols, 2013). Pursuers (in this case Yashwardhan) are encouraged to restrain their pursuit, stop making demands, decrease pressure for emotional connection, and see what happens, in them and in the relationship. I have had a talk and encouraged estranged son, Rahul to return to the family and encourage the family members to form stronger relationships with each other. She must use descriptive labels like "pursuer-distancer," and help members see the dynamic occurring; following distances (Rahul and Anjali) only causes them to run further away, while working with the pursuer (Yashwardhan and Nandini) to

Bowen's focus is not the intrapsychic experience of the individual. It focuses on the structure and workings of the system so that the individual can forge a different systemic role. In Bowenian therapy self-understanding comes from the between-session, planned action of the 'self in the system'. In suggesting Bowen’s model I run the risks of oversimplifying its in-depth formulation of family process. My aim has been to summarize how Bowen's core concepts can influence the focus of therapy. One needs to be mindful however, of potential pitfalls when using a family of origin model. Bowen's focus on the distant to solve the proximate may take families on therapeutic paths, which go beyond their request for the shortest possible road to symptom relief. I have attempted to overlay the informed gender, ethnicity and class aspects on Bowen’s model. Perhaps what is most distinctive about Bowen's theory amongst systemic therapies is that it directs therapists to consider their own roles in their families of origin so that they can personally experience the theory in order to appreciate its clinical