This paper compares and contrasts Chapters 9, 10 and 11 from the following book on family therapy:
Becvar, D.S. & Becvar, R.J. (1993). Family therapy: A systemic integration (2nd ed.) Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
After this comparison, one of the approaches discussed in these chapters is addressed in terms of my personal preference for it, its benefits and limitations, and those clients who might be best suited for the approach.
Chapter 9 presents an discussion of the communication approaches to family therapy which can be conceptualized as family therapy which focuses on the nature of the communication within the general family system and its subsystems with an emphasis on redundant, illogical, and confused, communication patterns. Moving a family from dysfunction to functionality involves helping family members to become more open and frank in their communication.
Chapter 10 discusses the strategic approach to family therapy, an approach which emphasizes cognitions, conceptual frameworks, assumptions, and probablistic responses. Coherence in cognitions is equated with normalcy by strategic therapists.
Whereas the communication approach has a model of what constitutes the functional family, the strategic approach does not. It considers itself to be fundamentally relativistic and value-neutral.
The communication approach, presented in Chapter 9, focuses on the meanings of what people are saying to one another within the family (as well as on what they are not saying). There is an emphasis upon internalities (perceptions, beliefs, thoughts, emotions, attitudes, and so forth) that give rise to communicatory meanings and shape communication. As with most family therapy approaches, theoretical models of what constitutes functional and dysfunctional communication within the family system are important.
The behavioral approach, as presented in Chapter 11, downplays both theory and internal states. The focus is primarily...