COMM227 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Codependency, Helicopter Parent, Physical Abuse
1 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Lecture 1
● Costs of unskillful family communication
○ Crisis in marriage, 50% of first marriages with fail within 8 years
○ Extra marital affairs, 20% people cheat in US
○ Abuse in families
○ Mental illness and addictions
○ Damaged relationships
Lecture 2
● The word family is a social construction
● Changing american family
● Social construction of family
○ Social/cultural/historical beliefs determine what counts as family
● Symbolic interaction approach to defining family
○ The idea that people interact with language or symbols to make meaning that is
socially constructed
● Marital forms across time and culture
○ Polygamy: multiple spouses/wives
○ Polyandry: multiple husbands
○ Polygyny: one guy with multiple wives
○ Endogamy: marrying someone inside the group
○ Exogamy: marrying someone outside the group
○ Monogamy: practice of being married to one person at a time
● Task oriented definition of family
○ What functions or tasks families are supposed to accomplish
○ Emotional support
○ Affection
○ Financial support
○ Quality or health of family based on how well it fulfills the task it is supposed to
accomplish
● Tasks of the institutional family
○ Reproduction
○ Financial security
Lecture 3
● Psychosocial tasks of companionate marriage
○ Happiness
○ Love and intimacy
○ Emotional support
○ Emotional health and security
○ Nurturing children
○ Individual growth and fulfillment
● India and Pakistan more likely to be in institutional marriage
○ >10% divorce rate
● Family systems theory
○ Families are emotional systems
○ The way an individual behaves is tied to the larger family picture
● Properties of all open systems
○ Interdependence of parts
○ Seeks homeostasis
○ Feedback
○ Nonsummativity
■ The whole is greater than its part
○ The larger system is more important than any individual part
● Family as an emotional system
○ Anything that happens to one person affects the others
○ System that seeks balance and tries to regulate stress while maintaining healthy
boundaries
○ Unhealthy systems try to balance themselves at the expense of an individual's
well-being
● Sources of stress/imbalance in family systems
○ Normative stressors -> normal stress
○ Non-normative stressors -> abnormal stress
● Severity of stressors
○ Level 1 stressors: rules and roles need to change
○ Level 2 stressors: relationships need to change
○ Level 3 stressors: fundamental beliefs and structure must change
● Circumplex model of family functioning
○ Family stability and health is determined by how well family balances cohesion
and flexibility
○ Levels of cohesion
■ Enmeshed (high)
■ Connected
■ Separated
■ Disengaged (low)
○ Levels of flexibility
■ Chaotic (high)
■ Flexible
■ Structured
■ Rigid (low)
○ Healthy zones
■ Flexibly separated
■ Flexibly connected
■ Structurally separated
■ Structurally connected
Lecture 4
● Circumplex model, most dysfunctional
○ Chaotically disengaged
○ Chaotically enmeshed
○ Rigidly disengaged
○ Rigidly enmeshed
● Boundaries
○ External boundaries: barrier between family and outside world
○ Subsystem boundaries: between parts of the family
○ Internal boundaries: personal, individual boundaries
● Healthy family boundaries
○ Clear
○ Balance of firm and flexible
○ Able to adapt and change
○ Increase freq and quality of communication between parts of the system
○ Prevent triangulation
● Two types of unhealthy boundary patterns
○ Rigid boundaries
■ Family members disengaged from one another or from others outside the
system
○ Weak boundaries
■ Overly involved or intrusive
● Boundary problems: enmeshment
○ Helicopter parents
○ Boundary is weak
● Boundary problems: codependency
○ Extreme form of enmeshment
○ Cannot function without other person
● Boundary problems: emotional distance and cutoff
○ A response to unhealthy boundaries with parents
○ Boundaries are too strong
● Boundary problems: emotional triangulation
○ Triangulation: a third person is used by a system to balance stress between two
other people
Lecture 5
● Typical triangulation patterns
○ Cross generational coalitions
○ Detouring
○ Persecutor>victim>rescuer
○ Extra marital affairs
● Features of triangles
○ Relationship kept steady by third person
Document Summary
Crisis in marriage, 50% of first marriages with fail within 8 years. Extra marital affairs, 20% people cheat in us. The word family is a social construction. Social/cultural/historical beliefs determine what counts as family. The idea that people interact with language or symbols to make meaning that is socially constructed. Monogamy: practice of being married to one person at a time. What functions or tasks families are supposed to accomplish. Quality or health of family based on how well it fulfills the task it is supposed to accomplish. India and pakistan more likely to be in institutional marriage. The way an individual behaves is tied to the larger family picture. The whole is greater than its part. The larger system is more important than any individual part. Anything that happens to one person affects the others. System that seeks balance and tries to regulate stress while maintaining healthy boundaries.
