Changes in Family Members During Psychotherapy

Abstract

A socioeconomically diverse set of 20 families presenting themselves for treatment at a child psychiatric clinic in Melbourne were tested at the commencement and end of therapy. Judgements of self and others were obtained on 13 provided constructs. The present report is based on a subsystem offourfamily members consisting of the patient child, a sibling close in age, and both parents. Using the program SERIES, two consensus grids were obtained which were then submitted to principal components analysis using the INGRID program. Changes in judgments over the period of therapy were then assessed by means of the DELTA program. This showed that, after therapy, the patients were being positively perceived by all judges, while their siblings were perceived less positively. However, the parents were rating each other more positively but were judged more negatively by the children. These changes suggest that the therapeutic procedure had effects beyond the resolution of the presenting problem to the whole pattern of intrafamily perceptions.