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Unit 32 : Problems of Guidance and Counseling in India and their Solutions

friends, relatives and others. The objective of this approach is ‘retribalization’, that is, creating a Notes
social network for the individual member or family in distress. Yet another approach is multiple
family counseling in which a number of families are brought together and are enabled to be counselled
simultaneously. This approach provides for different families, opportunities for observation, imitation
and identification with other families. This results in social facilitation and reduction of social
inhibition.
In clinical work with individual patients it became increasingly obvious that there was more to the
problem than what the patient was apparently reporting. The fact that the relationship between the
patient and his family is of importance was recognized a long time ago. It was seen that
communication between the individual and the rest of the members in a family was in most cases
muffled and barriers seemed to be erected. In the early days of counseling the idea of family therapy
was suggested by the structuralist approach. This leads to questions like, “What is the purpose of
the family?”, “How does it function?”, “What roles are assigned to its members?”, “What are the
goals of a family?”, “Are the goals of the individual at variance or in conflict with those of the
family?”. This points to the goal of family counseling : “What should be the outcome of family
counseling?”, “Should the relationship(s) between the children be examined?” Family counseling
aims at some kind of change. What should the extent of change be? The techniques to be used are
only matters of detail. The goal of family counseling is not merely to remove some symptoms but to
create a new. way of living. This involves helping people to express emotion. Within the family set-
up individuals are either too rigid or too fluid. Either of these is not desirable, for the former type
of individuals are blind to the new learning and the latter contribute to the destruction of family life.
The goal of healthy family relations is to strike a balance between the two extremes, namely, continuity
of the old and openness to the new experience. The family change is facilitated by the counselor by
shifting the balance within the family and by advising the members on how to relate to one another
in new ways and if necessary to examine its value system and provide for appropriate changes in
it.
The family is a complex entity comprising interlocking systems and sub-systems. Fundamentally,
the family is an affectual interaction system. The affectual system within the family could be seen as
interlocking triangles. So an affective method of changing the family system involves ‘detriangulation’.
This is done by helping the persons to respond to the system and not just react. The family changes
when the interlocking triangles change. The counselor’s intervention is most necessary in this process
The counselor helps the members, for example, the marital partners, to define and clarify their roles
and their relationship, to get detriangled from the family emotional system, to learn other ways of
functioning emotional systems by communication of feelings. The counselor can separate out their
fantasies, feelings and their thinking systems, thus enabling the persons to know themselves better
and also view others more objectively, leading to a better or higher level of maturity.
A person starts life as an undifferentiated part of the family. In course of time he learns to establish
his own identity and at an appropriate time separates himself from his family. This involves forming
new emotional attachments and the detriangulation of other emotional relations.

An ecological perspective is emerging in family counseling. Ecology deals with the relationship
between organisms and their environment, the interplay between the two and their interdependence.
Here it refers to the interactions in the family system among the members and their relationship to
society, their neighbourhood, school and other significant social systems. Ackerman (1956, 58, 66,
70) places enormous emphasis on this approach and holds that one cannot compartmentalize
individual, family and other social systems. Surprisingly, not much work is done with cultural
factors in family counseling. In the multifamily counseling approach, cultural differences are brought
together when five to six families with different backgrounds meet. Family counseling in the years
to come must grapple with new models.

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