Parents’ resistance of anticipated blame through alignment strategies: a discursive argument for temporary exclusion of children from family therapy.

Abstract

In this chapter, we utilise a discourse perspective to explore ways in which parents manage therapeutic alignment in family therapy. As therapy is an activity which relies heavily on the use of language (McLeod, 2001), we use a language-based analytic approach to explore child mental health, particularly as discourse analysis is most appropriate for looking at family therapy processes (Roy-Chowdhury, 2003). In this chapter, we present a case for the deliberate temporary exclusion of children in the initial stages of a series of therapeutic sessions. The purpose of this temporary exclusion is to provide opportunities for therapists to engage in active solution-focused alignment with parents in order to provide a foundation and set boundaries for later work with the whole family. We also argue that while this initial session with parents is taking place, the child could be otherwise engaged in a session of their own so that the child’s perspective and expectations are also managed effectively.