Socioculturally Attuned Brief and Strategic Family Therapies

This chapter illustrates how family therapists can integrate principles of sociocultural attunement into enduring concepts and practices related to brief and strategic family therapies. This includes parallel societal processes that promote imbalances of power within families. Socioculturally attuned brief and strategic therapists are called on to attune and help family members attune to each other&s;s perspectives, name societal power dynamics expressed as symptoms or metaphors of the problem, value the voices of those not fully heard or in one-down positions, and intervene in incongruent hierarchies by making the covert overt. Families are encouraged to envision possibilities that lead to transformation in which relationships are no longer limited by what is socially ascribed. The chapter concludes with a case example that demonstrates a set of guidelines for practicing socioculturally attuned brief and strategic therapies.