Change the sequence, not the archaeology of the problem

When trouble sits inside a family, this Korean essay argues, one person’s private counseling is often not enough. The whole group is implicated, and the work becomes more like treating a small system than treating a single patient. Strategic family therapy, as the essay describes it, has the therapist propose a strategy aimed at the problem the family actually brings.

The therapist, in this account, is not chiefly interested in why the problem started. Attention stays on whether behavior changes. Goals still include solving what the family says is wrong, but the method is not a single technique applied in the same way to every household. Unlike a more uniform structural toolkit, the essay says, a strategic therapist can vary the plan for the particular family in the room.

MRI, Haley, and three stages of a short course

The essay names two sources. The Mental Research Institute (MRI) in Palo Alto was an early home of strategic work. The model most often used, it says, is Jay Haley’s. Meetings are typically weekly, and the course is short: about ten to fifteen sessions.

The process, as the essay divides it, has three stages. First the problem is defined: the therapist watches the family’s interaction, including the hierarchy and the chain of moves around the symptom, and restates the trouble as a concrete, workable problem of that hierarchy. Next comes a strategy and an intervention, which may be a direct instruction or a paradoxical one. Finally comes separation: if the chain has shifted, the therapist judges whether the family can hold the change, and steps back.

A five-session practice case, and a caution about dual relationships

The writer then walks through a practice case with a relative’s family — and later admits that a dual relationship is not how counseling should be done. The household had a 17-year-old first-year high-school boy, a father of 44 who was a pastor, a mother of 41 who worked at home, and younger brothers of 12 and 9. The older boy’s aggression was the presenting problem: he was anxiously preoccupied with the family’s tight money, spoke harshly to his father, and acted out at school.

In the first meeting the whole family sat together. The mother answered little and showed little feeling. The father blamed himself for economic failure; the 12-year-old pushed back at his older brother; the youngest said, simply, that the fighting was the problem. The older boy apologized in form and then attacked his father, defending his mother. The therapist read a repeating chain: when the older boy attacked, the 12-year-old rebelled, the mother sided with the older boy, the father sided with the younger, and the youngest tried to mediate. The father’s place was also double — high in the hierarchy when he scolded, low when he asked to be forgiven.

The intervention was a straightforward, almost contrary task. The two older boys were to quarrel only once a day, from seven to eight in the evening; the father was to take the older boy’s side and conduct the fight; the mother was to take the younger boy’s side and keep a record; the youngest was not to mediate, and even to egg them on. The 12-year-old refused at first. In later sessions the task frayed — the mother had kept no record, the boys had stopped after three days — and the therapist still pressed the parents’ part, then added a second task: the couple were to talk, about anything, for one hour in the evening. By the fifth meeting only the parents could come, because of exams; fighting had eased and talk at home had grown. The writer felt relief that the work had moved, and unease that it had been done with relatives. The lesson the essay keeps is smaller than a cure: in this model, much hangs on the task the therapist sets, and on whether the family actually carries it out. The longer Korean original is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. A student account of strategic family therapy, following the Mental Research Institute, Jay Haley’s model, and one five-session practice case.

Last updated 15 November 2026