The Family Meets the Hospital

Abstract

A family's perception of a treatment program may determine whether ir becomes productively engaged or destructively withdrawn. A theory of family types, in conjunction with a standardized laboratory problem solving procedure, was used to predict the nature of families' shared perceptions of a psychiatric ward. The individual and shared perceptions of thirty families were determined by means of a specially designed Q-sort. Two dimensions of problem solving behavior successfully predicted significant differences between families in their shared perceptions. Configuration, or the family's capacity to derive effective solutions in the laboratory, predicted the subtlety to their perception of the ward. Coordination, or the capacity of family members to dovetail their problem solving effort with one another, predicted the family's sense of comfort and engagement in the ward setting.