Inside the Family: Toward a Theory of Family Process

Abstract

Inside the Family: Toward Theory of Process. D. Kantor & W Lehr. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 1975. In the forward to Larry Constantine's book, Paradigms: The Practice of Theory in Therapy (1986), Carlfred Broderick stated, of the most germinal works in the field has been the now classic monograph of Kantor and Lehr, Inside the Family (1975, p. vii). So renowned is this work that whenever articles, monographs, and books address the topic of family interaction and family systems, it is almost axiomatic that Inside the will be referenced. Given the vintage of this classic and its limited availability, it is worthwhile to briefly review the of Inside the for its important contributions to provide the reader with some sense of the images, ideas, and constructs it introduced to the family field. The guiding purposes of this work were the merging of general systems theory with conceptual framework, the establishment of multiple typologies that identified distinctly different whole family processes, the description of unified theory of family process around which family scholars could communicate, the identification of the basic components of family process, and the demonstration of how such components relate to one another. Two images provided the foundation for Inside the Family, the family as spatial metaphor and the commonplace family going about its daily activities. Kantor and Lehr selectively discussed number of systems concepts as applied to families. systems, they stated, are organizationally complex, open, adaptive, and information-processing systems guided by the spatial attribute of distance regulation. A central theme was the focus on family strategies. A family strategy is a purposive pattern of moves toward target or goal made by two or more people who are systematically bound in social-biological arrangement (p. 18). strategies are purposive and collaborative; they are characterized by member awareness and provide for member contingencies through freedom of behavioral choice. Kantor and Lehr's conceptual framework is comprised of five components: subsystems, access dimensions, target dimensions, family types, and player parts. The subsystems are the personal, interpersonal, and family-unit subsystems. interaction always involves two or more subsystems and requires the consideration of strategies at the point of subsystem boundary interface. Issues of covertness are matters of focus and not intention, according to Kantor and Lehr. Focusing on the appropriate boundary interface makes manifest system's latent or covert aims (p. 33). The content of family life is represented by three-by-three family social matrix or field comprised of the access dimensions (resources) of time, energy, and space and the target dimensions (goals) of affect, power, and meaning. These six dimensions give substance to the constructs of strategies at boundary interface. Kantor and Lehr's discussion of access dimensions introduced the ideas of mechanisms and submechanisms as both structure and process (structures in action). Each access dimension is described by three mechanisms, and each mechanism is in turn described by number of submechanisms. The importance of this detail found in the identification of submechanisms is that the essential questions of everyday life are revealed, for example, to what should we devote our time and energy? Who, what, and when can enter or exit our family system? How, when, and how often do we bring together or separate people, places, things, events, and ideas within our family? What temporal orientations) (past, present, future, nontemporal) should guide our family? The target dimension counterpart to access dimension mechanisms were identified as themes. The mechanism-theme connections constituted the essence of family dimensional strategies to be enacted at the subsystem boundary interface. …