The story provides a direct, personal example of a situation psychologists commonly encounter in their practice: gaining a family’s trust and willingness to cooperate. It gives insight into some of the challenges one can face in such a situation and the thought process toward resolving them. By describing the meeting as a personal experience, the authors also demonstrate how personal a psychologist’s work and engagement with a client can be.
Two psychologists working with a family allow two professional viewpoints to emerge and collaborate to form a better therapy strategy. Moreover, as the authors note, families are less likely to allow one specialist to disrupt their established patterns and habits. The lack of social and cultural norms or patterns about families approaching an individual for guidance. Thus, involving two psychologists in a family’s case can be generally beneficial.
However, it can also have negative aspects, the most obvious being logistics and scheduling, since arranging a meeting becomes more difficult with each additional person. It can also undermine the psychologist’s authority or the family’s confidence. This can happen if the family perceives the specialist to be incompetent or their case is so difficult he or she needs assistance.
In this particular situation, the psychologist was stressing the fact that the issues that caused the family to seek guidance in the first place affect the entire family, not any of its members specifically. Don, the child who at first does not seem to be involved in the issue or conflict, is affected by it and will likely be affected by any steps taken to resolve it (Varghese, et al., 2020). Thus, the entire family must be involved in the process.
References
Varghese, M., Kirpekar, V., & Loganathan, S. (2020). Family interventions: Basic principles and techniques. Indian Journal of Psychiatry, 62(8), S192-S200. Web.