How Reality Is Invented Not Discovered

In today's society, many have discussed the birth of reality in the field of family therapy. It has been ask if reality is something that is invented or discovered. Based on research, reality is what one creates. According to postmodernism, reality can be defined by stories we and those we identify with, embrace to be true. Therefore reality is not objective but subjective and defined by each individual observer or community of observers.

Family members have their own perspective about everything, including reality. Each person constructs his or her own personal views and interpretation of what they might be experiencing. As a therapist, one must be able to help the family by gathering important information on the subject that brought the family to therapy. A therapist's prejudgements cannot be considered objective or unbiased. According to Goldenberg and Goldenberg (2004) a therapist task is to help families by providing insight or promoting differentiation, or clarifying boundaries or prescribing task, or restructing cognitions. Therapy is not about the therapist giving the client answers for their problems. It is about helping the client or clients discover choices and open avenues for change. This may be accomplished in a variety of ways including, but not limited to role plays, guided imagery, homework assignments, journal writing and reading.

Once the therapeutic subject has been identified, the therapist then decides what form of therapy would be most productive to the family.

For instance, a family goes out and seeks counseling because a family member has a chronic illness that is impacting the immediate household. The therapist would need to ask questions that give information about the family before the chronic illness. Asking questions is a crucial technique used in therapy. The therapist would ask each family member to say what the chronic illness means to them. Other who, what, where, when questions would be asked as well of the family members. Questions along these lines would help pinpoint each family member reality of the illness, because everyone may not view the illness the same.

The therapist would also need to find out which family member is the primary caregiver of the chronic ill person. Caregivers experience enormous frustration and sometimes irrational anger towards the ill person during care. Additional counseling may be needed for that person. Although the family is seeking counseling as a whole, they may need different types of counseling. After gathering enough valid information from the family, the therapist would review and evaluate the information collected. The therapist will then plan and implement the strategy he may want to take with the family.

A theoretical approach that could be used for this type of dysfunction (illness) within the family is the Biopsychosocial model. This multi-factored perspective suggest that an interaction of the biological, psychological, and social aspects of a person's life are the determinants of his or her health, the onset of illness, and of the prognosis (Engel, 1980a). This would give the family a better understanding to what is going on. It is believed the psychological factors, such as cognition, emotion, and motivation for behavior contributes to a person's proneness for illness and also to the person's