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ABSTRACT
The family assessment wheel is a practical diagrammatic tool for use in therapy. Consistent with social constructionism, It suggests areas for inquiry. It stresses process as well as content, emphasizes family understanding and participation, and converts data gathering into an empowering process of discovery. The tool acknowledges the importance of the family's view of their experience within the context of their culture and community.
Recent advances in social constructionist theory have stimulated thinking about family assessment. Social constructionists and traditional family therapists approach assessment in similar as well as significantly different ways. Social constructionists have raised many important questions about the purposes of assessment and the nature of knowing (Dean, 1993; Lax, 1992). Family therapy schools of thought differ in what they consider pertinent factors for assessment, but all of them limit their observations to specific configurations and behavior patterns within a systems framework. For purposes of comparison we have selected structural family therapy interpreted by Minuchin (1974) as the prototype of family therapy approaches. The family assessment wheel we introduce here applies social constructionist concepts to a diagrammatic representation of knowledge that is relevant to family assessment. Used together, family theory and social constructionism strengthen both the content and the process of assessment.
Family Therapy and Assessment
The various family therapy approaches, despite their many areas of divergence, provide valuable principles for family assessment and treatment (Breunlind, Schwartz, & MacKune-Karrer, 1992). Structural family therapy offers a clear set of guidelines for assessment: "The consistent, repetitive, organized and predictable modes of family behavior are what allow us to consider that they have structure" (Nichols, 1984, p. 469). This approach seeks to discover historical or current forces that generate and maintain behavior symptoms or patterns. It illuminates the significance of family organization and structure, identifying boundaries between family subsystems, uncovers communication patterns and rules that govern family life, evaluates the effects of intrafamilial and intergenerational forces, and notes family roles and role expectations (Bowen, 1976; Minuchin, 1974).
Social Constructionism
Laird (1995) states,
We force our current experiences and perceptions into our prior categories for knowing, thus creating what it is we think we see and know. History, from a constructionist perspective, is always in the making, a more or less changing narrative about the...