Family System

Family System Identifying Information:    Mr. Gil Buckman is 35 year-old European American Man. He is Married with 3 Children living in the home. The Buckmans are expecting a baby in February. (Grazer Howard, 1989) Presenting or Identified Problem:    Mr. Buckman is seeking services to help strengthen his family system. His primary concern is that his son Kevin age 9 is having difficulty in school and suffering from an emotional disturbance. Mr. Buckman feels Kevins struggles are a direct result of his parenting skills. Mr. Buckman is also struggling with a decision that must be made regarding his career. He wants to ensure his family stability but making partner may cost him time with his family. He would like to find another job but with a baby on the way he does not feel this is an option. (Grazer Howard, 1989) Medical History:    There are no known health risks. The Buckman family appears to be quite healthy. However, Gil reports that his father drinks quite heavily, mostly on special occasions and might possibly be an alcoholic. Kevin is seeing a psychiatrist for his emotional needs. (Grazer Howard, 1989) Immediate Family System:    The Buckman Home consists of the Client Gil Buckman, his wife Karen Buckman, and their 3 children Kevin, Taylor, and Justin. Karen is a 34 year-old, European American mother to Kevin age 9, Taylor Age 6, and Justin age 3. She is also expecting a baby. All of the children are the biological offspring of Gil and Karen and share their Ethnicity. The Spousal Subsystem Gil and Karen have difficulty communicating at times. Gil resents Karen for not telling him about the pregnancy sooner. Karen thinks Gil is blaming her for getting pregnant. Women have choices, Men have responsibility. They maintain a healthy sex life and mutual belief systems. (Pellebon, 2009) Sibling Subsystem: Kevin Taylor and Justin have petty arguments and antagonize each other. Kevin resents having to care for his younger siblings and often replies why do I have to do everything? when asked to help his siblings. (Pellebon, 2009) Parent/Child Subsystem: Gil is a doting father. He tries to rectify his own relationship with his father by being a better parent. He communicates well with his kids, keeping an open dialogue. He has a very macho type relationship with Kevin, while he is more nurturing with his daughter Taylor. Karen admits that they were more overprotective with Kevin when he was younger and less anxious with Justin. (Pellebon, 2009) Parent/Grandparent Subsystem: Gil and his father have a strained relationship. Gill is bitter that his father was neglectful. Frank realizes he has made mistakes and is reaching out to Gil. Frank also feels his son is a better father than he was. Recently hes been learning to communicate with Gil. He previously was more partial to Larry. (Pellebon, 2009) Extended Family System not in home:    Mr. Buckmans Grandmother age 88 lives with his Parents Frank age 64 and Marilyn age 63. Grandma has been uprooted since the visit of Frank and Marilyns youngest son Larry and his son Cool. The Buckmans are of European American Descent. Cool Buckman is bi-racial. His ethnicity is both European and African American. Gil has an older sister Helen, who is a single mom to Julie and Gary. He has a younger sister Susan who is married to Nathan and they have a daughter named Patty. The youngest sibling discussed earlier is Larry. The Buckman family is enmeshed with open dialogue. Family roles are clear with the occasional diffuse boundary. (Grazer Howard, 1989) Peer Relationships and Impairment:    Mr. Buckman is deeply rooted in his family. They have limited community involvement, Gil coaches his sons little league and Karen babysits children in the neighborhood. He has strained work relationships due to his lack of socializing in order to be with his family. His work and family responsibilities dont allow much free time for social networking. This can cause a deficit in support systems. (Grazer Howard, 1989) Environmental Factors:    Gil works outside the home. Karen stays home with the children. They live in a two story suburban home located in a very clean middle- class neighborhood. The home is modern and well furnished. Little financial struggle yet maintain a moderate budget. Gil and Karen seemed very chaotically connected to Gils family. They get along with their neighbors and the community. (Grazer Howard, 1989) Educational/ Vocational/ Employment History and Impairment:    Mr. Buckman chose to college instead of taking over his fathers business. He works in financial firm. His need to help his son is taking away from his ability to perform well in employment (Grazer Howard, 1989) Legal History:   Ã‚  Ã‚   Mr. Buckman does not have a criminal record nor has he sought legal services or been sued. His younger brother has a gambling addiction and has been involved with illegal racketeering. His niece Julie was arrested for panhandling. (Grazer Howard, 1989) Resources:   Ã‚   Gil Buckman sought services to help with his son, so he and his immediate family would be the Client System. However the extended Buckman Family are so enmeshed that it is hard to separate them. Therefore we will consider them to be a Target System. There is a tremendous transference of intrinsic and extrinsic energy between these two systems. Extrinsically, they spend a great deal of time with each other, helping with family events and combining resources such as serving dishes. Also they share in the responsibility of caring for Grandma. Intrinsically, their emotional responses add to the support the family provides. There are few boundaries in what is acceptable conversation. (Pellebon, 2009) The School and Child Psychologist would be the Action System in helping with Kevins emotional needs. However it is met with resistance from Gil, who fears the stigma of special education and feels responsible for causing the tension. He believes he has the potential energy to solve the problems within his own family subsystem. His intrinsic attempts to be there for him emotionally and mentally have proved futile. So he moved toward a more extrinsic approach by spending money on a psychiatrist and spending time coaching his sons baseball team. At this point Mr. Buckman feels he has exhausted these resources and seeks services elsewhere. (Pellebon, 2009) Special Circumstances:    The Buckman family has no religious affiliation. There are also no known physical or mental health problems. There appears to be a great deal of tension within the family and Kevin suffers from an emotional disturbance. Frank Buckman has been known to abuse alcohol. (Grazer Howard, 1989) Life Area Impairments:    Gil feels his fathers drinking causes some embarrassment at weddings and family fucntions. However no one has intervened. They make light of it and go on. Kevins emotional issues have put a great deal of added pressure on the family. (Grazer Howard, 1989) Cognitive Affective and Behavioral Functioning:   Ã‚   Gil is college educated and quite intelligent. Has strong cognitive abilities but does not handle stress or tension well. He becomes very irritable and irrational. He raises his voice to his family and uses a negative tone. He does not have much confidence in his parenting skills as he has resentment toward his own father. Mr. Buckman is generally content except when dealing with family or work. He tries to be nonchalant until he feels his ability to handle responsibilities is threatened. (Grazer Howard, 1989) Positive Reinforcement: Frank knows Larry is gambling and gives him money to help covering his losses. He is reinforcing the behavior to gamble; even when Larry loses he is rewarded with more money from his father. (Pellebon, 2009) Negative Reinforcement: Nathan did not allow Patty to attend preschool and limited her time with Gils kids. He believed that removing these social influences would increase her ability to learn and maintain her extreme intelligence. (Pellebon, 2009) Positive Punishment: Grandma notices Gil is tense and arguing with Karen. So she tells a story of her first roller coaster ride using it as metaphor for life. She in a sense scolds Gil for getting upset hoping to stop his ranting. (Pellebon, 2009) Negative Punishment: The family shares extrinsically, giving and combining resources but when Larry comes for a visit they are guarded with their money. They believe withholding money from Larry will stop his erratic spending behavior. (Pellebon, 2009) Respondent Conditioning: Gil felt abandoned by Frank. Frank would take him to a baseball game every year and leave him with an usher leaving him feeling abandoned by his Dad. Even as an adult baseball games trigger sad memories and feelings of abandonment. (Ashford, LeCroy, Lortie, 2006) Habituation: The Buckman family learns to bond and communicate by the routine of tucking the children into bed every night. Saying goodnight and I love every night creates a habit of showing care and affection. (Ashford, LeCroy, Lortie, 2006) Modeling: Gil spends time with his kids and communicates with them in order to model good parenting skills. He hopes that by being a good parent that his kids will grow up to be good parents. He was not aware that his father was also observing and learning to be a better parent. (Ashford, LeCroy, Lortie, 2006) Vicarious Learning: Karen learns that her sister-in-law Susan would give her husband Nathan oral sex in the car when he would get tense. Later when in the car with Gil when he is tense she attempts to calm him down in the same manner. (Pellebon, 2009) Strengths and Weakness:    Gil Buckman is very motivated to make a positive impact on his family. He doesnt cope well with stress. However he is eager to implement change in his life. He lacks self control yet he is resourceful and goal oriented. He is assertive, and willing to preserve in order to meet the needs of his family. Mr. Buckman gets along well with others, yet has limited ties to his community. What little involvement he has is positive, he has effect peer relationships. (Grazer Howard, 1989) Multidimensional Assessment: Mr. Buckman has the capabilities to utilize resources provided to him. He has adequate means to meet the needs of his family. His readiness to implement change will assist him in his preparation to care for Kevins emotional problems.

Mental Isolation in Franz Kafkas The Metamorphosis Essay -- Kafka Met

Mental Isolation in Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis The metamorphosis very possibly was written by Kafka as an outlet for his feelings of isolation and helplessness. In it, the protagonist, Gregor Samsa, awakens one morning to find himself spontaneously "transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin." The story continues from there in a most realistic fashion: his family rejects him, and he stays cooped up in his room until he dies. Although interpretations of the story differ, my opinion is that Kafka wrote this story as a protestation, whether consciously or unconsciously, of his own inner needs not being met. Franz Kafka suffered from severe mental disorientation. This man suffered severe tragedies as a child: as the first child of Hermann and Julie Kafka, he lived to see two brothers born and die before he was six years old. Although they were eventually replaced by three new sisters, Kafka began his life with tragedies which most people do not experience until they are much older. Kafka lacked parental guidance, as he and his si sters were brought up mostly by governess. He was a Jew, and lived in Czechoslovakia, but he went to German schools. Therefore Kafka masked himself twice, at the bidding of his father. His father had made himself into a successful businessman, and expected Kafka to do the same. Most of Kafka's stories contain or center around an over-domineering, almost frightening father figure. Kafka obeyed his father. He remembered his high school education as being meaningless and dull, but, out of obedience to his father, he completed it, and passed with flying colors. This switching to a less offending option in order to offend no one characterizes Kafka very well. He possessed a wonderful mind but rarely, ... ... express himself openly would suggest otherwise. The Metamorphosis lends itself more to the psychology student instructed to profile an author based on his work than to the literature student instructed to cite and expand on different literary elements. It is obviously the work of a very disturbed man, although the disturbance would probably be more of the chronic type that slowly eats a man away than the type which causes, say, one to hallucinate. To sum up The Metamorphosis, I would call it a very deceiving book. On the surface, the simplistic plot, apparent lack of imagination with regard to the syntax, and the largely flat characters tend to drive the reader away. However, when one looks just a little deeper, Kafka's whole world of fear and isolation opens up before his eyes. Works Cited: Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis. Mattituck: Vanguard Press, 1946.

There are many reasons why you could argue the ‘Class Structure’ is changing in the Contemporary UK

Firstly, up until the 1980's wealth was becoming more fairly distributed across the population, however since the 1980's this trend has reversed and the gap between rich and poor has rocketed. Now a days, most wealth remains in the hands of a tiny minority whilst the majority float above the fine line of poverty. New Right sociologists claim that the old ruling class has disintegrated and a share owning expanded middle class has emerged. Peter Saunders now claims minority rule by a minority class has been replaced with a nation of stakeholders. However the continued existence of a ‘power elite' controlling the majority of wealth and power has been well documented by John Scott. Manual work patterns have changed also, i.e. in the primary and secondary industry manual jobs have declined significantly, whilst service sector jobs have increased. The expansion of the Welfare state has caused professional and non manual jobs to increase, results in a bloated middle class. The traditional working class has also changed, with women becoming a more influential and important member of the work force. Part time work has increase too. As a result of a rising global economy a geographical shift in the traditional working class has emerged. In the West there has been a growth in non manual employment with an extension of state services, in particular teachers, nurses, clerks etc There has also been an increase the employment of women and part time low insecure employment. Roberts claims the middle class has expanded but also ‘fragmented' into a number of distinct groups, i.e. professionals, managers, self employed. Roberts call these strata within the middles class ‘class fractions' each with its own culture, norms and values. Professionals tend to employ internally, therefore if your father is a professional you are much more likely to be employed. Savage suggest that professionals have a strong sense of class solidarity as evidence of their willingness to take collective action to protect their values, i.e. Occupational Associations-BMA, law society and lower down the NUT There has been a significant increase in self employed people, especially in the areas of consultancy in the finance, ICT areas. Large numbers of employed managers have their own consultancy business too. It is understood that Henry Ford shaped the traditional working class with his first moving assembly line in the 1914. Work was divided up into much more manageable loads and presented to a much lower skilled work force in return for lower labour costs. Fordism shape both working class and its sense of solidarity. However with manufacturing in decline this class has also begun to decline. Henry Braveman argues that Fordism still impacts working class as workers are constantly de-skilled with the introduction of technology. This introduction of technology has also dented the middle class occupations as white collar clerical/ technical are subject to proletarianisation by the impending application of technology. Marxists suggest that revolutionary class consciousness will be the result of such trends. Daniel Bell suggests that we are now living in a post fordist or post industrial age where work is based intellectual creativity rather than physical effort. Businesses also take more care of their workforce through better conditions, pay and concern for professional development. To support these claims by Bell the primary and secondary industries have declined whilst tertiary have expanded, as a result fewer people in Western Europe now work more with their brains than with their hands. Service sector workers lack the old structures of union and solidarity, thus seemingly becoming more privatised. There has been a growth of highly skilled new technology workers (wired workers) whom work from home, enjoying increased flexibility, challenge and autonomy. However there is strong evidence against Bell's theory, i.e. some sociologists argue that manual work has simply followed market conditions to low labour costing parts of the world. Also some argue the point that most computer workers sit in fact sit front of computers to input simple repetitive data, in poor conditions and for low pay.

Industrial Capitalism Comes to Southern Appalachia The...

Industrial capitalism comes to Southern Appalachia 1860-1940: The effects on society and religion Appalachia has long been regarded as a place of natural beauty and allegedly backwards people. In one of the early attempts to civilize rural Appalachia, the population was characterized as consisting of agricultural savages who refused to learn better farming practices (Anglin 2002: 565). The poverty and environmental abuse I witnessed there were not simply a failure of economics. It went much deeper than that; hence our continual failure to social engineer meaningful changes there. It was a poverty of the spirit; a poverty of the soul said one observer, of the attempt to encourage rural Appalachians to adopt modern farming practices at the turn of the 20th century (Anglin 2002: 565-566). Other than subsistence farming, the only other predominant industry in rural Appalachia is the coal industry. Rather than provide a potential source of enrichment to the region, this too has been seen as impoverishing, rather than sustaining the residents. Appalachia has become virtually synonymous with coal and problems of the notoriously dangerous, cyclically unstable, and highly competitive industry (Pudup 1990: 61). Historically, the origins of settlements in Southern Appalachia were not so unpromising. Attracted by plentiful game, local availability of precious resources like salt, and fertile and relatively cheap land, settlers in southeast Kentucky differed little