Name of Concept
Accommodation
Synonyms
Introduction
Accommodation broadly refers to the spontaneous way a system instinctively adapts to coordinate functioning (Nichols 2017). Accommodation has two distinct definitions within the field of marriage and family therapy. The first is defined through a structural lens and describes the techniques a therapist uses to make self-adjustments in order to successfully join with and understand a system’s functioning (Minuchin 1974). The purpose of accommodation in this context is to join with the system to create change.
The second application of accommodation describes the way family members change or adapt their behavior to decrease another family member’s emotional distress often reinforcing an individual’s maladaptive behavior (Calvocoressi et al. 1995). Within the family system, accommodation maintains maladaptive functioning and/or behaviors often through subliminal patterns of interaction. Family...
Keywords
- Structural Family Therapy
- Family Accommodation (FA)
- Accommodation Techniques
- Maladaptive Symptoms
- Cognitive Behavioral Family Therapy
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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References
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Calvocoressi, L., Lewis, B., & Harris, M. (1995). Family accommodation in obsessive-compulsive disorder. American Journal of Psychiatry, 152(3), 441–443. https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.152.3.441.
Lebowitz, E. R., Woolston, J., Bar-Haim, Y., Calvocoressi, L., Dauser, C., Warnick, E., … & Leckman, J. F. (2012). Family accommodation in pediatric anxiety disorders. Depression and Anxiety, 30(1), 47–54. https://doi.org/10.1002/da.21998.
Merlo, L. J., Lehmkuhl, H. D., Geffken, G. R., & Stroch, E. A. (2009). Decreased family accommodation associated with improved therapy outcome in pediatric obsessive-compulsive disorder. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 77(2), 355–360. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0012652.
Minuchin, S. (1974). Families and family therapy. London: Routledge.
Nichols, M. P., & Davis, S. D. (2017). Family therapy: Concepts and methods. Boston: Pearson.
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O’Neil, K., Black, D.A. (2019). Accommodation in Couple and Family Therapy. In: Lebow, J., Chambers, A., Breunlin, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15877-8_343-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15877-8_343-1
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