ABSTRACT
Restructuring operations are the therapeutic interventions that confront and challenge a family in the attempt to force a therapeutic change. They are distinguished from joining operations by the challenge they pose. There are at least seven categories of restructuring operations: actualizing family transactional patterns, marking boundaries, escalating stress, assigning tasks, utilizing symptoms, manipulating mood, and supporting, educating, or guiding. Taking on the family’s affect is a joining operation, but it can also be a restructuring operation. The therapist can use an exaggerated imitation of the family’s style to trigger the family’s deviation-countering mechanisms. The therapist may have to introduce intensity to make the family respond appropriately to a situation that they should realize is serious. The therapist makes the family enact a conflict between parents and child around the symptom, which increases the proximity between the spouses and lessens the protective tie between mother and daughter.
