ABSTRACT
Malinowski emphasizes “the impossibility of envisaging any form of social organization without the family structure”. The family is the essential unit of every social organization across the history of humanity. It acquires this dynamic meaning because its functioning provides an adequate context for the definition and preservation of human differences. Thus, it gives objective form to the different but mutually linked roles of father, mother, and child—the primary roles in every culture. The family can only function on the basis of differences among its members that determine these three closely related roles. According to Kretsch and Crutchfield, family as a primary group may be analyzed in three different levels: from a psychological or psychosocial perspective, from the sociodynamic or group dynamic perspective, and from the institutional perspective. The study of the pathological aspects of a family group and its treatment require several dimensions of analysis. Among them the four moments of the therapeutic operation are diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, and prevention.
