ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the development of focus points as a mechanism that accounts for how families evolve in the short-term. Family configurations of individuals with psychiatric problems are more unstable than others, changing in a rapid pace or, in other cases, being frozen for years. Individuals with psychiatric problems develop a distinct pattern of change over time, as they face much more frequently non-normative events in their life. Sociologists have tried to understand how families change by virtue of normative and non-normative events. A more straightforward explanation of changes can be drawn from the fact that individual lives are led by shifting personal concerns for things, activities or persons. Courtship goes through a series of stages by which individuals develop common interests and activities and a shared culture that designate to them a series of objects that need to be jointly invested.
