ABSTRACT
During the decades of the 1960s and the 1970s, new explanations of human motivation were found in the social context of the individual. The clinical focus shifted from the individual to the nuclear family and the extended kin. Family structures were described and the importance of maintaining generational boundaries was emphasized, as was the fact that all organizations have hierarchies. It was observed that people with symptoms are involved in incorrect hierarchies, such as when a problem child determines what happens in a family. The issue was how to describe problem hierarchies and how to think about changing them. It became obvious that symptomatic behavior is adaptive and that a person behaves in abnormal ways when in an abnormal context. The problem was how to describe the family as a social context and how to change the behavior of its members.
