ABSTRACT
An essential component of working with families, and developing a meaningful systemic approach to violence within the family, is to develop a satisfactory way of describing and assessing families. The first tier focuses on aspects of family interaction and was never called systemic. The second tier focused on patterns or sequences or conversation and actions involving the whole family and was usually held to be systemic. The third tier placed whatever was seen in a broader or narrower context, to guide therapy, and was also referred to as systemic. A particular approach to making a holistic formulation is the creation of a focal hypothesis which focuses on the specific effects of traumatic events and stressful relationships on the functioning of individuals and the family as a whole. Dealing with family violence and abuse requires the therapist to contemplate how this family might function if therapeutic work was successful—an "idealistic" narrative of how the family might be.
