Integration (referred to how the family perceives the access its members have to the processes underlying in the environment: universal means the family as a whole can access them, particular means the single members may have access).Coherence (referred to the way the family perceives the world: stable or intrinsically moving).Family paradigms differ, much like constructs, on three dimensions: They are built through family crisis when a family enters a state of dissonance that threatens to destroy it, some parts of its paradigm become obsolete, while others rise to help the family get out of the crisis those parts of the construct that survive the crisis become so relevant and strongly embedded in the life of the family, that they become organizers of the life of the family from that point on, up to the next crisis. Achievement-sensitive families (families characterized by a very high competitivity between its members, scoring high on both configuration and closure, but low on coordination).Īccording to Reiss, the family has underlying patterns imbued in itself, which shape these family constructs the author calls these patterns "family paradigms".Distance-sensitive families (families with delinquential or characterial problems, scoring low on all three dimensions).Consensus-sensitive families (families with schizophrenic offspring, scoring high on coordination, but low on both closure and configuration).Environment-sensitive families (families without psychopathology, scoring high on all three dimensions).Closure (which "refers to the family's proclivity for suspending or applying order and coherent concepts to raw sensory experience", ).īy crossing these variables we could possibly obtain eight different types of families, but the authors investigate only four possible configurations, thus dividing families on the basis of their shared construing of the laboratory experience:.Coordination (which "refers to family member's ability and willingness to develop problem solutions similar to each others", ).
The term "family paradigm" is used by the author to define a set of shared beliefs and views that every family has, even though they are mainly present at a subliminal level.