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ACRUCIAL BAROMETER for determining whether a family's functioning promotes health in its members can be found in the ways the family deals with its boundary issues. This includes how the family respects personal space and whether it has appropriate expectations for behavior of family members of various ages and generations.
Both the psychoanalytic and family therapy literatures are filled with theoretical and clinical descriptions of families and their effects on family members who become symptomatic. Freud, for example, in the cases of Dora (1905) and Little Hans (1909), painted powerful pictures of families in which psychological pressures created unbearable difficulties for his patients. Sullivan (1938), coming of course from a more interpersonal perspective, focused on the minute interactions between people that shape their feelings and relationships. Laing and Esterson (1964) described how a family member may feel and be a different person in different dyadic or triadic subgroupings within the family. Among family therapists, Jackson (1957), (1965), Ackerman (1958), (1966), Satir (1964), and Minuchin (1974) have all emphasized, in different ways, the interactional nature of families and its effect on family members.
Minuchin and his colleagues have particularly focused on the importance of maintaining appropriate generational boundaries in families. In their work with slum families (Minuchin et al., 1967) and, later, with families with psychosomatic illnesses (Minuchin, Rosman & Baker, 1978), they have demonstrated how boundary issues affect symptom formation and how therapeutic interventions that change inappropriate boundaries can lead to healthier family systems. Of particular interest is their work describing inappropriate alliances and intergenerational boundaries in family systems