There are several schools of family therapy and no single approach is universally applicable to the great range of pathologies presented by families. Nor is any therapeutic method suited only to interventions in one type of pathology. But family therapists often find it helpful to be able to categorize both interventions and pathologies in a way that facilitates the matching of the particular set of family problems with the most appropriate, helpful therapeutic approach. There have been attempts to develop rigorous systems in which characteristics of families in particular combinations can be said to require a particular style of intervention. But such approaches are both unnecessarily limiting and far from perfect. Weltner (1985) has, however, studied the problem of matching therapy with pathology and produced a framework that characterizes family functioning in four basic levels. Weltner also offered a summary of the principal schools of family therapy, identifying those family characteristics for which each is uniquely suited. The comparison of these two sets of characteristics is designed to provide a means by which therapists can more efficiently estimate the relative value of different therapeutic approaches once they have assessed family functioning. Two of the theories included in Weltner's scheme are structural therapy and family systems therapy. These two approaches, as embodied in Murray Bowen's (family systems) and Salvador Minuchin's (structural) ideas about family therapy interventions will be compared to Weltner's categorization of levels family functioning to see which therapies are best suited to which pathologies.
Weltner's first two levels of functioning concern families that present quite straightforward--in the sense of easily defined--problems. Level I involves "life and death issues" in which there is insufficient "'executive capacity' available to nurture and protect" the family (1985, p. 43). Wh...