en one or both parents are incapacitated, or a single parent is incapable of managing the family and achieving basic levels of security and nurturance, the therapist must immediately address the deficiency of leadership in the family. At Level II Weltner identifies those families in which nurturance and safety are relatively well assured and "authority and limits . . . are the prominent issues" (p. 44). One or more family members resist the authority of the family leadership to such a degree that they disrupt family functioning and threaten the stability of the family system. There may be a lack of power on the part of those in authority, or the problem can be a lack of clarity regarding expectations. In the cases presented by Weltner for Levels I and II the problems were addressed very directly. Older children assisted the mother in the Level I family as a sort of "cabinet" that aided the "executive" in procuring security and nurturance. In the Level II example parents were encouraged to act in unison toward a rebellious teenager who raised difficulties, regularly refusing to go to school in the mornings, as a response to her perception of a rift between her parents.
In Level III families Weltner includes those who have "a structure that is often perceived as working," often, as in his example, a "three-generational legacy" that is ingrained and that parents not only believe already works, but also feel should be passed on to their children (1985, p. 46). Families are, therefore, committed to such structures and will resist attempts to change them. This means that therapists working with families at Level III functioning have to "encompass and adapt to resistance" (p.
...