Parental accounts of blaming within the family: a dialectical model for understanding blame in systemic therapy

The aim of this study was to further understanding of blame in systemic therapy. Five families were chosen by their therapeutic team as engaging in blaming of a kind that the therapists found difficult to work with. Couples from each of the five families participated. A video extract from therapy identified by therapists as typifying blaming within the family was used as a focus for semistructured interviews with each parent. Transcripts were analyzed according to the procedures of grounded theory. On the basis of this inductive qualitative analysis, a framework of understanding emerged from the data consisting of the core category, "dialectical understanding," and an accompanying set of overarching themes. These themes capture the way in which participants oscillated among 13 dialectics in their discussion of blame within their family and within family therapy. The model provides a framework for analyzing the style and content of therapy conversations with a view to helping therapists facilitate therapeutic change in this difficult client group.