FAMILY-STRUCTURE AND RELATIONSHIPS - THE DYADIC APPROACH

Many attempts have been made at defining family and most have been suc cessful. By successful I mean here that the definitions have been acce pted by an important number of followers. But. the definitions have al l been seriously questioned by others and have in this; respect not be en successful. Like some others, I stress that there is no family in s ingular and definite article, there are families, plural and not any d efinite article. Any group consists of at least two members and I sugg est that any group be analysed with a dyadic approach. With this appro ach one can analyse the structure of any family; one can as well study the existence of emotional ties in the dyadic structure of a family; one can analyse the power structure in a family by looking at the powe r structure os all dyads; just to mention some examples of dyadic anal ysis. This theoretical and analytic tool can be applied not only in re search but also in, for example, therapy.