Kuang-Hui Yeh
Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica
The phenomena of “recurring conflict” in family are discussed from systems perspective, a new scientific paradigm in family psychology. Each family has some overt or covert rules and ideologies that dominate the family on how to think, interact, and resolve problems. These rules and ideologies also form a dominating power that may regulate the family’s thinking and how to resolve family conflicts. If these rules and ideologies are rigid or inappropriate, then the conflicts may be terminated temporarily, but in the long run, these same conflicting events or conflict patterns will happen again and again. This phenomenon of repeated happening of same conflicting event or conflict pattern is called “recurring conflict”. The present research suggests that the systems perspective approach is the best way to detect the recurring conflicts in family. Finally, two family case studies are also presented to justify the argumentation.
Keywords: systems perspective, recurring conflict, dominating power, collusive structure