Family Therapy Case Study

Developing a Counseling Plan: John Wayne Gacy As a counselor one constantly strives to help clients become successful members of society. In order to become successful in society one must be mentally healthy, there are clients that are so unhealthy mentally and that have struggled so much throughout their childhood and through adolescents that as a counselor you work and push that much harder to help your client overcome those obstacles. In some cases ones counseling can prevent a negative life and provide for a safer society. This case depicts a client that falls under those circumstances. As a client, John Wayne Gacy will be introduced to Family Therapy to help him understand his family environment and help him to cope and or change
Family Therapy is known for helping individuals whose presenting problems deal with issues that stem from the family and the environment the individual was brought up in. Family therapy is the best way to look at “the patterns of communication and the relationships that connect people with one another and to their social and physical environments” (Capuzzi & Gross, 2011, p. 287). In this case we will be looking at how John fits into his family and what his father’s expectations are of John. Interviewing as an intervention will be crucial in figuring out John place in the family and seeing how his and his father’s view of the roles conflict with each other. Family therapy allows for John and his family to work on their problem solving with each other within the family, expressing their individuality with each other, discussing the positive and negative aspect of their family atmosphere as well as with each other on an individual basis, and lastly the acceptance of each other (Capuzzi & Gross, 2011). Family therapy allows for clients to understand their environments as well as to understand their role within that environment. The counselor’s role within the session is to basically guide the discussion and conduct the interview. Family Therapy I feel is the best theory to use for a client such as John Wayne Gacy due to his confusion within his family,
Family Therapy is designed to be an extensive look at John Wayne Gacy’s family makeup. John Wayne Gacy’s presenting problems are his father abusing him and his family, his father being an alcoholic, he struggles with his sexuality, and he is anti-social. Family therapy is used to deal with these concerns, so for John, the counseling objective is to find a way to cope with his anger towards his father and to be able to express how his father’s abuse towards the family affected him in a negative way. The counseling plan addresses John’s concerns of worrying about his father’s abuse and constant push for perfection as well as his anti-social tendencies. Due the treatment plan and goals presented and the attitude of John to want to get better, I feel that Family Therapy will be successful for John Wayne Gacy as well as his