Rejunctive Moves Toward Systemic Healing: A Contextual Family Therapy Approach to Father’s Absence

Abstract

The phenomena of father’s absence and the disruption of a family unit due to social justice issues like incarceration and mental health/substance misuse challenges are widely documented, and their effects on the whole family are well established in the literature. This paper specifically examines how systemic inequities like racism contribute to destructive entitlements that can occur transgenerationally within families affected by father’s absence. The consideration of racial trauma is crucial, as father’s absence and family disruption are not limited to any one racial or ethnic group, but the effects are often exacerbated for families of color due to the intersecting impacts of systemic racism. This paper highlights contextual family therapy (CFT) concepts, such as multidirected partiality, destructive entitlements, and exoneration, as they apply to these families within the context of racial trauma. Family therapists using a CFT approach with families impacted by incarceration, mental health, and/or substance misuse should address racial trauma as a key component influencing each family member as well as the family dynamics. A clinical case example is used to demonstrate the application of CFT in supporting rejunctive moves toward healing parent– and adult–child relationships within these resilient families.