Family therapy - ✔✔first created to treat schizophrenia.
A way of thinking in systemic relational terms.
A set of strategies for intervening with individuals, couples, families, and other systems.
Widely used since 1950's
Not defined by a number
Systems approach forges collaborative relationships
Psychotherapeutic approach focuses on interactions
Heart of the approach is systems theory
Systems theory - ✔✔Comes out of mid 20th century biology, physics, chemistry, and cybernetics.
Transcends the reductionist bias by breaking them down to their smallest parts
Therapists can be family psychologists, counselors, psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, clinical social
workers, and MFT's.
Reductionist bias - ✔✔That psychological problems can be explained by how an individual functions
psychologically or biologically without regard to their environment.
Family therapy background - ✔✔Born in the 1950's but also a culmination of influences from the 20's
and 30's
Created to treat the enmeshed, smothered families
First homegrown American form of psychotherapy
First generation - ✔✔Radical founders of family therapy.
Palo Alto team. Murray Bowen, Salvador Munichin, Strategic family therapy, Experiential family therapy,
Behavioral family therapy
Palo Alto Team - ✔✔Bateson's schismogenesis- symmetrical and complementary
,Circular interaction processes
Analogical and Digital communication
Double bind analyses paper marked the birth of family systems theory
Family homeostasis
Division into theoretical and clinical towards the end
Schismogenesis - ✔✔Process of differentiation in the norms of individual behavior resulting from
cumulative interaction between individuals.
The reaction of individuals to the reactions of other individuals.
Can be complementary or symmetrical
Complementary Schismogenesis - ✔✔When two individuals or groups behavior each invites the
opposite response from the other (dominance and submission). This pattern can escalate progressively
unless other factors are present to restrain the excesses of the two behavioral tendencies.
Symmetrical Schismogenesis - ✔✔The same kind of response is elicited from the two individuals or
groups. The pattern can become progressive and damaging if not restrained by dynamics internal to the
relationship.
Circular Interaction Processes - ✔✔The cornerstone of family therapy theory.
People develop mechanisms to get out of the circle they are in together so the relationship does not
explode or implode.
Analogical Communication - ✔✔Nonverbal Communication.
Provides context for the digital-Classifies the verbal message by telling us how to interpret it.
Digital Communication - ✔✔Verbal Communication
Family Homeostasis - ✔✔Tendency of all families to maintain habitual patterns of behavior
, Murray Bowen - ✔✔Leading theoretician providing an alternative to the Palo Alto group.
First to develop a comprehensive theory of family functioning
Son of a funeral director, attracted to biology
Founded a family therapy training program at Georgetown medical school in 1959
Published paper on the Differentiation of Self about his own family
Said that Family processes foster or diminish the individuals differentiation of self to achieve a balance
between intellectual and emotional functioning and a balance of autonomy and togetherness in social
relationships
He viewed individuals as struggling with an evolutionary past from biology that accentuates lower brain
functioning and stimulates fight or flight anxiety.
Anxiety leads to a low differentiation of self or the inability to separate the emotional and rational
domains of the mind.
Anxiety and low differentiation of self are fostered in a nuclear family emotional system characterized
by emotional fusion without autonomy, emotional cutoff out of fear of fusion, and conflict through third
parties rather then directly (triangulation)
He de-emphasized technique and thought the heart of healing was the therapists own differentiation of
self and consequent ability to stay out of triangles and maintain a non-anxious objectivity in the face of
the family's emotional field.
The goal is to promote differentiation of family members so they can be distinct selves while
maintaining emotional connection
Focus is on the spouses and controlling the interchanges to diminish reactivity and help them touch on
areas of emotional importance in a calm way. Therapists non-reactivity is crucial.
Salvador Munichin - ✔✔Greatest influence on the development of family therapy as an intervention.
Structural Therapy Model
Emphasized the family as a system operating through subsystems that require adequate boundary
clarity and permeability
Proposed that families have functions, particularly socialization of children and mutual support of
married couples, that are carried out through well bounded subsystems
Families experience trouble when their boundaries are too porous (enmeshed) or too rigid (disengage).
Psychosomatic family-enmeshed parent-child boundaries, overprotection, rigidity, poor conflict
resolution or conflict avoidance, triangulation, and detouring
Families can become dysfunctional in response to a hostile environment that overwhelms their
adaptability.
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