Download this fully solved and updated exam for Family Therapy

Family therapy Family therapy, also referred to as couple and family therapy, marriage and family therapy, family systems therapy, and family counseling, is a branch of psychotherapy that works with families and couples in intimate relationships to nurture change and development. Change and view of family relationships It tends to view change in terms of the systems of interaction between family members. It emphasizes family relationships as an important factor in psychological health. The different schools of family therapy have in common a belief that The different schools of family therapy have in common a belief that, regardless of the origin of the problem, and regardless of whether the clients consider it an "individual" or "family" issue, involving families in solutions often benefits clients. Influencers There was initially a strong influence from psychoanalysis (most of the early founders of the field had psychoanalytic backgrounds) and social psychiatry, and later from learning theory and behavior therapy - and significantly, these clinicians began to articulate various theories about the nature and functioning of the family as an entity that was more than a mere aggregation of individuals. The work of... The movement received an important boost starting in the early 1950s through the work of anthropologist Gregory Bateson and colleagues - Jay Haley, Donald D. Jackson, John Weakland, William Fry, and later, Virginia Satir, Paul Watzlawick and others - at Palo Alto in the United States, who introduced ideas from cybernetics and general systems theory into social into social psychology and psychotherapy, focusing in particular on the role of communication (see Bateson Project). Traditional focus meets new interventions This approach eschewed the traditional focus on individual psychology and historical factors - that involve so-called linear causation and content - and emphasized instead feedback and homeostatic mechanisms and "rules" in here-and-now interactions - so-called circular causation and process - that were thought to maintain or exacerbate problems, whatever the original cause(s).[4][5] (See also systems psychology and systemic therapy.) Other influencers This group was also influenced significantly by the work of US psychiatrist, hypnotherapist, and brief therapist, Milton H. Erickson - especially his innovative use of strategies for change, such as paradoxical directives Some groups were focusing on schizophrenia including Carl Whitaker, Murray Bowen, and Ivan Böszörményi-Nagy) had a particular interest in the possible psychosocial causes and treatment of schizophrenia, especially in terms of the putative "meaning" and "function" of signs and symptoms within the family system. Some groups were focused on communication The research of psychiatrists and psychoanalysts Lyman Wynne and Theodore Lidz on communication deviance and roles (e.g., pseudo-mutuality, pseudo-hostility, schism and skew) in families of schizophrenics also became influential with systems-communications-oriented theorists and therapists. Another theme A related theme, applying to dysfunction and psychopathology more generally, was that of the "identified patient" or "presenting problem" as a manifestation of or surrogate for the family's, or even society's, problems. (See also double bind; family nexus.) Evolution of family therapy From those groups that were most strongly influenced by cybernetics and systems theory, there came MRI Brief Therapy, and slightly later, strategic therapy, Salvador Minuchin's Structural Family Therapy and the Milan systems model. Partly in reaction to some aspects of these systemic models, came the experiential approaches of Virginia Satir and Carl Whitaker, which downplayed theoretical constructs, and emphasized subjective experience and unexpressed feelings (including the subconscious), authentic communication, spontaneity, creativity, total therapist engagement, and often included the extended family. more influencers Concurrently and somewhat independently, there emerged the various intergenerational therapies of Murray Bowen, Ivan Böszörményi-Nagy, James Framo, and Norman Paul, which present different theories about the intergenerational transmission of health and dysfunction, but which all deal usually with at least three generations of a family (in person or conceptually), either directly in therapy sessions, or via "homework", "journeys home", etc. Psychodynamic family therapy - which, more than any other school of family therapy, deals directly with individual psychology and the unconscious in the context of current relationships - continued to develop through a number of groups that were influenced by the ideas and methods of Nathan Ackerman, and also by the British School of Object Relations and John Bowlby's work on attachment. Multiple-family group therapy, a precursor of psychoeducational family intervention, emerged, in part, as a pragmatic alternative form of intervention - especially as an adjunct to the treatment of serious mental disorders with a significant biological basis, such as schizophrenia - and represented something of a conceptual challenge to some of the "systemic" (and thus potentially "family-blaming") paradigms of pathogenesis that were implicit in many of the dominant models of family therapy. The late-1960s and early-1970s saw the development of network therapy (which bears some resemblance to traditional practices such as Ho'oponopono) by Ross Speck and Carolyn Attneave, and the emergence of behavioral marital therapy (renamed behavioral couples therapy in the 1990s; see also relationship counseling) and behavioral family therapy as models in their own right. Family therapy uses a range of counseling and other techniques including: Structural therapy - Identifies and Re-Orders the organisation of the family system Strategic therapy - Looks at patterns of interactions between family members Systemic/Milan therapy - Focuses on belief systems Narrative Therapy - Restoring of dominant problem-saturated narrative, emphasis on context, separation of the problem from the person Transgenerational Therapy - Transgenerational transmission of unhelpful patterns of belief and behaviour. Founders and key influences[edit] Some key developers of family therapy are: • Alfred Adler (individual psychology) • Nathan Ackerman (psychoanalytic) • Tom Andersen (reflecting practices and dialogues about dialogues) • Harlene Anderson (postmodern collaborative therapy and Collaborative Language Systems) • Harry J Aponte (Person-of-the-Therapist) • Jack A. Apsche (family mode deactivation therapy, FMDT) • Gregory Bateson () (cybernetics, systems theory) • Ivan Böszörményi-Nagy (contextual therapy, intergenerational, relational ethics) • Murray Bowen (systems theory, intergenerational) • Steve de Shazer (solution focused therapy) • Milton H. Erickson (hypnotherapy, strategic therapy, brief therapy)