Family Systems Therapy
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Family therapy is a component of psychology developed to initiate a change and bring up development in a close relationship between couples and family members. The work of a family therapist is to alleviate a conversation that will serve as a catalyst to tighten and upgrade connections within the family (Lester, 2017). Several family therapy sessions are conducted depending on the situation in the family or target participants in efforts to come up with the desired solution. Family therapy success is not bound to the number of participants who take part in the whole process. Still, the analytical framework and perspective.couple and family therapy are viewed to be a practical approach in treating patients with severe mental issues (Schwartz & Goldsmith, 2017).
American psychiatrist Murray Bowen first developed family system therapy. He began his idea in the mid-1950s at his job position as a psychiatrist at the national institute of mental health. He used his knowledge of family patters and system theory, which carefully looks at components of a system (such as independent family members) regarding the entire family (Schwartz & Goldsmith, 2017). Bowen maintained that emotions, personalities, and actions of grown individuals are as an outcome of their birth order, their duty within the family they have grown in, and the survival mechanism they have developed for taking on with emotional family problems. Bowen suggests viewing a family as a whole; a family is not just people who makeup it but also their daily interaction with each other to make a distinctive family dynamic (Lester, 2017).
Family system therapy looks at the family as an emotional unit. Murray Bowen’s theory, which forms the basis for the system, believes that people are inseparable from their grid of relationships. The members of the family highly depend on each other; they also have deep-rooted emotional connections. The family can profoundly impact people’s life. People in the same family seek validation and approval from each other. The inability to receive this approval and validation causes long term damage mostly for a child in need of reassurance from parents. Families facing conflicts between its members and in need of professional help to solve their problem may find a family system therapy friendly approach. Dr. Bown originated the theory used in family therapy and its eight interconnected concepts. He comes up with the method by using system thinking to merge knowledge of human beings as a product of evolution with experience fro family research. A primary assumption is that an emotional system that advanced billion years controls the human relationships system (Schwartz & Goldsmith, 2017).
Salvador Minuchin also made various beneficial contributions to the family therapy field. The most important contribution was the development of structural family therapy (SFT). SFT is a form of treatment that looks at patterns of interconnections that generate a problem within a family. The approach views mental health concerns as signs of a dysfunctional family. Minuchin’s structural family therapy, therefore, suggests a treatment that focuses on changing the family structure instead of changing individual family members (Lester, 2017). STF aims to better communication and relationships among family members and to develop the necessary boundaries for a healthy family structure. In his work as a therapist, Minucci first worked as a family therapist and wrote about enmeshed and disengaged families, which form significant structural family therapy components. He suggested to stop using first-order changes (change of a single behaviour) when handling family problems and instead focus on second-order change( adjustments of family rules). These concepts formed the basis for his structural family therapy and shaped other branches of family psychology (Schwartz & Goldsmith, 2017).
Jay Haley (1923– 2007) was also another theorist to family therapy. He works for an extended period with other pioneers of the family therapy, forming foundations for a contemporary psychotherapy. Together with Nathan Ackerman and Don Jackson, he came up with the first family therapy journal named Family process. Haley was one of the pioneers who formed the basics of strategic therapy. Strategic therapy follows the procedure of planning the treatment, solution-oriented, and short term approach. He introduces up to date terms to the therapeutic practice, such as perverse, stages of family life, double-blind, and paradox. It is precisely the double-blind that helps in the understanding of the ongoing communication difficulties in different families. Besides, Haley defined some fundamental directives for family therapists (Lester, 2017). They include permanent access to group supervision, the need to work in an excellent cooperating team, the necessity to plan and foresee the systematic results on one’s activity, and permanent access to group supervision.
Individual psychology assumes that individuals only feel, think, and act based on their perception of goals. Therefore, one can be fully understood only by knowing their goals and purpose towards which they are pursuing (Adle, 2019). The approach is only interested in the future and does not involve experience. It believes that decisions stand based on the current situation of an individual and the direction in which they move. Individual psychology looks continuously at its themes running through personal lives. Centrally, Family system theory assumes that everyone involved in the family system both impacts others and is also impacted by them. The approach discourages the idea of concentrating on an individual member of the family. Instead, it focuses on addressing the problems facing family members by addressing matters which concern the whole family (Lester, 2017). FST also assumes family is greater than the sum of its parts. Unlike on the individual psychology, which looks at their behaviour and goals, family system therapy views a family as a set of mutually impactful and interconnected relationships. It maintains the only way to understand individual family members is by following the family as a whole.
Traditionally the family has been defined as a family structure that incorporates a man, woman, and a number of their biological or adopted children. For most traditional families, men and women live like husband and wife, and they have distinct roles. Either definition of family has recently evolved, and the family view has changed to consist of two or more people connected by marriage, birth, or adoption residing in the same household unit (McNulty & Goldsmith, 2017). Other components which make part of the current family definition include:
- Cohabitation families; consist of unwed couples living in the same household.
- Single-parent families; its made up of one parent and one or more biological or adopted children
- Extended families- consists of two or more adults with the same family origin and who maintain the household together.
- Same-sex families; its made of same-sex couples, either male or female, and one or more children
According to the traditional family definition, recognize marriage as a union between a man and woman who establish their commitment to live together in a specific country or social or religious group. It requires the families of the two parties to engage in a ceremonial visit and exchange gifts. On the other hand, the current family definition views marriage as when two people, whether of the same or different sex, start living together under the same household as a husband and wife. It does not adequately relay on ceremonial events. Either in a traditional family, one is considered devolved when there is an explicit agreement presented to a socially structured organization such as a court of law. It is not the case with the current family definition where divorce is when two married people stop leaving together (McNulty & Goldsmith, 2017).
A blended family happens when two partners make a life together when one or both of the partners have children from the previous relationship. Unlike traditional family, the current family definition only considers family to be blended when children of the prior relationship live with the two couples in one unit household (McNulty & Goldsmith, 2017).
References
Lester, R. J. (2017). Self‐governance, psychotherapy, and the subject of managed care: Internal Family Systems therapy and the multiple self in a US eating‐disorders treatment center. American Ethnologist, 44(1), 23-35.
Schwartz, R., & Goldsmith, J. (2017). Internal Family Systems in Family Therapy. In Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy (pp. 1-7). Springer, Cham.
McNulty, Y. (2015). Acculturating non-traditional expatriates: A case study of a single parent, overseas adoption, split family, and lesbian assignees. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 49, 278-293.
Adler, A. (2019). The fundamental views of individual psychology. The Journal of Individual Psychology, 75(3), 185-187.