Systemic family psychotherapy is a new approach to psychological counseling on family problems. The whole family is taken as a client as a single organism. The goal is to improve the functioning of the family system as a whole.
The family as an object of influence
Systemic family psychotherapy considers the family as an independent organism with its own history, values and laws of development. The therapist is sufficiently involved in the process of therapy, he observes or acts as a trainer. Along the way, he asks questions, controls, can create an artificial conflict or any other situation. The systems direction is currently the leading one in family psychology.
Older directions considered one person as an object of psychological influence, while the systemic one takes the family and its entire system as such an object. Such a theory arose not from any previously existing psychological knowledge, but from cybernetics. Cybernetics has a general systems theory. It says that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. All parts and processes of the whole mutually condition each other.
The family system is a group of people with a common place of residence, connected by certain relationships. It is argued that the actions of family members are subject to the laws and regulations of the entire family system. Something doesn't always happen because of the wishes of family members. The family system constantly communicates with the environment.
Goals and methods of systemic family psychotherapy
The psychotherapist allows everyone to speak and provides comfort for the rest. Together with his family, he is looking for an opportunity to change the functioning of the family system for the better. At the same time, there is no task to change the individual people entering the system. Systemic family psychology has several currents, some of which do not require the presence of all family members at a psychotherapeutic session. They work with those of them whose problems and behavior became the reason for the whole family to turn to a psychotherapist. Through it, the negative aspects of intra-family communications are eliminated.
Any pathologies of the psyche are regarded as manifestations of inadequate relationships within the family. Families have their own rules, myths, patterns of behavior. It is their specificity that can provoke mental illness in family members. In childhood, a child accumulates negative patterns of behavior observed in adults. Subsequently, he begins to unconsciously reproduce them in adulthood.
Therapy techniques: circular interview. One family member is asked how the other two relate to each other. Sometimes the therapist uses supervision by placing colleagues behind the one-way mirror. Colleagues observe the process and share their thoughts. Also, the therapist uses such a technique as a positive redefinition of the problem with which the family came. The point is not to downplay the difficulties, but to present them as friends who will help you find a way out of the situation.
