Systemic Family Therapy

The clas­si­cal approach in psy­chol­o­gy involves work­ing direct­ly with the client. A rel­a­tive­ly new school — sys­temic fam­i­ly psy­chother­a­py has an impact on the whole fam­i­ly, which allows you to con­sid­er inter­per­son­al con­nec­tions and rela­tion­ships. This type of ther­a­py is sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly rec­og­nized in the USA, Fin­land, Italy, Poland, Great Britain, Ger­many, Switzer­land and Aus­tria. The most com­mon tech­nique in Ger­man-speak­ing coun­tries is the sys­temic fam­i­ly con­stel­la­tion; this type of psy­chother­a­py is sup­port­ed by M. Var­ga, G. Weber and I. Spar­rer.

Principles of systemic family therapy

Fam­i­ly ther­a­py is based on the fol­low­ing fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples

1. Cir­cu­lar­i­ty. Usu­al­ly peo­ple use lin­ear log­ic when con­sid­er­ing prob­lems, but every­thing in the fam­i­ly occurs accord­ing to cir­cu­lar log­ic. It is not easy to learn to see the cir­cu­lar causal­i­ty of events, but once the ther­a­pist learns to do this, his task of choos­ing meth­ods of influ­ence is great­ly sim­pli­fied.
2. Neu­tral­i­ty. For effec­tive influ­ence, the psy­chother­a­pist must take a neu­tral posi­tion and equal­ly sym­pa­thize with all fam­i­ly mem­bers, give every­one the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be under­stood and heard.
3. Hypo­thet­i­cal. The pur­pose of the spe­cial­ist’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the fam­i­ly is to test his hypoth­e­sis about the mean­ing of fam­i­ly prob­lems. In accor­dance with the hypoth­e­sis, the psy­chother­a­pist’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion strat­e­gy is built.

Introduction to Systemic Family Psychotherapy by A. Varga

Among domes­tic pop­u­lar­iz­ers of this method, A. Var­ga and her books on sys­temic fam­i­ly psy­chother­a­py are wide­ly known. In her writ­ings, she exam­ines the struc­ture of the fam­i­ly, the stages of its devel­op­ment, demon­strates exam­ples and ana­lyzes the life cycle of the Russ­ian fam­i­ly, which is impor­tant, since the pecu­liar­i­ties of the men­tal­i­ty can­not be dis­count­ed. The lit­er­a­ture also dis­cuss­es the prop­er­ties of the fam­i­ly sys­tem, with­out knowl­edge of which it is impos­si­ble to approach the assess­ment of inter­per­son­al rela­tion­ships. Detailed descrip­tion of the prin­ci­ples of fam­i­ly psy­chother­a­py allows you to gain basic knowl­edge on the top­ic, although, of course, read­ing a book will not make you a pro­fes­sion­al fam­i­ly ther­a­pist.

Systemic family therapy — training

The prin­ci­ples of fam­i­ly ther­a­py are used not only for ther­a­peu­tic impact, but also for coach­ing, social work and sys­temic con­sult­ing. But nev­er­the­less, the train­ing of sys­temic fam­i­ly psy­chother­a­py is car­ried out pre­cise­ly for the retrain­ing of spe­cial­ists. Such cours­es are offered by many train­ing cen­ters, so find­ing them is not dif­fi­cult, you just have to choose the best option for your­self.