For a long time, the approach to the treatment of psychological problems has focused on consideration of the characteristics of the behavior, emotions and feelings of the individual. However, in the middle of the twentieth century, this view began to change and more attention was paid to family therapy. Virginia Satir was one of the pioneers of this trend in psychotherapy, which emphasizes the need to work with relationships between family members in order to eliminate the causes of behavioral problems in individuals.
Virginia Satir was an American psychotherapist and the creator of the unique approach to family therapy. Due to this fact she is known as “one of the pioneers in family therapy” (Corey & Corey, 2021, p. 46). Satir graduated from social work school after which she worked as a private practitioner. During her collaborative work with Illinois Psychiatric Institute she began to actively promote the need to prioritize family therapy over individual therapy. After moving to California, Satir co-founded the Mental Research Institute (MRI) in Palo Alto. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) granted MRI with the possibility to offer a formal therapy family training program. This formal program was the first of its kind and was unique, and Satir was appointed Training Director.
The psychiatrist believed that the basis for all psychological problems and disorders is the family unit, which served as the basis for the creation of the Transformational Systemic Therapy (TST) approach. Within the framework of this therapeutic method lies the collective work of family members. Each of them must learn not only to be aware of individual feelings, but also to understand how they affect other members and the family unit as a whole. Satir believed that psychological conditions affect all family members at once and therefore need family therapy.
Family Systems Therapy is a combination of social work and psychiatry that focuses on working with couples and families. It assumes that the best way to understand an individual is to consider the interaction of the entire family. This perspective underlines that “symptoms are an expression of a dysfunction within the family – not the individual – and dysfunctions are often passed across several generations” (Corey & Corey, 2021, p. 215). Thus, individual behavioral problems are the result of established dysfunctional patterns in the relationships of family members. The main goal of family therapy is to eliminate these patterns and build a new relationship structure within the family.
Family was considered as a system with its own rules and interactions. Satir recognized that “the family rules we learned were often in a form that lacked choice and were impossible to implement” (Corey & Corey, 2021, p. 50). She encouraged clients to replace the irrational attitudes learned in the family with more flexible, relevant and feasible rules. This therapeutic activity was based on her transformational approach and aimed on eliminating possible family conflicts. According to Satir, the rules in the family should promote individualization and communication, which allows different people to exist harmoniously within the same family. Additionally, these transformations allow individuals to develop the necessary stress coping techniques and adequately experience the processes of change.
Family Systems Therapy utilizes counseling and a range of various therapeutic techniques. Structural therapy and strategy are main of them as they help to examine and reorganize patterns of interaction in the family. Systemic therapy helps to transform family rules and beliefs in order to make them more flexible. Other techniques are used to support the progress and target the specific issues of the family. The duration of the therapy as with all the family therapy approaches are not long as members seek to resolve the most urgent interaction and behavior issues. Family Systems Therapy practitioners are more concerned with relationships within the family rather than individual psychological features of its members. The goal of the family therapy is to train members how to cope with different stress and conflict transforming their perceptions of individual response.
Reference
Corey, M. S., & Corey, G. (2021). Becoming a helper (8th ed.). Cengage Learning.