Family Therapy (FT) as a distinct method did not actually emerge until 1960's. However the conceptual and clinical influences can be traced back to the end of the 18th century. The socio political economic conditions and major events which influenced the society and nourished the climate for the emergence of FT as a separate entity or requisite are those during the great depression era. There was major shift when society moved from agrarian to industrial and people started migrating to nearby factory areas creating urban households. This along with other stress and strain imposed a need for an approach which we will discuss briefly.
FT as a treatment modality is the final product of contributions from several disciplines like psychology, sociology, cybernetics, anthropology and biology. The events, movements, and research in several other fields that brought about FT as a distinct clinical initiative and a specialty treatment are as follows :
1.
Great Depression :
It was during this period that the United States witnessed a dramatic shift from an agrarian based society to an industrialized urban society. Because of this transition many urban families found themselves coping with an array of issues stemming from rapid social change resulting from the impact of the industrial revolution and rapid urbanization. Social problems such as poverty, increasing social dislocation, immigration, illiteracy, disease, exploited labor, and slum housing adversely impacted the lives of increasing numbers of individuals and families. Modernist view was that a perfect understanding of the societal problem would give a proper tool to eradicate it.
2.
Emergence of Professional Social Work :
COS (Charity organization Society) and Settlement house movements emerged as a response to help the families suffering the transition in society. However their approach was different. The former assumed the problems having emerged from individual character or moral disturbance while the latter believed that the societal, neighborhood and surrounding conditions had delirious impact in families. However these movements along with problems of industrialization, shift from agrarian to industrial society, migration, crowded settlements, unsafe factory conditions, poverty, emerging women movement all led to a pressing need to treat individual in family. Not family as a whole yet.
3.
Group Dynamics :
this began with settlement house movement when they tried to gather people to teach them life skills, training and so on, so when groups formed group research emerged. Individual in group has become an interest of study. because man is a social being. So did they find the impact of groups in individual task. And they started studying groups and its dynamics
4. Marriage and Family Counselling 1920's:
With light being shown upon problems in marriages, people came out of their homes and started to approach professional guidance for marital problems. Usually this include everyday problems in marriage, death of a person, pre marital counselling. these were psycho educational kind of.
5.
Child guidance movement :
With progressive era, mentally ill underwent cruel institutionalization and then came clifford Beers movement. This reformed the mental health system with more humane approach. The child guidance movement initially began for delinquent kids teaching parents how to understand their children and respond to
them with the appropriate use of love and discipline. With research of Alfred adler and rudolf aimed at intervening problems as early as possible to remedy. One of the significant outcomes of this movement as it relates to the future
development of family therapy was as child guidance practitioners began to understand the child they began to examine the ways in which both social and family dynamics might influence the child’s psychological difficulties. For example, these practitioners began to recognize the importance of intervening with the
entire family units around child-focused issues. In addition there was a shift in understanding the causative factors in childhood psychological disorders. The child’s emotional stability was increasingly being understood as reflective of parental, especially maternal, child-rearing behaviors. While much of this understanding was informed by psychoanalytic theory there was an increased focus on the relational dynamics within the family.
6.
Changes in the field of Psychology :
Autonomous self to relational self.
Freud took the position that much of human behavior is motivated by unconscious sexual and aggressive instincts and that the expressions of these instincts are shaped by early childhood relationships between children and their parents. Freudian psychoanalytic theory was based on the concept of the embodied and autonomous self.
Adler’s formulations challenged Freudian theory, which understood human motivation as being biologically and instinctually driven. For Adler, individuals were social beings and were motivated by the drive to overcome feelings of inferiority and to achieve a sense of self-esteem, adequacy, and power within their social and relational worlds. A person’s character and personality including behaviors, perceptions,
feelings, and thoughts illuminate how he or she fits into the social milieu
Influenced by Adler,
Sullivan’s theory of psychiatry, interpersonal analysis, was based on the theory that both interpersonal relationships and social forces play a critical role in the formation of the self. In his study of the social sciences, especially the sociological theories of George Herbert Mead, Sullivan understood that human behavior was motivated not only by the desire for physical satisfaction but more important by a drive to attain a sense of security in relationships.
7.
Impact of Sociological theory in history of FT :
Many theorists were influenced by the field of sociology based on which their respective treatment strategies were formed. Structural functionalism and symbolic interactionism were two major influential theories.While the former studies society as being smaller units interacting with one another and requiring adaptation so when one unit is affected it affects the very other units in the structure, the latter postulated by george mead says that is important for family therapy is the concept of the self. The self is not found solely through the process of inner reflection (the “I”). Rather it is discovered by taking on the role of the “other” and imagining how one’s sense of self is perceived from another’s perspective (the looking glass self or the “me”) From this sociological perspective the family is the interactional, communicative, and meaning-generating network that is critical in the formation of self.
8.
1950's Cybernetics, systems, communications and ecological theories and their impact:
Systems, cybernetics, communications, and ecological theories challenged the influences of psychoanalytic thinking, which was the dominant perspective from the early 1920s well into the late 1950s. With the exception of theorists such as Alfred Alder and Harry Sullivan, psychoanalytic theory focused on the individual and intrapsychic conflicts emanating from the experiences of childhood and the
fantasy life emanating from the inner psychological world. These new theories acknowledged that a person’s behavior is not determined solely by one’s internal world but that the social context is a powerful determinant
in shaping behavior. Furthermore individual psychopathology cannot be understood without a detailed appreciation of the psychosocial and ecological context of the individual and his or her family.
9. Theodore Lidz : Murray Bowen and Lymann Wyne Schizophrenia and family system areas of research : throw light on relevant ties between individual pathology as pathology in the family.
First generational family therapy : (based on anthropological and sociological work of Talcott Parsons
they were interested in the components of the family system, the various units that make up the family and observe the activities and functions to provide a clue to how the family is structured. For them family is a boundary maintaining social system in constant transaction with environment of other systems.
Therapists and Approaches in Structural Functionalists
1. Murray Bowen
2. Nathan Ackerman
3. Ivan Nagy
4. John Elderkin
5. Salvador Minuchin
First generationl : Communicative and Interractional therapists and approaches gave importance to race, gender, larger ecological point of view and historical and cultural context
1. Carl Whittaker
2. Jay Haley
3. Virginia Satir
4. Milan group
Second Generational/ Post Mordern approach
1. Solution focussed
2. Narrative
Third Generation
Evidence based approach
Reference : free source link :
http://www.uk.sagepub.com/upm-data/35408_Chapter1.pdf
timeline neat demonstration :
http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/history-of-family-therapy
http://www.preceden.com/timelines/46781-history-of-family-counseling
Summary of Family Therapies : http://www.aamft.org/Institutes13/Supervision/Individual_Documents/Saturday/mft%20model%20charts%202012%20sup.pdf
http://www.scribd.com/doc/20296973/C6436-11th-Family
