Family Systems and Couples Approaches

Abstract

The quote by the late, great comedian, George Burns, alludes to the individual vs. family dialectic that exists both in families and in the field of psychotherapy. Every one experiences a tension between their need for autonomy and their need for intimacy: to differentiate an identity separate from one’s family, but still remain connected with them. With a few exceptions, e.g., Adler’s child guidance clinics and the family focus of social workers, psychotherapy has focused on the individual during its first 50 years. The family was of interest only as experienced and internalized by the individual. Sullivan began the shift from a monadic to a dyadic focus when he conceptualized psychopathology as a process occurring between two people and ushered in the interpersonal school of psychotherapy. Problems with others develop from maladaptive caregiver and child interactions instead of being located in the “identified patient.” Family theorists took the next step in the 1950s with a triadic focus. Instead of a monadic focus on problems within the person or a dyadic focus on what happens between client and therapist, they worked with at least three people in the room: therapist, child, parents, and perhaps other children or family.

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.

George Burns (1896–1996)