Overview

Working with Families

Working with families is not for the faint hearted but is arguably the most challenging, exciting and satisfying approach to human difficulties. It is premised on the idea of recursion, that human difficulties can best be understood as part of a web of interaction that is best addressed by the patterns which perpetuate the problem. This means that difficulties in one part of the family, for example between adults may be expressed in another part, perhaps in a child. By mapping the pattern of interaction one may uncover the connection between all parts of the system and provide advice to change the recursive loops holding difficulties in place. Change may occur in terms of behaviour, what people do, affect, how people feel, meaning, how people understand specific actions or events or belief, the premises on which people build their lives. This also means that the focus of change may not necessarily be where the symptom signaling difficulties is located. Change between grandparents and parents who are in conflict about a child may well resolve temper tantrums in the child. The name used to describe this approach is systemic, referring to the practitioner’s attention to the whole system in which the problem presents from the widest social and political to the individual’s own inside world. 

There are many misconceptions about what family therapy is and it may be best to describe what it is NOT. 

Perhaps the most pernicious is the idea that family therapy is quite simply doing individual therapy with all family members in the same room. 

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