How to Coach Yourself and Others Coaching Families | Page 27

History and theoretical frameworks
Formal interventions with families to help individuals and families experiencing various kinds of problems have
been a part of many cultures, probably throughout history. These interventions have sometimes involved formal
procedures or rituals, and often included the extended family as well as non-kin members of the community (see
for example Ho'oponopono). Following the emergence of specialization in various societies, these interventions
were often conducted by particular members of a community – for example, a chief, priest, physician, and so on
- usually as an ancillary function.
Family therapy as a distinct professional practice within Western cultures can be argued to have had its origins
in the social work movements of the 19th century in England and the United States. As a branch of
psychotherapy, its roots can be traced somewhat later to the early 20th century with the emergence of the child
guidance movement and marriage counselling. The formal development of family therapy dates to the 1940s and
early 1950s with the founding in 1942 of the American Association of Marriage Counsellors (the precursor of
the AAMFT), and through the work of various independent clinicians and groups - in England (John Bowlby at
the Tavistock Clinic), the US (John Bell, Nathan Ackerman, Christian Midelfort, Theodore Lidz, Lyman
Wynne, Murray Bowen, Carl Whitaker, Virginia Satir), and Hungary (D.L.P. Liebermann) - who began seeing
family members together for observation or therapy sessions. There was initially a strong influence from
psychoanalysis (most of the early founders of the field had psychoanalytic backgrounds) and social psychiatry,
and later from learning theory and behaviour therapy - and significantly, these clinicians began to articulate
various theories about the nature and functioning of the family as an entity that was more than a mere
aggregation of individuals.
The movement received an important boost in the mid-1950s through the work of anthropologist Gregory
Bateson and colleagues – Jay Haley, Donald D. Jackson, John Weakland, William Fry, and later, Virginia Satir,
Paul Watzlawick and others – at Palo Alto in the US, who introduced ideas from cybernetics and general
systems theory into social psychology and psychotherapy, focusing in particular on the role of communication
(see Bateson Project). This approach eschewed the traditional focus on individual psychology and historical
factors – that involve so-called linear causation and content – and emphasized instead feedback and homeostatic
mechanisms and “rules” in here-and-now interactions – so-called circular causation and process – that were
thought to maintain or exacerbate problems, whatever the original cause(s). (See also systems psychology and
systemic therapy.) This group was also influenced significantly by the work of US psychiatrist, hypnotherapist,
and brief therapist, Milton H. Erickson - especially his innovative use of strategies for change, such as
paradoxical directives (see also Reverse psychology). The members of the Bateson Project (like the founders of
a number of other schools of family therapy, including Carl Whitaker, Murray Bowen, and Ivan BöszörményiNagy) had a particular interest in the possible psychosocial causes and treatment of schizophrenia, especially in
terms of the putative "meaning" and "function" of signs and symptoms within the family system. The research
of psychiatrists and psychoanalysts Lyman Wynne and Theodore Lidz on communication deviance and roles
(e.g., pseudo-mutuality, pseudo-hostility, schism and skew) in families of schizophrenics also became
influential with systems-communications-oriented theorists and therapists.A related theme, applying to
dysfunction and psychopathology more generally, was that of the "identified patient" or "presenting problem" as
a manifestation of or surrogate for the family's, or even society's, problems. (See also double bind; family
nexus.)
By the mid-1960s a number of distinct schools of family therapy had emerged. From those groups that were
most strongly influenced by cybernetics and systems theory, there came MRI Brief Therapy, and slightly later,
strategic therapy, Salvador Minuchin's Structural Family Therapy and the Milan systems model. Partly in
reaction to some aspects of these systemic models, came the experiential approaches of Virginia Satir and Carl
Whitaker, which downplayed theoretical constructs, and emphasized subjective experience and unexpressed
feelings (including the subconscious), authentic communication, spontaneity, creativity, total therapist
engagement, and often included the extended family. Concurrently and somewhat independently, there emerged
the various intergenerational therapies of Murray Bowen, Ivan Böszörményi-Nagy, James Framo, and Norman
Paul, which present different theories about the intergenerational transmission of health and dysfunction, but
which all deal usually with at least three generations of a family (in person or conceptually), either directly in
therapy sessions, or via "homework", "journeys home", etc. Psychodynamic family therapy - which, more than
any other school of family therapy, deals directly with individual psychology and the unconscious in the context
of current relationships - continued to develop through a number of groups that were influenced by the ideas and
methods of Nathan Ackerman, and also by the British School of Object Relations and John Bowlby’s work on
attachment. Multiple-family group therapy, a precursor of psycho educational family intervention, emerged, in

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