How to Coach Yourself and Others Coaching Families | Page 294
VI. Experiential Family Therapy Outline by Sarah Sifers
A. Leading figures and background
1. Emerged in the 1960s from humanistic psychology and drew heavily from gestalt therapy
and encounter groups (it is not very popular today)
2. Carl Whitaker
3. Virginia Satir (yes, the same one from communications family therapy)
4. Walter Kempler
5. Bunny and Fred Duhl
6. David Kantor
7. Current figures: Leslie Greenberg and Susan Johnson
B. Theoretical formulations
1. Commitment to freedom, individuality, personal awareness, individuals’ goals and values,
self - expression, and personal fulfilment, but largely a-theoretical
2. There is a wide variety of perspectives that a rather loosely connected under the heading of
experiential family therapy
C. Normal family development
a. Continuous growth and change and flexibility
b. Nurtures and supports individual growth and experience (which leads to increased growth in
the family) open (say anything) and constructive problem solving
c. Natural and spontaneous; freedom, privacy, and togetherness
D. Development of behavior disorders
1. Family and societal pressures prevent naturally occurring self - actualization
2. Denial of impulses and suppression of feelings (emotional deadness)
3. Seeking security and stability (rigid) rather than satisfaction
4. Loyalty to family stressed over loyalty to self
5. Mystification - smothering emotion and desire
6. Marriages consist of two people trying to work out conflicts that arise from each trying to
reconstruct his or her family of origin and their differences frighten them causing them to cling
closer together
7. Includes "normal" difficulties such as infidelity or "quiet desperation" and "invisible"
(culturally accepted) symptoms such as overwork and smoking
8. Intra-psychic defences that lead to interpersonal problems
9. Getting stuck during a life transition or change
10. Lack of warmth >>> avoidance >>> preoccupation with outside activities
11. "wrong" communication: blaming, placating, being irrelevant, and being super reasonable
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