How to Coach Yourself and Others Coaching Families

Salvador Minuchin Born and raised in Argentina, Salvador Minuchin began his career as a family therapist in the early 1960's when he discovered two patterns common to troubled families: some are "enmeshed," chaotic and tightly interconnected, while others are "disengaged," isolated and seemingly unrelated. When Minuchin first burst onto the scene, his immediate impact was due to his dazzling clinical artistry. This compelling man with the elegant Latin accent would provoke, seduce, bully, or bewilder families into changing -- as the situation required -- setting a standard against which other therapists still judge their best work. But even Minuchin's legendary dramatic flair didn't have the same galvanizing impact as his structural theory of families. In his classic text, Families and Family Therapy (Minuchin, 1974) Minuchin taught family therapists to see what they were looking at. Through the lens of structural family theory, previously puzzling interactions suddenly swam into focus. Where others saw only chaos and cruelty, Minuchin helped us understand that families are structured in "subsystems" with "boundaries," their members shadowing to steps they do not see. In 1962 Minuchin formed a productive professional relationship with Jay Haley, who was then in Palo Alto. In 1965 Minuchin became the director of the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic, which eventually became the world's leading center for family therapy and training. At the Philadelphia Clinic, Haley and Minuchin developed a training program for members of the local black community as paraprofessional family therapists in an effort to more effectively related to the urban blacks and Latinos in the surrounding community. In 1969, Minuchin, Haley, Braulio Montalvo, and Bernice Rosman developed a highly successful family therapy training program that emphasized hands-on experience, on-line supervision, and the use of videotapes to learn and apply the techniques of structural family therapy. Minuchin stepped down as director of the Phildelphia Clinic in 1975 to pursue his interest in treating families with psychosomatic illnesses and to continue writing some of the most influential books in the field of family therapy. In 1981, Minuchin established Family Studies, Inc., in New York, a center committed to teaching family therapists. Minuchin retired in 1996 and currently lives with his wife Patricia in Boston. Jay Haley A brilliant strategist and devastating critic, Jay Haley was a dominating figure in developing the Palo Alto Group's communications model and strategic family therapy, which became popular in the 1970's. He studied under three of the most influential pioneers in the evolution of family therapy - Gregory Bateson, Milton Erickson, and Salvador Minuchin, and combined ideas from each of these innovative thinkers to form his own unique brand of family therapy. In 1953 Haley was studying for a master's degree in communication at Stanford University when Gregory Bateson invited him to work on the schizophrenia project. Haley met with patients and their families to observe the communicative style of schizophrenics in a natural environment. This work had an enormous impact in shaping the development of family therapy. Haley developed his therapeutic skills under the supervision of master hypnotist Milton Erickson from 1954 to 1960. Haley developed a brief therapy model which focused on the context and possible function of the patient's symptoms and used directives to instruct patients to act in ways that were counterproductive to their maladaptive behavior. Haley believed that it was far more important to get patients to actively do something about their problems rather than help them to understand why they had these problems. Haley was instrumental in bridging the gap between strategic and structural approaches to family therapy by looking beyond simple dyadic relationships and exploring his interest in triangular, inter generational relationships, or "perverse triangles." Haley believed that a patient's symptoms arose out of an incongruence between manifest and covert levels of communication with others and served to give the patient a sense of control in their interpersonal relationships. Accordingly, Haley thought that the healing aspect of the patient-therapist relationship involved getting patients to take responsibility for their actions and to take a stand in the therapeutic relationship, a process he called "therapeutic paradox." Haley conducted research at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto until he joined Salvador Minuchin at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic in 1967. At the Philadelphia Clinic, Haley pursued his interests in training and supervision in family therapy and was the director of family therapy research for ten years. He 32

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