Family Therapy
Harry Stack Sullivan
Mindfortherapy.com hopes to further the contributions of the different schools of classic family therapy. These orientations span the structural family therapy of Minuchin, the problem-solving therapy of Haley, the Milan team model, and the work of Olga Silverstein and Peggy Papp, among many others. Though the approach of the Mental Research Institute is not actually a family therapy orientation, we may respectfully include it as a systemically oriented therapeutic approach.
Family Therapy focuses on treating problems, troubles, and difficulties in the context of relationships, rather than as a dis-ease or dis-order in a particular individul. Many of the schools are non-pathological, meaning that problems are viewed as adaptive to circumstances rather than orgininating from chemical imbalances, etc. Family therapy has been used effectively in the full range of human dilemmas; there is no category of relationship or psychological problem that has not been addressed with this approach.
The historical development of family therapy is outline by Wendel Ray in document titled Interactional Approaches: A 75 Year Time-Line of Influential Contributors. Ray states, “All current interactionally oriented modern and postmodern brief and family therapy approaches share a common lineage. Harry Stack Sullivan’s Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry heavily influenced the first generation of family theoreticians and clinicians. Don Jackson was personally supervised by Sullivan, while Nathan Ackerman and Murray Bowen also acknowledged Sullivan’s influence. In turn, Jackson, through his supervision of and collaboration with Gregory Bateson, Jay Haley, and John Weakland had a formidable influence on all interactionally oriented family and brief therapy approaches; while similarly Murray Bowen’s thinking forms the underpinning of all family of origin oriented approaches (Ray, 2000)”
Family Therapy focuses on treating problems, troubles, and difficulties in the context of relationships, rather than as a dis-ease or dis-order in a particular individul. Many of the schools are non-pathological, meaning that problems are viewed as adaptive to circumstances rather than orgininating from chemical imbalances, etc. Family therapy has been used effectively in the full range of human dilemmas; there is no category of relationship or psychological problem that has not been addressed with this approach.
The historical development of family therapy is outline by Wendel Ray in document titled Interactional Approaches: A 75 Year Time-Line of Influential Contributors. Ray states, “All current interactionally oriented modern and postmodern brief and family therapy approaches share a common lineage. Harry Stack Sullivan’s Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry heavily influenced the first generation of family theoreticians and clinicians. Don Jackson was personally supervised by Sullivan, while Nathan Ackerman and Murray Bowen also acknowledged Sullivan’s influence. In turn, Jackson, through his supervision of and collaboration with Gregory Bateson, Jay Haley, and John Weakland had a formidable influence on all interactionally oriented family and brief therapy approaches; while similarly Murray Bowen’s thinking forms the underpinning of all family of origin oriented approaches (Ray, 2000)”
