Systemic Therapy: What Is It And What Principles Is It Based On?
He systemic approach It is the application of general systems theory in any discipline: education, organizations, psychotherapy, etc.
This approach is presented as a systematic and scientific way of approaching and representing reality seen from a holistic and integrative perspectivewhere the important thing is the relationships and the components that emerge from them. From there emerges the systemic therapy.
Therefore, its study and practice places special importance on the relationship and communication in any group that interacts, understood as a system. This approach also extends to individual people, taking into account the different systems that make up their context.
The systemic therapy understands the problems from a contextual framework and focuses on understanding and changing the dynamics of relationships (family, work, etc.).
The roles and behaviors of people in these contexts are understood to be determined by the unspoken rules of that system and the interaction between its members.
Understanding multicausal disorders
Until then, in the field of psychotherapy, mental illness was understood in linear terms, with historical and causal explanations for the condition. First we look for the cause and then move on to treatment. The systemic therapy model (widely used in family therapy), observes phenomena in a circular and multi-causal manner, therefore, linear markers cannot be established. For example, within a family, members behave and react in unpredictable ways because each action and reaction continually changes from the nature of the context.
Paúl Watzlawick was a pioneer in distinguishing linear causality and circular causality, to explain the various possible repetitive patterns of interaction and marking a before and after in the interpretation of difficulties in personal relationships. The circular view of problems It is marked by how the behavior of one individual influences the actions of another, who in turn also influences the first.
Therefore, systemic therapy offers a circular, interactive visionwithin the system or group that has its transformation rules and self-controls through feedback phenomena to maintain a state of balance. The components of the system enter into a relationship through communication, one of the keys to this therapy.
The beginnings of systemic therapy
Systemic therapy emerged during the 1930s as support for professions in different fields: psychiatry, psychology, pedagogy and sexology. Although the movement began in Germany thanks to Hirschfeld, Popenoe It is the first to apply it in the United States. Later, Emily Mudd developed the first assessment program in family therapy in Philadelphia.
John Bell, his most popular reference
Many claim that the father of modern family therapy is John Bella professor of psychology at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, because in 1951 he conducted joint therapy with the entire family of a very aggressive young man and obtained excellent results. That is why many bibliographical citations mark this moment as the beginning of systemic therapy.
From here, many have applied and spread the principles of systemic therapy in different areas. For example, Nathan Ackerman, in child psychiatry, Theodore Lidz specialized in working with families of schizophrenic patients and was the first to explore the role of parents in the schizophrenia process. Bateson, who was an anthropologist and philosopher, and studied the family structure of the tribes of the islands of Bali and New Zealand together with his wife Margaret Mead.
Since the early 70s, It was proposed that the systemic model could be applied to a single individual even if the entire family did not attend.and which represents a development of the brief therapy of the Palo Alto MRI.
Brief Systemic Therapy is a set of intervention procedures and techniques that aim to help individuals, couples, families or groups mobilize their resources to achieve their objectives in the shortest time possible, and has its origin in systemic therapy.
In the mid-1970s, a group consisting of Paul Watzlawick, Arthur Bodin, John Weakland and Richard Fisch established the “Brief Therapy Center”. This group developed what is known today throughout the world as the Palo Alto Modelgenerating a radical change in psychotherapy, by developing a brief, simple, effective and efficient model to help people produce change.
The praxis of systemic therapy
Systemic therapy is characterized as a practical rather than analytical problem-solving approach. The diagnosis of who the patient is or who has the problem (for example, who has an aggressive problem) does not matter so much. but focuses on identifying dysfunctional patterns within the behavior of the group of people (family, employees, etc.), in order to redirect those behavioral patterns directly.
Systemic therapists help systems find balance. Unlike other forms of therapy, for example psychoanalytic therapy, the goal is to practically address current patterns in the relationship, rather than causes, as in this example may be subconscious impulses from childhood trauma.
