SALVADOR MINUCHIN: BIOGRAPHY, FAMILY THERAPY AND ITS TECHNIQUES, OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS, WORKS - BIOGRAPHIES - 2024

Salvador Minuchin (1921-2017) was an Argentine family therapist, doctor and pediatrician, recognized for being in charge of developing the theory of structural family therapy and its techniques. During his career he wrote several works, some of them being awarded.

A family therapist is part of the area of ​​psychotherapy, a discipline that focuses on delving with family groups or couples about the intimate relationships they have. It attaches great importance to the interpersonal relationships that occur in a family because they represent a fundamental element of people's psychological health.

Salvador Minuchin (center) with Braulio Montalvo and Jay Haley. Source: Jamespkeim, via Wikimedia Commons.

The structural family therapy that Minuchin developed consisted of establishing existing relationships and addressing emerging problems. For Minuchin it was important to determine the power dynamics that occurred in the family group, as well as the limits that were established.

The goal is to put an end to relationships that are not working properly. This was only possible if a healthier behavior and relationship model was established.

Biography

Early years and studies

Salvador Minuchin was born on October 13, 1921 in San Salvador de Jujuy, a city in the Entre Ríos province in Argentina. He was part of a family of Russian and Jewish immigrants that settled in a population of Jewish customs in a rural area of ​​Argentina.

Minuchin was the eldest of the three children that Clara Tolcachier and Mauricio Minuchin had. His father owned a shop, but financial difficulties forced him to dedicate himself to herding horses.

During his high school education he made the decision to help young people with delinquency problems, a decision that was influenced by an idea from one of his psychology teachers. The reason for carrying out this social act was born by sharing the thoughts and studies of the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who explained that criminals were victims of the society of which they were part.

At the age of 18, Minuchin began his education at the university level. She entered the National University of Córdoba, in Argentina, to study medicine. During his university life he also served as a political activist.

During his years of study, the Peronist movement seized power, which Minuchin opposed, among other reasons, because of the control they exercised over the universities of the South American country. The role of political activist landed Minuchin in jail, where he spent at least three months behind bars.

To complete her studies, she decided to do her internship in the area of ​​pediatrics. She even specialized in the branch of child psychiatry over the years.

Professional life

After completing his academic training, Minuchin enlisted in the Israeli army as a doctor, while the war of independence raged in 1948. When his military service ended, the Argentine settled in New York City where he completed his studies in the area. of child psychiatry, led by Nathan Ackerman.

Subsequently, Minuchin returned to Israel to help the country's most affected children and returned to the United States in 1954 to study psychoanalysis at the William Alanson White Academic Institute.

Wiltwyck School

When he finished his training in the branch of psychoanalysis, Minuchin worked in the area of ​​child psychiatry at Wiltwyck, a school specialized in young people with delinquency problems. That's when Minuchin made the decision that working with entire family groups would be more critical.

At school, he managed to design family therapy, a method in which he got his co-workers involved. Minuchin, or another psychiatrist at the educational center, performed therapies with families while the rest of the doctors observed the therapy session from another room and thanks to a mirror.

This observational exercise allowed therapists to learn and refine techniques for designing Minuchin's structural family therapy theory. After formulating his ideas, in 1962, the doctor traveled to Palo Alto to collaborate with Jay Haley, a psychotherapist specializing in brief and family therapy in general.

Minuchin's ideas and work at Wiltwyck enabled him to write a book, his first. It was called Families of the Slums and was published in 1967. In that book, she described the method of family therapy.

By then, Minuchin was already the director of a child guidance clinic in Philadelphia. He held this position until 1976, when he left office to occupy the position of head of recruitment at the same medical center. He left Philadelphia in 1981 and moved to New York to teach child psychiatry, until in 1996 he moved to Boston and retired from his profession.

Death

Minuchin died on October 30, 2017 in Boca Raton, Florida. He was 96 years old when heart disease ended his life. The news was given by his son Daniel and it was reviewed around the world, including by the prestigious newspaper The New York Times.

Influence

Jay Douglas Haley was one of the creators of strategic therapy, being one of the most recognized in his area. In the 1960s, Minuchin moved to California and was able to work alongside the American.

From that professional meeting, a great friendship was born between both therapists, Minuchin coming to declare that Haley was his most important teacher. He recognized that his admiration for the American was due to the fact that he always worked to the limit in the search for new ideas. That was a great challenge for Minuchin.

Also, the relationship was very fruitful because Haley focused her ideas more towards the intellectual side, while Minuchin was a more pragmatic focused therapist.

Family therapy and its techniques

Mnuchin was tasked with developing a clinical model of treatment, known as structural family therapy (or SFT for its acronym in English). The studies for the development of this model were largely carried out at the Child Guidance Clinic, located in Philadelphia, United States.

This model was distinguished from the rest because the therapist took an active role in the process. That is, the family therapist was part of the family, with the aim of knowing first-hand its functioning dynamics. This active role allowed the therapist to be able to stop dysfunctional behaviors more effectively.

Rules

In family therapy, a series of rules was established to regulate the interaction of the therapist with the family. This regulation was based on pacts, establishing limits and setting hierarchies.

Minuchin explained that a family was dysfunctional depending on the level of adaptation it had to certain stressors. Healthy families, for example, established clear boundaries between parents and children, this allowed the interaction to respect certain levels of authority.

Therapy techniques

The fundamental objective in family therapy was to redefine the system of family rules, so that relationships are more flexible and allow more alternatives. The members of the family group abandon the restrictive roles that they fulfilled to discard the dysfunctional behavior.

Only when the family is able to sustain a system of rules that is not so strict and without the support of the therapist, is when therapy comes to an end.

Therapists came up with ways to accelerate this process of change. They were in charge of varying how they carried out their therapy sessions with simple tools such as: varying the position of individuals in the room or isolating a family member. The objective of this was to cause a change that allowed observing the pattern that changed when a member of the family group was not present.

Minuchin did not place greater emphasis on the use of specific techniques, but over the years structural therapists developed tools to comply with the proposed clinical treatment model.

Other contributions

Minuchin was one of the authors who dealt with the subject of anorexia nervosa in the 70s, delving into the causes of this disease and its possible treatments. Together with Rosman and Baker, he delved into the clinical model that was based on family therapy from a behavioral and structural point of view.

He also criticized the way family therapy has been conducted since the 1990s. For Minuchin, clinical models have ceased to be family-centered over the years. Minuchin, in different articles, delved into her thoughts and explained that the most modern therapy had a very broad focus.

The breadth of the approach used in family therapy avoided applying it effectively to solve the specific problems of family groups. While Minuchin always maintained that therapy should be focused on remedying the effects caused by suffering in a family.

In addition, the Argentine therapist left a great legacy at the Minuchin Center for the Family. It all started in 1981 when he founded the Institute for Family Studies in New York, being in that place where he was in charge of teaching other therapists and consulting.

The institute changed its name in 1995, when Minuchin retired and became the Minuchin Center for the Family, a name that it maintains to this day. There, they continue to delve into family therapy and support groups affected by situations of poverty, racism or discrimination.

Plays

Minuchin's work is perhaps not as extensive in relation to publications. He wrote seven books, the first of which was Families of the Slums in 1967, where he shared authorship with Braulio Montalvo, Bernard Guerney, Bernice Rosman and Florence Schumer.

He published two more papers in the 1960s: The disorganized and disadvantaged family (1967) and Psychoanalytic therapies and the low socieconomic population (1968).

He wrote four more books on family therapy and on strategies for therapies to serve their purpose.

In addition to the published books, at least three articles are known with the signature of the Argentine doctor. Two of them were published in The Journal of Marital and Family Therapy.

References

1. Gehart, D. (2017). Mastering Competencies in Family Therapy. Cengage Learning.
2. Marley, J. (2013). Family involvement in treating schizophrenia. New York: The Hawort Press.
3. Minuchin, S. (2018). Families and Family Therapy. Florence: Routledge.
4. Rasheed, J., Rasheed, M., & Marley, J. (2011). Family therapy. London: SAGE.
5. Seligman, L. (2004). Diagnosis and treatment planning in counseling. New York: Kluwer Academic.