SYSTEMIC THERAPY: ORIGIN, PRINCIPLES, SCHOOLS AND TECHNIQUES - PSYCHOLOGY - 2025

The systemic therapy is a type of psychological therapy that tries to solve all kinds of mental disorders not only putting the focus on the individual who suffers, but its surroundings and the groups they belong to. This approach arises from the application of general systems theory to the field of mental health.

The main idea behind this theory is that each individual is not isolated from their environment. On the contrary, your mental and emotional states will depend a lot on the groups to which you belong. The most important of all is the family; but others such as friends, the educational community or the workplace also influence.

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Systemic therapy has its origin in family therapy, but in recent decades it has developed beyond it. Today, it is a unique approach to solving both individual, family or couple problems. Her techniques pay special attention to solving difficulties, rather than focusing on finding the causes of them.

Systemic therapy has both supporters and critics within the world of psychology, but its popularity has continued to grow since it was developed. In this article we tell you everything you need to know about this therapeutic approach.

Origin

Early years

Systemic therapy has its roots in family therapy, especially in two schools of thought that developed in the 20th century. The first was Mara Selvini Palazzoli's School of Milan; and the second, the brief MRI therapy in Palo Alto, which was driven by thinkers such as Salvador Minuchín, Paul Watzlawick, and Arthur Bodin.

Its origins date back to the 30s, where it began to develop as a support to different fields of mental health and other related fields; for example, psychology, psychiatry, sexology, and pedagogy. Some of its first exponents were Popenoe in the United States and Hirschfeld in Germany.

However, many scholars mark the true beginning of systemic therapy in 1951, when John Bell, a Massachusetts professor of psychology, managed to successfully treat a young man with aggression problems working together with his entire family.

Discipline development

After Bell's success in 1951, many specialists tried to perform systemic interventions with different types of problems.

For example, Theodore Lidz was the first to study the role of the family in the development and maintenance of schizophrenia; and Nathan Ackerman did the same in the field of child psychiatry.

Later, in the 1970s, ideas were taken from the Palo Alto School and the idea developed that systemic therapy could be applied even if only one individual was in consultation. Later, the number of groups that were examined was expanded, also covering the partner, friends or work.

Finally, from the 1980s on, the focus began to focus more on what each experience means for each of the components of a group, than on the objective reality of what happens.

Thus, systemic therapy has become a postmodern approach focused on results rather than on explaining what happens.

Beginning

Like all forms of psychological therapy, the systemic approach is based on a series of fundamental ideas about how the human being works and why certain mental phenomena occur. Next we will see which are the most important.

We are a product of our environment

The most important principle of systemic therapy is the idea that people are not isolated entities. On the contrary, what surrounds us, and especially the people around us, exert a great influence on our way of being and behaving.

From the moment we are born, we belong to different groups. Among them, the most important is our family, but there are also others such as our circle of friends, our educational center, or our work environment. Each of these groups changes us and makes us slightly different.

Thus, the people with whom we usually interact provide us with beliefs, attitudes, thoughts and ways of acting that we adopt without realizing it.

In addition, the dynamics that form in each of our groups affect all areas of our lives in many different ways.

Due to this, systemic therapy focuses on understanding the dynamics that exist in each of our groups and tries to help us solve the problems that can occur within them.

The patient is the only one who can change

Contrary to what happens in other forms of therapy, in systemic therapy it is considered that the psychologist does not have all the answers.

Therefore, you cannot tell the patient what to do at all times; her role is to analyze the dynamics that occur within a group (usually the family) and help the client to change them if she wishes.

For this, the therapist will have to find the hidden ideas, the established roles and hierarchies, and the ways of acting that occur within the family group. Once they have been discovered, the patient can openly examine all of these issues and decide whether or not they want to make a change.

On the other hand, systemic therapy does not attempt to find culprits or sick people. Instead, the therapist helps patients to look for problem behaviors that they believe need to change, and guides them to find a more functional alternative.

The origin of the problems is seen as multicausal

In most traditional forms of therapy, psychological problems are understood as a direct consequence of a series of events, thoughts, or actions.

On the contrary, in the systemic the concept of "circular causality" is used to explain that the appearance of a difficulty is something much more complicated.

Therapists who follow this approach believe that the actions of each person within a group affect those of the rest, and that their behavior is constantly fed back.

For this reason, it is impossible to find an original cause to each problem: the difficulties remain due to the dynamics existing within the system.

Usually the whole system is treated

Contrary to what happens in other forms of therapy, systemic therapy usually tries to work with all members of the group at the same time. Although it is possible to carry out a process with just one individual, the change will be easier and more powerful if the entire system is present.

On the other hand, "subsystems" are also often used. For example, within a process with a family, the therapist may decide that it is important to do some session only with the mother and the child, or with the parents' relationship. This helps to identify problems that occur only between some of the parts of the group.

Schools

There are several versions of systemic therapy that are more or less widespread throughout the world. The most important are the School of Milan, the Interactional School of the MRI, and the Structural and Strategic School. Next we will see what each one of them consists of.

Milan School

The Milan School focuses on treating problems such as anorexia or psychotic disorders. According to Mara Selvini - Palazzoli, its main exponent, these occur due to the rigidity of the limits that are present within some families.

The main objective of this current of systemic therapy is to help families to establish healthier limits, to collaborate, and to normalize the situation of the member of the group who has the problem. Thus, he can learn to normalize his situation and the symptoms tend to disappear after a while.

The systemic approach of the School of Milan has proven to be quite effective in dealing with these types of problems. However, more research is needed on this before adopting it as the primary form of therapy to combat these disorders.

MRI Interactional School

The Interactional School, also known as the Palo Alto School, is made up of various researchers from the 1980s such as Paul Watzlawick, Fisch, Weakland and Segal.

It is one of the currents that most developed systemic therapy, although some of its ideas differ from those of other approaches.

The most important principle of the Interactional School is that the behaviors that maintain the problems were in the past ways of facing other similar situations, but that they have ceased to be functional in the present. However, these ways of acting have become unconscious and are very difficult to change.

Therefore, the main focus of the Palo Alto School is to detect and change these habitual ways of acting, so that the patient can break their behavior patterns and develop a strategy that is more effective in their present moment.

Structural and Strategic School

The Structural and Strategic School is formed mainly by the works of Salvador Minuchín and Jay Haley. These researchers believe that the main nucleus of problems in a family are the alliances between several members of a group against others of those who form it.

Therefore, the main objective of this school of systemic therapy is to find the alliances that have been formed within the group, and see if they are problematic or not.

If so, the therapist has to be able to offer participants alternative behaviors that help them resolve their difficulties.

Techniques

Despite the fact that there are different types of schools within the systemic approach, and that each therapy process is different, there are a series of techniques that are usually used on a regular basis. Here we will see some of the most important.

Family constellations

The constellation technique is a way to analyze the dynamics of a family or group without the need for all its components to be present.

The patient has to place various elements that represent the rest of the participants (such as drawings or human figures) in a position that shows the relationships between them.

Once all the elements have been placed in position, the therapist will ask a series of questions that will help the patient to analyze the relationships between the different members of the group.

At the same time, this process will also serve to discover what role he plays within the family, and to see what alternatives exist.

Exceptions and miracle questions

These two techniques are used to make the family or group reflect on the changes that need to be made to solve the problem for which they have come to therapy. The two have quite a few similarities, but the details vary slightly.

The "miracle question" technique consists of asking all members of the group what would happen if one day they woke up and their difficulties had been solved as if by magic. What would you change in your usual routine? How would you especially notice it?

The exception technique, on the other hand, consists of helping the group to find moments when the problem they usually have was not present, and to make them reflect on what was different in those situations. Both techniques help participants to identify the elements that need to change.

Circular questions

When there is conflict within a group, it is common for each of the participants to focus on their own feelings and feel misunderstood by the others. Therefore, one of the most effective techniques is the use of circular questions.

This consists of asking each participant questions that force them to reflect on what another member of the group is feeling, on their motives for acting the way they do.

Done correctly, this technique helps develop empathy between all participants and can lessen the intensity of conflict.

References

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3. “Systemic psychotherapy: What is it? And what is it like to do it? " by subway. Retrieved on: January 04, 2019 from Metro: metro.co.uk.
4. "Everything you need to know to understand Systemic Therapy" in: Psyciencia. Retrieved on: January 04, 2019 from Psyciencia: psyciencia.com.
5. "Systemic therapy (psychotherapy)" in: Wikipedia. Retrieved on: January 04, 2019 from Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org.