Different Approaches in Family Therapy

Cybernetics in Family Therapy Family therapy as it is known today has a long and convoluted history. From the days of Freud and Jung, there was a general believe that the individual was solely responsible for whatever has gone wrong in the psyche. Hence, all therapeutic interventions have focused on the individual relationship between therapist and individual. This has been the basis for psychiatric intervention for decades and still forms the basis for many therapies today.

In addition to the basic Freudian and Jungian analyses, therapies today include newer philosophies such as seeing the therapy recipient as a "client" rather than a "patient" and regarding the person as a kind of equal with whom to build a therapeutic relationship in order to achieve optimal results. The dynamic of psychotherapy interventions have evolved since the 1920s to include not only an acknowledgement of individual inner conflicts, but also the influence of society and ecology on the individual psyche.

In addition, the rise of systems theory during the 1940s and 1950s has had a significant impact on the therapeutic relationships. The rise of theories relating to systems, cybernetics, communication theory, and the role of the personal ecology brought a new dimension to psychoanalysis, which initially recognized only the individual and his or her personal inner conflicts and psychoses (Cook, 2006). This kind of thinking was challenged by the rise of systems theory, which brought about a new type of thinking about human relationships within various systems of interaction.

Hence, a paradigm that reigned supreme for some thirty years was challenged during the 1940s and 1950s by a new acknowledgement of how the human mind functions in relation to the systems of which it forms part. Hence, the social context was regarded as an important part of psychological functioning. In this, the anthropologist Gregory Bateson is considered the most important figure to influence family therapy in terms of systems theory (Dallos & Draper, 2010).

Bateson developed a theory according to which the mind could be explained at the hand of externally influencing factors such as family and society. For the first time, systems theory has created the impression that an individual's psychological disorders and difficulties do not occur in isolation. Instead, the individual's family and wider relationships more often than not have an impact (Fromme, 2011) www.sagepub.com/upm-data/35408_Chapter1.pdf. For this reason, family therapy has become one of the norms in treating severe psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and depression.

In this way, families have been acknowledged not only as impacting mental illness, but also impacting the healing process (Goldenberg & Goldenberg, 2013). Initially, the assumption was, much like in individual therapy, that the therapist stood external to the family system being treated. The therapist was the "expert," while those in therapy were regarded as being subordinate to the expertise and the treatment. This was known as first-order cybernetics. The individual's social context was acknowledged in terms of influence and the therapy process.

However, the therapist him- or herself was not acknowledged as such. Indeed, the role of the therapist in terms of power, gender, ecology, history, and culture was largely ignored, much like the influence of the social system was ignored in the past. On this basis, there was a more recent development of second-order cybernetics. This type of cybernetics acknowledges the therapist as inseparable from the system being observed.

As such, like the evolution of the individual therapist as a partner to an individual client, the therapist within the second-order cybernetics is regarded as part of the narrative being constructed about the challenges faced by the therapeutic system (Chapter 1, n.d.).

In one perspective, the family is regarded as a "language system," where the therapist is not regarded as an entity outside of a system that needs to be "healed." Instead, the therapist is part of the integral communication process in order to gain clarity about how to achieve improvement. Hence, both the family and the therapist regard themselves as part of the same system, exercising mutual influence upon each other.

To some degree, first-order cybernetics is somewhat less convoluted, since it offers the therapist the opportunity to observe a system from an assumed external level. As external party, it is "easy" to diagnose problems and offer assistance (Atkinson, 2015). As part of the system itself, however, things become a little less clear cut. The therapist must use the narrative and influence of those around him or her to help not only the therapist, but the system as a whole to establish a road towards the equilibrium that is the ideal.

When considering the current directions of therapy for individuals, where the client is acknowledged as a partner in the healing process, second-order cybernetics appear to be the more realistic course of action. Appealing though it may be, no system is isolated from any other, particularly in family therapy (Wright, 2002). There is continuous mutual influence on the part of both the therapist and the clients. Hence, the therapist becomes somewhat vulnerable in order to enter the world of the systems he or she is trying to influence towards a healing dynamic.

In conclusion, I believe.