Systemic therapy: what is it and what principles is it based on?

Everything you should know about this type of psychological therapy.

The systemic approach is the application of the general theory of systems to 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 perspective, where the important thing is the relationships and the relationships between the different disciplines.where what is important are the relationships and the components that emerge from them. From this 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 individuals, taking into account the different systems that make up their context.

Systemic therapy: another way of doing therapy

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 tacit rules of that system and the interaction between its members.

Understanding disorders in a multicausal manner

Until then, in the field of psychotherapy, mental illness was understood in linear terms, with historical and causal explanations of the condition. First one looks for the cause and then moves on to treatment. The systemic therapy model (widely used in family therapy), observes phenomena in a circular and multicausal way, therefore, linear markers cannot be established.. To give an example, within a family, members behave and react in unpredictable ways because each action and reaction changes continuously from the nature of the context.

Paul Watzlawick was a pioneer in distinguishing linear causality and circular causality, thereby explaining 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 is marked by how the behavior of one individual influences the actions of another, which in turn also influences the first.

Therefore, systemic therapy offers a circular, interactive visionWithin the system or group, which has its own rules of transformation and controls itself through feedback phenomena in order to maintain a state of equilibrium. The components of the system enter into relationship through communication, one of the keys to this therapy.

The beginnings of systemic therapy

Systemic therapy emerged during the 1930s as a support as a support to professions from different fields: psychiatry, psychology, pedagogy and sexology. Although the movement started in Germany thanks to Hirschfeld, Popenoe was the first to apply it in the United States. Later, Emily Mudd developed the first family therapy evaluation program in Philadelphia.

John Bell, his most popular reference

Many people claim that the father of modern family therapy is John BellBell, a professor of psychology at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, who in 1951 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 this point on, many have applied and disseminated the principles of systemic therapy in different fields. 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.

Brief therapy developed from systemic therapy.

Since the beginning of the 70's, it was suggested that the systemic model could be applied to a single individual even if the whole family did not attend.and that it represents a development of brief therapy of the Palo Alto MRI.

The Brief Systemic Therapy is a set of intervention procedures and techniques that aim to help individuals, couples, families or groups to mobilize their resources to achieve their goals in the shortest possible time. and has its origins in systemic therapy.

In the mid 1970s, a group formed by Paul Watzlawick, Arthur Bodin, John Weakland and Richard Fisch, established the "Center for Brief Therapy". "Center for Brief Therapy".. This group developed what is now known throughout the world as the Palo Alto ModelThis group developed what is now known worldwide as the Palo Alto Model, generating a radical change in psychotherapy by developing a brief, simple, effective and efficient model to help people bring about change.

The praxis of systemic therapy

Systemic therapy is characterized as a practical rather than an analytical problem-solving approach. It is not so much concerned with the diagnosis of who is sick or who has the problem (e.g., who has an aggression problem), but rather focuses on identifying dysfunctional patterns within the behavior of the group of people (family, employees, etc.) in order to redirect these patterns directly. (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 aim is to address in a practical way the actual patterns of the relationship, rather than causes, as in this example may be the subconscious impulses of a childhood trauma.