Virginia Satir’s family therapy: its goals and uses

From her Mental Research Institute, Satir created a controversial Growth Model as therapy.

The family therapy of Virginia Satir, co-founder of the MRI in Palo Alto and in charge of training students at this institution for many years, had a great influence on the systemic-oriented interventions that appeared in the second half of the 20th century.

In this article we will analyze the main characteristics of the therapy proposed by Satir, we will describe his Growth Model and we will make a brief review of his biography and his work.

Biography of Virginia Satir

Virginia Satir was born in Neillsville, Wisconsin in 1916. During the Great Depression her family moved to Milwaukee leaving the farm where they lived so that Virginia, the eldest daughter, could study in high school. She later graduated from Milwaukee State Teachers College with a degree in education and worked as a teacher for a few years.

Satir later trained as a social worker; in 1951 she began to devote herself to this work, which would constitute the core of her professional activity. Shortly thereafter she began working at the Illinois Psychiatric Institute. During this period Satir's preference for family intervention (as opposed to individual treatment) was already well established.

In the late 1950s Satir co-founded the Mental Research Institute, commonly abbreviated as "MRI", in Palo Alto, Illinois.in Palo Alto, California. Other therapists who played a prominent role in the creation of this institution were Don Jackson, Paul Watzlawick, Chloe Madanes, Salvador Minuchin, R. D. Laing and Irvin Yalom.

The IRM was for several decades the fundamental core of American family therapy, especially when we refer to the systemic orientation. Satir directed the training of students, so the influence of her ideas on this therapeutic model was very significant.

Virginia Satir died in 1988. In addition to her contributions as a family therapist and as a social worker, which are summarized in the bookwhich are summarized in the book "Conjoint Family Therapy" (1964), Satir left a series of inspiring publications with a poetic tone through which she tried to help other people to develop to a greater extent as human beings.

Objectives of Satir's Growth Model

Satir's work was derived from his personal values and beliefs, which had a spiritual and self-transcendent character with remarkable similarities to the approaches of the humanistic psychological current. This author defined five general objectives in her Model of Growththe name she gave to her theory of psychotherapy.

Increasing self-esteem

For Satir the concept "self-esteem" refers to our deep perception of ourselves and includes consciousness. According to his approach, high self-esteem is related to the identification of the self with spiritual energy.

2. Empowering decision making

In this sense, one of the objectives of Satir's family therapy is the empowerment of patients so that they can make their own decisions in order to achieve a state of psychological and physical health.. Personal transcendence would relate to the experience of freedom of action.

3. Adopting Personality Responsibility

Satir argued that experiencing our self fully allows us to take responsibility for it and to truly know ourselves. Such facts would contribute centrally to the human development of individuals.

4. Achieving self-congruence

Personal congruence is defined as the harmony between an individual's experience and his or her "life energy".related to the transcendence of the self. In this sense, aspects such as authenticity and sincerity are important, both on the part of the client and the therapist, who should serve as a role model.

Principles of your family therapy

Five fundamental therapeutic principles have been identified in Satir's methods of intervention; we will focus on them in this last section. These keys must be present throughout the treatment, as they are necessary elements for therapeutic change.

Experiential methodology

This characteristic involves mainly two aspects: the full perception of personal experience and the re-experiencing of significant events of the past as part of the therapy. Satir stressed the importance of a hypothetical body memory as a useful tool for therapeutic change.

2. Systemic nature

Although systemic therapies are often are often understood as being basically focused on the family relationship, in reality the concept of "systemic" is not a "systemic" one.In reality, the concept "systemic" also refers to other interpersonal contexts, to the interaction between the past and the present and even to the organism itself as a whole.

3. Positive directionality

Satir stated that the therapist should help clients to perceive the world in a positive way, to achieve physical and psychological health and to develop their maximum human potential. For this it is necessary to generate a new interpretative framework for the experiences and to promote the use of personal resources instead of psychopathological aspects.

4. Focus on change

Satir's family therapy focuses on personal and interpersonal transformation.. To this end, she emphasized the usefulness of deep self-reflection questions at the individual level.

5. Therapist self-congruence

Congruence between the therapist's behavior and self is a necessary condition for the therapist to be able to help others to achieve their own. The client perceives this congruence through tools such as humor, metaphors, self-revelations and creative behaviors in general.