What is Family Therapy: Patterns of Living, Patterns of Mind and Patterns of Therapy

Abstract

When we approach a new model of therapy what do we want to know about it? The questions that students most frequently ask about how family therapy differs from other counselling or therapy point to three areas that loosely pull together a systemic approach. First of all family therapy looks at current context, what is going on in people’s lives now, as well as what has gone on before: the voices that continue to shout down the telephone or speak in a derogatory manner at Sunday lunch, as well as those voices from the past that are carried in a person’s head. Secondly it listens to the ways in which current relationships, as well as former relationships, come to form patterns and conversations in people’s minds, and therefore influence their beliefs and daily practices. Thirdly the way in which these inner and outer conversations are arranged, the importance the individual accords to each of them and the way some are privileged over others are seen as related to how individuals behave in their families, in their circles of intimate relationship and in wider social contexts.