Understanding Family and Couples Therapy:
What It Is and Why It’s Important

We are born into families, or in some cases, given to families when sadly we have none. Family can be the family you were born into, the family you create through marriage or partnering with another and the offspring you produce or adopt, as well as your chosen family of friends, co-workers, neighbors, advisors, and mentors.

Origins and Foundations of Family Therapy

Family therapy is an approach that originated as further development and alternate approach to individual therapies which, in academic terms, was “multidisciplinary.” Specifically, using insights from other fields of thought, for example sociology, anthropology, the study of communication, information processing, linguistics, and biology. Most significantly, family therapy originally integrated cybernetics (the study of systems that regulate and control themselves through feedback loops, encompassing communication, information processing, and control mechanisms in both living organisms and machines) and “biological systems theory.” This development resulted in a new and revolutionary approach to the treatment of mental health and substance use disorders in treatment resistant mental health and substance use/ abuse problems.

Seeing the Individual as Part of a System

Different than individual counseling or therapy, the “identified client or patient” is seen as an inseparable component of a system rather than just a separate detached individual. Sometimes treatment of the individual requires a wider and more encompassing vision of the client or patient to “see the forest and not just the trees.”

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”
-Aristotle

Systems theory strongly accepts and asserts this concept: “The system in more than the sum of parts of the system.” The system includes how the family operates as a unit and how subsystems or individual relationships within the family display unique dynamics or relationships.

The family system can be thought of as an biological organism of sorts. Like biological organisms adapt to differing circumstances, the family system organizes and regulates itself for survival to maintain homeostasis and equilibrium. The system self regulates in an automatic and unconscious manner

Focus of Systems-Oriented Therapy

Family or systems oriented therapy focuses on understanding and resolving problems within the context of relationships and broader systems, such as families, couples, or groups.It emphasizes how interactions and patterns within these systems influence individual behavior and well-being.

Instead of solely focusing on individual symptoms, systemic therapy examines how the system, as a whole, contributes to, and enables the client’s or patient’s problem and also my promote changes in the system can lead to resolution of unnecessary suffering.

How Systemic Therapy Differs from Individual Therapy

A systems or family therapy approach addresses these interpersonal dynamics and relational processes. As opposed to individual therapy, where the therapist’s focus is on intrapsychic - internal dynamics and belief structures, as well as, what is conscious and what is unconscious. Part of individual therapy is making the unconscious conscious.

A system approach identifies transactional patterns in the family system that may be dysfunctional and addresses and attempts to disrupt and modify these interpersonal processes and patterns. Some family therapists believe if the individual changes it will disrupt the system and the system my change. It is also true, if and when the system changes, it affects and changes the individuals to develop new more adaptive ways to manage life and relationships. This interpersonal approach reflects the radically holistic nature of systemic thinking.