Goals of Family Psychotherapy

Family psychotherapy is a special type of psychotherapy aimed at correcting interpersonal relations in order to eliminate emotional disorders in the family that are most pronounced in a sick family member (Myager, Mishina). In other words, it is the psychotherapy of the patient in the family and with the help of the family. Satir under family therapy understood all the interventions that change the family system.
Currently, the boundaries between the various methods of family psychotherapy are being erased. Remaining at its core systemic, over the years of development, family psychotherapy has absorbed the positive aspects of structural, strategic, and cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy. For example, in structural therapy, as in behavioral, the starting point for psychotherapeutic intervention is the observation of the behavior of family members. In strategic family therapy, the formulation of hypotheses and tasks by the psychotherapist brings his position closer to the directiveness of the behavioral approach. The object of therapy is not only a disharmonious family, but also a family in crisis. It is important to find family resources, abilities and motivation for change, and focus on solving actual problems.
The common goals of different models of family psychotherapy can be summarized as follows:
- change in the family of a number of ideas (attitudes, assumptions) about the problem being presented;
- the transformation of the views of family members on their problem from the individual-personal to the systems approach;
- modification of channel permeability and boundaries between subsystems;
- creation of alternative models for solving problems through direct or indirect intervention;
- reduction of the emotional involvement of family members in the symptomatic behavior of one of its members;
- correction of various forms of hierarchical discrepancy;
- interruption of dysfunctional stereotypes of behavior taken from the parental family, bringing important “unfinished business” to the surface, opening family secrets, improving the communicative style between family members.