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

The systemic approach is the application of the general theory of systems in 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 components that emerge from them. From there 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 individual people, taking into account the different systems that make up their context.

Systemic therapy: another way to do 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 unspoken rules of that system and the interaction between its members.

Understanding disorders in a multicausal form

Until then, in the field of psychotherapy, mental illness was understood in linear terms, with historical and causal explanations of the condition. First the cause is looked for and later to go to treatment. The systemic therapy model (widely used in family therapy), observes the phenomena in a circular and multi-causal manner, therefore, linear markers cannot be established. For example, within a family, members behave and react in unpredictable ways because each action and reaction continually changes from the nature of the context.

Paúl Watzlawick was a pioneer in distinguishing linear causality and circular causality, to explain the various patterns possible repetitive interactions and marking a before and after in the interpretation of difficulties in relationships personal. The circular view of problems it is marked by how the behavior of one individual influences the actions of another, which in turn also influences the former.

Therefore, systemic therapy offers a circular, interactive view, within the system or group that has its transformation rules and controls itself through feedback phenomena to maintain a state of equilibrium. The components of the system come into relationship through communication, one of the keys to this therapy.

The beginnings of systemic therapy

Systemic therapy arises during the thirties as a support to professions in different fields: the psychiatry, psychology, pedagogy Y sexology. Although the movement started in Germany thanks to Hirschfeld, Popenoe he is the first to apply it in the United States. Later, Emily Mudd developed the first evaluation program in family therapy in Philadelphia.

John Bell, his most popular reference

Many claim that the father of modern family therapy is John bell, a professor of psychology at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, because in 1951 he conducted joint therapy with the entire family of a very aggressive young man and obtained excellent results. That is why in many bibliographic citations they mark this moment as the beginning of systemic therapy.

From here, many have applied and disseminated the principles of systemic therapy in different settings. For example Nathan Ackerman, in child psychiatry, Theodore Lidz specialized in working with families of schizophrenic patients and he was the first to explore the role of parents in the schizophrenia process. Bateson, who was an anthropologist and philosopher, studied the family structure of the tribes of the islands of Bali and New Zealand together with his wife Margaret Mead.

Brief therapy develops from systemic therapy

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

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 objectives in the shortest time possible, and has its origin in systemic therapy.

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

The praxis of systemic therapy

Systemic therapy is characterized as a practical rather than an analytical problem-solving approach. It does not matter so much the diagnosis of who the patient is or who has the problem (for example, who has an aggressive problem), rather it focuses on identifying dysfunctional patterns within the behavior of the group of people (family, employees, etc.), in order to redirect those behavior patterns directly.

Systemic therapists help systems find balance. Unlike other forms of therapy, for example psychoanalytic therapy, the goal is to address in a practical way current patterns of the relationship, rather than causes, as in this example may be the subconscious impulses of childhood trauma.