Salvador Minuchin: biography of this pioneer doctor in family therapy

From humble origins, this forerunner of the family therapy he never stopped carrying out his work as a therapist and teacher of other future professionals who sought to follow his model.

Minuchin's extensive career in the field of psychotherapy allowed him to develop a new model of therapy, known as structural family therapy, originated in his work as a therapist with families unstructured.

In this biography of Salvador Minuchin we will review the life of this researcher and the complete work performed by this Argentine psychiatrist in the field of family therapy.

• Related article: "History of family therapy: its stages of development and authors"

Brief biography of Salvador Minuchin

Salvador Minuchin was born on October 13, 1921 in the city of San Salvador, in the province of Entre Ríos (Argentina), in a family belonging to a close-knit community of Jewish-Russian immigrants. He was the oldest of the three children his parents had, who made a living from a small local store.

His family went through numerous financial difficulties due to various socioeconomic changes that occurred in the country, he even lost his business after the great financial crisis of 1929, known as the Great Depression.

For this reason, his father had to dedicate himself for a time to work as a horse driver. Meanwhile, Minuchin collaborated with her mother in her work as a seller of all kinds of products. Years later, an uncle of Minuchin rescued the family business, becoming the ringleader, instead of Minuchin's father.

Notably Despite all the financial hardships that Salvador Minuchin's family went through, he and his siblings never neglected their studies., since his parents made sure that they never lost that opportunity that was going to be the one that would allow them to have a more prosperous future.

• Related article: "History of Psychology: main authors and theories"

Admission to the Faculty of Medicine at the National University of Córdoba

In 1940, after finishing secondary school studies, Minuchin enters the medical school of the National University of Córdoba (Argentina). While he was in his fourth year of university, the country suffered a military coup, leaving education under the control of the State, before being directed by representatives of teachers and students, for which several students who opposed were imprisoned, among whom was Salvador Minuchin.

After spending 3 months in prison, Minuchin was readmitted to the university, graduating in 1946, choosing the specialty of pediatrics.

• You may be interested in: "The 24 branches of Medicine (and how they try to cure patients)"

First stay in New York: making contact with child psychiatry

Two years after graduating, Minuchin's attention was drawn to the war conflicts that were taking place in Israel, which is why he decides to help the Israeli army by performing the work of a doctor.

After the war ended, Salvador Minuchin decided to travel to New York to continue training and thus specialize in child psychiatry, coming to work in a hospital with children suffering from disorders psychotic.

During that time as a worker in the New York children's hospital he met a child development psychologist named Patricia Pittluck, whom he married. Both worked side by side in their work as psychotherapists, helping each other to continue growing in the workplace and research.

• Related article: "What is psychotherapy? Main characteristics of this process "

Return to israel

In 1951, Minuchin He returns to Israel accompanied by his wife, in order to continue carrying out his work, even going so far as to co-direct five institutions focused on helping children who had been orphaned during World War II, as well as migrant children who came from from the Middle East and Asia, who had been received in residences belonging to the institutions he directed Minuchin.

In these institutions Minuchin learned a lot in relation to cultural diversity and this experience It allowed him to understand the benefit of working with groups rather than individuals.

Return to the United States

In 1954, Minuchin and his wife, as parents, returned to the United States again. It is at this stage that Minuchin He begins working with the psychiatrist who developed the interpersonal theory, Harry Stack Sullivan, at the William Alanson White Institute, where Minuchin developed his training as a psychoanalyst therapist.

• You may be interested in: "Harry Stack Sullivan: biography of this psychoanalyst"

Work at Wiltwyck School for Boys: origin of the development of structural family therapy

Three years after beginning his training with Sullivan, Minuchin began his work as a psychiatrist at Wiltwyck School for Boys, a an educational institute where young people who had suffered numerous conflicts in their lives and used to belong to families attended unstructured. There he immediately realized that working with these young people in a context such as that of the center and applying a series of psychological techniques it was not possible to help the young people and they obtained results at the long.

So Minuchin decided that it would be more appropriate to work with young people with problems in his family context and, after 8 years of long work with the help of his team of collaborators, developed a theoretical model on the functioning of unstructured families, coming to create a series of psychotherapeutic techniques that could help them.

In 1967 he published "Families of the Slums", where he explains everything he learned in his work as a psychotherapist with families and young people who came to study Wiltwyck, exposing the fundamentals of structural family therapy, a therapeutic model established by Minuchin and his colleagues. collaborators.

Structural family therapy postulates that an unstructured family organization supposes a support of the problematic symptoms of the young people, so the objective of psychotherapy is to intervene on those family patterns that result dysfunctional and reinforce other patterns that are more useful for the proper development of a family climate structured.

• Related article: "The 8 types of families (and their characteristics)"

Staying in Philadelphia: Growth of Structural Family Therapy

The reputation of Salvador Minuchin and his collaborators did not stop increasing until he got the position of director of a child guidance clinic in the city of Philadelphia (USA) UU.), A place that under his direction grew dramatically to become one of the most reputable family therapy clinics in the world.

Among his collaborators at the center, he highlighted the role of Braulio Montalvo and Jay Hayley; both took part together with Minuchin in the development and consolidation of the structural family therapy model.

When the year 1975 arrived, Minuchin decided to leave his position as director of the clinic to dedicate himself to teaching his model of psychotherapy to other professionals in many countries, so in the 1980s, structural family therapy became the most widely practiced systematic model.

Since Minuchin's clinic had an agreement with the Philadelphia hospital, he was able to work on numerous cases with families of children who suffered from various problems of a psychological nature, where he came to corroborate his theoretical hypotheses about family structures in which he postulated that children Maladaptive patterns within the family favored the development and worsening of the child's symptoms, which could be channeled again through the family therapy.

New stage in New York: founding of a family therapy center

In 1984 Minuchin settled again in New York, where he founded a family therapy center while continuing to teach his model of psychotherapy. to other professions.

There he studied the dynamics of violence and the recovery process of a multitude of clinical cases throughout various phases of the development of a family nucleus. He in turn was in charge of carrying out several projects to help disadvantaged families and to deal with young people who abuse some type of drug.

• You may be interested in: "The 11 types of violence (and the different types of aggression)"

Years of residence in Boston

The next move of Minuchin and her family is to Boston in 1996, the city where her children and her granddaughter resided.. During his residence in this city he is hired to supervise other therapists who work at home with families. It is as a result of his work that he publishes the book "Poverty, institution and family" together with Patricia Minuchin and Jorge Colapinto.

Florida residency: last stage of your life

Minuchin's last change of residence occurred in 2004, when she moved to Florida, where she continued teaching her family therapy model and in turn continued with his work as a disseminator on this model through books.

At 92, Minuchin continued her pedagogical work around the model of family structural therapy that she had been developing for more than 5 decades., when it started in downtown Wiltwyck (New York).

He died at the age of 96 in the town known as Boca Raton, located in Palm Beach County, in the state of Florida (USA). UU.), Leaving an extremely important legacy in psychotherapy and, more specifically, in systemic family therapy models, which endures to this day.

Most outstanding works of Salvador Minuchin

Next we review some of the main works on family psychotherapy developed by Minuchin in chronological order.

• "Families and family therapy", in 1979
• Together with Charles H. Fishman, developed "Family Therapy Techniques" in 1984.
• "Family kaleidoscope: images of violence and healing", in 1985
• Collaborating with Michael Nichols, "The recovery of the family: Stories of hope and renewal", in 1994
• "The Art of Family Therapy", published in 1998.
• Together with Patricia Minuchin and Jorge Colapinto, he wrote “Poverty, institution and family”, in 2000.