ABSTRACT
Family systems theory, like psychoanalytic theory, has often been confused with various therapies which are based upon it. In fact the definition of the word ‘therapy’ is the medical treatment of disease. Systemic thinking is indeed the basis of most family therapy models of intervention, as psychoanalytic theory is the basis of psychoanalysis and many (though not all) of the psychotherapies. These models are not essentially therapeutic models, but adaptations which allow their application in the form of interventions which are specifically designed within a particular framework or context. Because psychoanalysis, for example, was developed within a medical model, assumptions are made about symptomatology or malfunctioning. Family therapy, on the other hand, has been developed from a systems model, and while avoiding some of the excesses of the medical model such as the search for a cure, as is implied in some models of psychotherapy, nevertheless became incorporated into the medical model with its basic premise of healing. Although it is not the intention of
this book to provide a history of family therapy, it is necessary to point out that what are now known as ‘first-order cybernetics’ are relied upon as fundamentals by many family therapists, particularly those of the structural and strategic schools of family therapy; see, for instance, Minuchin (1974), Papp (1983), Haley (1987), Hoffman’s (1981) earlier work and that of many others.
