ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes the therapeutic principles of several widely practised models of family therapy, paying particular attention to the role that they accord to empathy in their formulations of the therapist's stance and of the therapeutic relationship. It expresses that these systemic models of therapy rely on empathy and attend to emotional states and to the therapeutic relationship to a greater degree than has hitherto been recognized by critics of family therapy. In California, Gregory Bateson and others developed the “communication” model of psychopathology, which emphasized violation of tacit rules of family communication, contradiction between levels, and dissonant feedback between “the organism” and its environment. The most influential of the early models of family therapy was Salvador Minuchin’s model of Structural Therapy. Jay Haley’s original strategic therapy, with its emphasis on family homeostasis, and his later version of problem-solving therapy, reflects a passionate mistrust, for ideas that do not lead to practical, change-oriented, hope-enhancing manoeuvres by the therapist.
