ABSTRACT
Family therapy as a therapeutic approach in the UK has a complex interdisciplinary evolution, incorporating thinking from sociology, psychiatry, child development research, and communication research. Concurrently methodologies for observing and describing the interactions among family members, and between family members and the therapist, moved away from a focus on what was going on within people to a focus on what went on between them. Conceptualization in family systemic therapy, however, multiplied around theories of intervention into families rather than focusing on the lived experience of families. Object relations theory as well as attachment theory defines an infant as biologically predisposed to engage with other people. In systemic therapy, attention has long been paid to concepts of "privileged" and "marginalized" voices. The different power ascribed to different voices, and the cumulative effects of certain voices at the expense of others, can affect the ways a growing child perceives and reflects on himself.
