ABSTRACT
Family therapy has roots in social work, anthropology, and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Psychoanalytically based family therapy acquired a new richness through the influence of object relations theory and the willingness of some in the analytic community to acknowledge the value of a systems approach, particularly strategic and structural formulations. Every family has a natural developmental life cycle with identifiable and predictable phases and crisis points. Events and dynamics of preceding generations powerfully influence how a family handles the critical transition points in its development. Every family member has a largely unconscious, subjective life of attachments, thoughts, emotions, and representations of self and other that are experienced internally. Psychologist Ellen Wachtel suggests that in an integrated approach to family therapy, a psychodynamic formulation, rather than serving to pathologize a child or family, enhances the ability to make good sound behavior and systems interventions. As in all therapy, the relationships are altered from the very moment the therapist joins the system.
