ABSTRACT
This chapter reflects the similarity between the micro-environment and the family. There is often the same protection from the outside world, interactiveness, ecological balance, and, ultimately restrictiveness. When the balance has been disturbed by forces acting within the micro-environment or impinging from the world outside the environment, homeostatic processes are set in motion to restore the balance. In the case of the family in which self-healing has failed, a point is reached when they are referred for or seek therapeutic help. The voices audible in the field of family therapy theory often appear to be saying different things. There are the ethologists, the systems theorists, and the psychoanalysts. Traditionally the Tavistock Clinic has occupied a position between the intrapsychic emphasis of the psychoanalyst and the interpersonal emphasis of the sociologist. Kurt Lewin, the expounder of field theory, clarified this approach. Later John Bowlby at the Tavistock veered increasingly toward the ethological view.
