ABSTRACT
The central organizing thesis of the systemic paradigm is the focus on interpersonal relationships and the move to thinking about relationships as the cradle and web of human experience and development. This chapter considers both professional paths inter changeably when looking at the contribution systemic thinking and practice has made and can make to clinical psychology and the practice of psychotherapy. It suggests that systemic family therapy has progressed through three phases: systems theory and functional analysis, constructivism and social constructionism. The chapter introduces the concepts of the family life-cycle; repetitive generational patterns of behaviour; and family “scripts”. Psychology, including clinical psychology, has arguably been fundamentally concerned with the individual and intra-psychic states. This has included the study of cognitive as well as emotional states. Systemic theory offered an important conceptual shift in our understanding of human behaviour and experience. This has been described as a shift from linear to circular causation.
