ABSTRACT
Family therapy is a mainstream, empowering approach to the problems of mental health for individual, couple and family functioning. Family therapy pioneers focused on the politics of language and communication. As this family therapy dance continued, the relationship expanded to include additional aspects of an interpersonal approach. Initially, pioneers turned to family process as the context and used the field of cybernetics as a lens for exploration. Ackerman from Russia and Minuchin from Argentina were psychiatrists who saw children’s symptoms as the tip of a relational iceberg. In comparing the history of psychoanalysis to that of family therapy, one major difference is that Sigmund Freud worked hard to control the narrative. Jay Haley’s unique integration of the influences resulted in a model that conceptualized the family in terms of organization but emphasized an unwavering focus on the presenting problem. Practically speaking, anytime people discuss how they communicate or what their interactional process involves, this is metacommunication.
