The Fundamental Concepts of Family Therapy

The Fundamental Concepts of Family Therapy Name of Student Institution Affiliation The Fundamental Concepts of Family Therapy Before the advent of family therapy, the individual was regarded as the locus of psychological problems and made the target for treatment. Family therapy has changed the approach with therapists considering how the problems may be, in part, a product of the relationships surrounding them. Family therapy involves treatment that queries to gain an understanding of what makes the family operate. Four fundamental concepts explain how families work; cybernetics, systems theory, social constructionism, and attachment theory. Cybernetics Cybernetics is has become the most influential model that explains how families operate. Cybernetics is the study of feedback mechanisms in self-regulating systems. It studies and analyzes the flow of information in a closed system. A family, like other cybernetic systems, tends to maintain stability by using information about its performance as feedback. Feedback is the output that affects the same action in the future to either change through positive feedback or maintains the status quo through negative feedback. The concept is referred to as the feedback loop which is the process by which a system gets the information necessary to maintain a steady course. All communication systems, including families, need a healthy balance of both positive and negative feedback to allow for successful survival and adaptation in the world. As applied to families, cybernetics focuses attention on: first, family rules, which govern the range of behavior that a family system can tolerate (family’s homeostatic range). Second, the negative feedback mechanisms that are used by families to enforce those rules (guilt, punishment, and symptoms). Third, sequences of family interaction around a problem that characterize a system’s reaction to it (feedback loop). Lastly, what happens when a system’s accustomed negative feedback is ineffective, triggering a positive feedback loop. Systems theory The theory h...