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Family Resources

Psychology Degree Guide: Resources for Families

Mental health problems can be a strain not only on the individual patient, but on his or her family as well. And often, whole families can be called in for counseling to ensure harmony among all parties. In this guide to psychology resources for families, we examine the relationship between psychology and family, and light the way to links to help families deal with psychological issues.

Family Therapy

While therapy is often thought of as an individual exercise, it can be practiced on a family level as well. Family counselors work with couples and with families to resolve problems on a group scale. In the United States, family therapy methods are at present the second most popular technique for working psychotherapists; only cognitive-behavioral therapy has more adherents.

The history of family therapy can be traced back to the early 20th Century, when the field of marriage counseling emerged as a profession. The American Association of Marriage Counselors (the forerunner of the modern American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, the principal professional organization for family therapists) was established in 1942. In the ’50s and ’60s, psychotherapists became strongly influenced by new theories being developed in cybernetics and semantics, and family therapists took up this mantle. Theories were developed about the role of communication within the family and the family as an organizational unit. In sharp contrast to this model, another group of therapists began to apply the psychoanalytic model to the family as a whole. These therapists were far more interested in subconscious drives and subjective feeling than in the cool formulas of semiotic and functional theory.

In the 1970s, both of these models entered into crisis. Influenced by both overwhelming empirical evidence running counter to pre-existing models and by feminist critiques of academic psychology, psychotherapists began to revise their approaches. At present, a diversity of methods are used by family therapists. Some are strongly influenced by cognitive-behavioral therapy, others are more influenced by psychoanalysis, and others are interested in a transpersonal, holistic style.

While family therapists may meet with patients on an individual basis, they generally prefer to meet the family as a group. Much as the individual-scale psychologist deals with the processes at work inside the individual mind, the family therapist deals with the processes at work in the family. Consequently, they need to observe the dynamic between the various family members.

The Family’s Role in Individual Psychotherapy

Even in individual psychotherapy, the relationship between the patient and the family plays a major role. In the determinations of classical Freudian analysis, the relationship between mother, father, and child is critical to the development of subconscious drives. To a Freudian, our present neuroses are a direct result of complexes developed during childhood and psychosexual maturation.

In other forms of therapy more rooted in one’s conscious life, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy, interpersonal therapy, and Rogerian therapy, the individual patient’s relation to his or her family plays a major role. The family plays a major part in the context of the patient, is a major recipient of the patient’s positive and negative behaviors, and frequently figures into the patient’s mindset.

Further Reading and Resources

We’ve included resources ranging from the highly scholarly to the highly informal, with a focus on resources from professional therapists and academic psychologists. We’ve included professional organizations, educational sites, and peer-reviewed journals.

IMAGE: A San family in Namibia.  One of the many questions that family psychologists ask is whether family relations change across the variable of culture. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)