Family Therapy Approaches Research Paper

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Psychoanalytic therapy happens to be an in-depth conversational therapy whose objective is to accentuate the deep and unconscious feelings and thoughts held inside a person into their conscious mind (Altman, 2012, pp. 39-86). The aim is to ensure that the repressed emotions and experiences that are often associated with childhood are highlighted and evaluated. The client alongside their therapist work together in the attempt to understand how the early repressed memories affect the behavior, relationships, and thinking of the client in their adulthood (Psychology Today, 2019, pp.1).

Psychoanalytic family therapy happens to be a therapy founded on reasoning that any group of people that consider themselves as family in any culture has some level of interdependence existing between the individual units that make up the family. This is based on the generational hierarchy and role distribution within that hierarchy (Gale, 2005, pp.1). The family also has some subjective interdependence within it. The motivation behind the introduction of psychoanalytic family therapy was the difficulties therapist encountered in the treating some patients. Therapist became interested in the families from which these individuals came from. The families were considered pathogenic. The therapist examined the mental patient and the family as a unit and highlighted their specific functioning modes (Gale, 2005, pp.1).

Experiential family therapy was defined by Kempler (1965) as the psychotherapeutic method of treating patients who are emotionally disturbed within the family context (Kempler, 1965, pp.57). Experiential therapy is concerned with the exploration of the how and what of thou and I in the now and here. The fundamental concept of this approach is accepting the crucial relevance of the present, immediate, and the whole as opposed to excluding perspective but establishing the central point for which the perspective is related readily (Kempler, 1965, pp.57). Family context in therapy has been explicitly and implicitly identified as an important component of therapy just as the remote context of economic, social, national, and ethnic status of the client. Many therapists used to assume that therapeutic treatment could only continue beneficially if the patient would temporarily divorce themselves from their familial environment during therapeutic interviews (Kempler, 1965, pp.57).

Individual therapy has always had subjective advantages. These subjective benefits in many cases are exceeded in importance by the benefits that come from using an approach that unites the therapist with the family. Therapy sessions are often artificial in their atmosphere and arrangement. An individual therapy session dignifies the patient with some sense of importance accentuated through the therapist’s undivided attention (Kempler, 1965, pp.57). The client is removed, for a moment, from the counteraction and ordinary actions of their daily life. According to Tuttle (1998) experiential therapy happens to be a form of therapy that uses intuitive methods utilizing multisensory and active techniques (Tuttle, 1998, pp.167).

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The techniques used may include drawings, role playing, guided imagery, props, and other experiences that are active in nature. These techniques help surface new information (Tuttle, 1998, pp.167). The increase of new information will stimulate growth and change in the system of the family. These techniques are useful more so when more verbal and traditional based communication is assessed as not effective (Tuttle, 1998, pp.167).

Kingdon and Mander (2015) define CBT (Cognitive behavioral therapy) as…

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…on the family situation for the purpose of understanding the context within which their emotional disturbance is rooted. There is a lot of similarity between psychoanalytic and experiential family therapies. The only major difference is the approach used by the therapist. In the case of experiential family therapy the therapist results to using multisensory and active techniques because the verbal and traditional based communication have been assessed as not effective.

The various models of family therapy can be used to address the problem of poverty and trauma in various ways. For instance psychoanalysis and experiential therapy can be used to discover the emotional distress and functional problems that emanate from the pathogenic nature of the families. Furthermore, CBT can be used to identify and treat the problems of depression and anxiety and moderate behavior and thinking patterns in a person. Strategic family therapy on the other hand can be used to address leadership issues within the family context by identifying the issues and addressing them. Unlike an individual therapy like CBT family therapies in psychoanalytic, experiential, and strategic family therapies ensures there are balanced benefits that come from uniting the therapist and the client’s family. This way the client problems are viewed with a family lens hence making it possible to identify and solve the pathogenic childhood problems. By so doing the trauma within the individual is dealt with and the mentality that has dragged the entire family into poverty is solved. It is important to understand that poverty is a generational state of mind inherited from the family. A therapist can help a patient overcome the state of….....

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