Family Therapy

1950

Nathan Ackerman (1908–1971), Murray Bowen (1913–1990)

Life in post–World War II America should have been a dream. After a Depression and then a world war, things began to return to normal. The economy rebounded, new houses in attractive suburbs were available at low cost, hundreds of time-saving household gadgets were invented, and television became the focus of family entertainment. A new room called the family room was created in suburban homes, and a new piece of furniture, the sectional couch, was invented to bring families together as never before. In this seeming paradise, family therapy emerged as a new form of treatment. There were several key figures in its development, chief among them Murray Bowen and Nathan Ackerman.

Family life, far from being a haven in a heartless world, was often experienced as oppressive, especially for women. Families were potentially the source of delinquency and Schizophrenia. As one popular TV program in 1959 cautioned, “Seeds of insanity could be lurking in your own home.”

Family therapy, sometimes called family systems therapy, positioned itself as the arbiter of family mental health and social relations. Since the family was seen as a system of interlocking relationships, the only way to treat it was as a single organism. Typically, one family member was perceived as the identified patient, the one with problems, but because this person was part of a system, the symptoms reflected the health or illness of the whole organism. To restore families to healthy functioning, the focus of treatment could no longer be the individual; rather, the entire family unit was brought into the therapeutic hour.

This approach to treatment was radically different from Psychoanalysis or such American psychotherapies as Client-Centered Therapy. In those, the problem was perceived to lie within the individual, and treatment was provided to help the individual adjust to the world. In family therapy, the focus was on the communication and interaction styles of the family together. Healing happened as the system—communication and relationships—improved its functioning.

SEE ALSO Client-Centered Therapy (1947), Gestalt Therapy (1951), Double Bind Theory (1956)

Photograph of John Atherton next to a brand-new television set in Eugene, Oregon, c. 1953. Around this time, television became the focus of family entertainment, and family therapy emerged as a new form of treatment.