Name
Family Therapy
Synonyms
Family counseling; Family intervention
Introduction
Family therapy has been defined as, “a psychotherapeutic approach that focuses on altering interactions between a couple, with a nuclear or extended family, or between a family and other interpersonal systems, with the goal of alleviating problems initially presented by individual family members, family subsystems, the family as a whole, or other referral sources.” (Wynne 1988, p. 9). Central to the definition of family therapy is a focus on changing relationships and social interactions as a means to treating human problems (Doherty and McDaniel 2010). Family therapy rests on the premise that the family, as an interlocking set of relationships with repeated social interactions over time, is influential in the development and maintenance of individual problems. Family therapy may be differentiated from other psychotherapies by its emphasis on the system of interlocking relationships as a wholein...
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Carlson, C. (2019). Family Therapy. In: Lebow, J.L., Chambers, A.L., Breunlin, D.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49425-8_594
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