Systemic · Overview of the schools
Systemic therapy: the different approaches explained simply
What are the different approaches in systemic therapy? Here are, in a simple and concise way, a few landmarks on the major schools that make up the systemic current in therapy.
Speaking of “systemic therapy” in the singular is almost a shortcut: the systemic current grew into several schools that share the same relational reading of problems, but each engages with it in its own way. Here are three of the most significant.
1
The strategic approach
Born in the wake of Palo Alto, it focuses on what keeps the problem going — starting with attempted solutions — in order to aim for concrete change. A detailed presentation can be read here.
2
The structural approach
Associated with Salvador Minuchin, it reads the family as an organisation — boundaries, hierarchies, alliances — whose structure can be reshaped. It is explained simply here.
3
The Milan school
Around Mara Selvini Palazzoli and her team, it renewed family therapy through hypothesising, circularity and neutrality. Its story is told here.
Other schools and sensibilities further enrich this landscape. To go deeper, two reference works in French: Dans le dédale des thérapies familiales and Panorama des thérapies familiales.
I present this overview of the major approaches in the video below, in French.
How to cite this article
Besse, J. (2022, September 12). Systemic therapy: the different approaches explained simply. Complexe Systémique. https://app.complexe-systemique.com/en_GB/articles/systemic-therapy-the-different-approaches-explained-simply
To go further
- What is the systemic approach in psychology?The common ground of all these schools: thinking about problems in terms of relationships and systems.
- What mathematics brought to psychotherapy: cybernetics and the systemic approachCybernetics and its successive waves, at the scientific origins of the systemic current.
- The therapy that destabilizes: Carl Whitaker's symbolic-experiential approachA school that relies on lived experience in the session, even at the risk of unsettling the family.
- The Rome school of family therapy: understanding the symptom differentlyAnother great European school, which proposes to understand the symptom differently.
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