Family therapies
For whom are they for? What are the benefits?
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The family therapies present an attempt to support in psychotherapy several members of a family.
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Family psychotherapies are generally aimed at families in which one or more children have interaction, development or behavioral disorders, or serious eating disorders . They can also be recommended in the context of a parental separation or divorce and in custody issues in order to support the child in this ordeal.
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They are based on the principle that the troubled child is part of a troubled family itself as a whole. He/she is, in a way, the visible symptom of this family in difficulty.
It will therefore be necessary to address all the aspects of the interactions that regulate the complex functioning of the family group. It must be kept in mind that any group requires a certain stability to survive, and that touching one of its members can unbalance the others.
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The most commonly used techniques are either :
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Systemic therapies, founded in the USA, which are based on the so-called "system theory". They consider the family as a system, and seek to restore its balance by relying on theories of communication ;
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Psychoanalytic family therapies that use individual psychoanalytic concepts to understand the structure of interpersonal conflicts in action in the family group. They take into account the projection of the parents' unresolved psychic conflicts onto their child, who experiences them passively. And they consider the intervention of transgenerational conflicts : the unresolved conflicts between the parents of the suffering child and their own parents are often projected onto this child.
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Who should participate ?
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For better care, it is often preferable to meet all the family members, parents, brothers, sisters or even grandparents of the patient. At least during the first sessions. Then, the sessions will bring together the essential stakeholders of the family group.
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What is the process?
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