Terapia familiar sistemica pdf minuchin Continue Family therapy Heloisa Szymanski Ribeiro Gomez Professor Depto. Psychology of the Catholic University of Santos - SEME Therapy SP is a new form of work in our country, although already adopted about 30 years ago in North America and Europe. This is a new offer to participate in both parents, children and even grandparents and uncles, and, if necessary, even neighborhood and school groups (Speck and Attneave, 1976). The reason for the inclusion of the whole family in the treatment of adjustment problems is based on the fact that what happens in a person living in a family, not only because of the internal conditions for him, but also because of the intensive exchange with the wider context in which it is inserted. It not only gets the impact of this environment, but it acts on it, influencing it. In this approach, the terrain pathology, as Minuchin (1982) says, is a family. In a dysfunctional family group, the ways of interaction between its members crystallize either in the form of distancing or excessive interference in each other's lives, forming alliances between one member, leaving others peripheral, or turning others into scapegoats (usually a child). Symptoms such as poor school performance, aggressiveness, depression are treated as own symptomatic individuals, and this is seen as an isolated case. Against this background, sick families are gradually failing in their basic family functions (Carneiro, T., 1983). In terms of communication, the symptomatic family loses itself in criticism, accusations, silence, double messages: there are many difficulties in putting each other in place and rigidity in trying new ways to solve problems. In terms of structure, roles are poorly defined, with children playing paternal roles and parents forming alliances with children, excluding another member of the couple. From a dynamic point of view, it is often difficult to assume the role of parents with their responsibilities and limitations, as well as difficulties in setting family goals and organizing them. (Weitzman, 1985). Thus, the symptom of one of the family members is accompanied by dysfunctions in other areas of the relationship and the participation of other family members. With this in mind, in a therapeutic situation we are working with the royal family, now, in search to uncover the relational aspects that empower effective communication and the healthy development of its members. Symptoms are considered to have both individual and social function in the family group and constitute a complaint that something is going wrong in this group. As therapists began to deal with family as a therapeutic unit, other aspects inherent in family life, aspects that cause and which have been forgotten (Satir, 1980). The therapist's job is thus to look for these symptom-causing aspects by focusing on other relationships in the family, taking into account the changes that favor the family as a whole and each individual member. When the family begins to experiment with new ways of communicating, the symptoms tend to disappear. This work does not preclude the possibility of bringing a particular participant to individual work when it is determined that a deepening is needed, as well as a change at the individual level. Over time, several approaches, or family therapy schools, were developed that typically had two main roots: system theory, information and cybernetics, and psychodynamic theories. In the systematic approach, Gregory Bateson has made a great contribution to understanding communication processes. With Bateson, and a group that graduated to study schizophrenic families (Don J. Jackson, Jay Haley and John H. Weakland) began a systematic focus on exploring families who today presents themselves with different nuances, according to several authors. However, the basic idea is still to abandon the linear, causal, historical explanation of mental disorder and the focus of interrelacies, where information manipulation and the nature of relationships are the main explanatory elements. In this theoretical view, the way of communication, and the effect of one's behavior towards another in the family, acting and retro, are elements that need to be considered when trying to explain both the dynamics of the family and the deviation of behaviors and the result of emotional problems. Families are seen as living systems in which ... particular expression or acao (seen) as part of an environmental subsystem called context, not as a product or effect of what remains in context after the part we want to explain has been cut from it (Bateson, 1978). Thus, every action and reaction changes the nature, the field where they occur. The meaning of the symptom, in this approach, is changing radically. Insidious, irrational or symptomatic behavior serves as a function in a group in the sense that the behavior that occurs in the family system has a common complementarity (Dell, p. 2141). Thus, to disappear the symptom is not enough for symptomatic members to change - its change will occur only if a number of other (not always desired) changes occur within the family system. These changes are not desirable because they imply changes in the different subsystems of the family - couple, parents, fraternal group, grandparents - and the family system tends to have a homeostatic balance where everything to make sure that everything remains as it is. Example (and simple simplification): often the symptom of a child (fear, for example) can disappear if the couple changes the way they relate to each other (looking for approximation, for example). Since the couple is not always willing to do so, the symptom of the child performs the function while at the same time keeping the parents united in their care for him, and from a closer relationship with each other. Of course, this process does not take place voluntarily, on the part of parents and children, but eventually crystallizes in the form of relationships that resist the attempt to change. From the point of view of system theory, theoretical models and therapeutic practices have been developed that can be classified in different ways (Hoffman, L'Abbate and Alia, Madanes, Sluzki). There are those authors who emphasize the structural aspects of the family system: the limit (i.e. the rules of participation) and the hierarchy (i.e. the rules of power), (L'Abbate, Frley, Wagner). A family structure is an invisible set of functional requirements that organizes ways family members interact. It was Mnuchin who proposed this structural approach and developed his theory by analyzing the trans-transactional models that develop among the different subsystems of the family: parent, fraternal, marital. According to him, symptomatic behavior has the function of maintaining the rules of interaction that control the establishment of boundaries and hierarchies, and, therefore, the maintenance of the pathology of the family. The purpose of therapy, in this model, is to: a) restore the possibility of negotiations between family members regarding the use of power, avoiding intergenerational alliances (father with child, mother and son, grandmother and grandson) and b) reorganizing the boundaries between different subsystems, pointing to insufficiently rigid boundaries, or diffuse, and working to make them more suitable. Another model, also in the system approach, is a strategic challenge model that focuses more on the process than on the family structure. He suggests that there are powerful and controlling family rules for family members to avoid change. Therapeutic intervention occurs through strategies that aim to break these rules, through prescription symptomatic behavior, or not. The symptom recipe has its theoretical basis in mathematical group theory and in the theory of logical types (Watzlawick, Beavim, Jackson, 1981). Paul Watzlavik, Jay Haley, Jay Slabland and R. Fish are prominent figures in strategic therapy. With many points in common with the strategic school, the school has developed sistêmica.com milan group: Mara Selvini Palazzoli, Juliana Prata, Luigi Boscolo, Gianfranco Cecchin. For these authors, there is a reframing the situation by giving a positive tinge to the symptom by prescribing it. Thus, at the expressed (verbal) level there is a directive on non-change, but on a non-verbal level there is a proposal for change - which is the purpose of therapy. This is a therapeutic proposal that, to be mastered, requires teamwork and a good period of specific training, as of course requires any other therapeutic work technique. In addition, from a systemic point of view, some authors (Speck, Attneave) have developed what Hoffman calls an environmental model in which therapeutic work with families goes beyond the nuclear family, including neighborhood groups and extended family (family of parents of origin). The systematicization of this model was the result of mental health work with economically disadvantaged communities that health professionals with a holistic view of mental health issues needed. This environmental model for crisis management requires a combination of biological, psychological, social and environmental factors. In addition to schools that have evolved from a systemic paradigm, there are also those called psychodynamics that have evolved from the work of therapists who, although not necessarily associated with psychoanalytic practice, have adopted the form of procedures and interpretations that meet the psychoanalytic concept. Psychodynamic theorists of Klein orientation, for example, see the dynamics of the family organization as an expression of the intertwining of these different related object relationships (Meyer), in the family view, is very different from the systemic ones we have seen above. They are also different from them in terms of the goals to be achieved, because instead of promoting immediate change in the context where the problem arises, they are aimed at the individual growth of family members. The therapist, in this approach, works with the memories, feelings and emotions of the past; directives are not given and the therapeutic process takes a long time.