Psychoanalytic Family Therapy 01

Foundations

◆        Rooted in the “psychological self”

◆        Emerged in the 1980s in response to object-relations theory as a way to probe beneath family dialogues to explore individual family member’s fears and longings.

◆        Based in Freudian concepts (intrapsychic)

◆        Expanded by Nathan Ackerman

◆        Grew in proportion at the National Mental Health Institute in the 1950s.

◆        Brought to prominence by Jill and David Scharff in the 1980s at the Washington School of Psychiatry.


How it Works

◆        Method of therapy to discover some of the basic wants and fears that keep individuals from acting in a mature way based in the interpretation of unconscious impulses and the defense against them

◆        Human interaction is rooted in depth and complexity of psychic organization.

◆        Psychodynamic theory is useful to understand the self in the family system.

◆        Freudian drive psychology states that anxiety is rooted in unexpressed sexual and aggressive drives that children are taught to repress.

◆        The balance of this conflict should be shifted by either strengthening defenses or relaxing them to permit some         gratification.

◆        Self psychology
        o        Human beings long for appreciation.
        o        Acceptance from parents leads to strong self confident personalities