PSYCHOANALYSIS AND FAMILY THERAPY

Psychoanalysis and Family Therapy Are Just Two of the Many Therapies Which Have Developed From the Psychodynamic Model of the Human Mind

Psychoanalysis and Family Therapy Are Just Two of the Many Therapies Which Have Developed From the Psychodynamic Model of the Human Mind

Introduction

In speaking of psychoanalysis one often refers to a therapeutic technique. One may also refer to a method of psychological investigation whose main aspects are free association and interpretation; or, finally, to a body of facts and theories (Freud 1951, 13). In this last sense, we would certainly consider as psychoanalytical any knowledge gained directly by Freud's method of investigation; but many of us would today consider analysis to include related procedures such as the application of psychoanalytic insights to data of direct child observation, a field which has grown in importance in the last two decades. The theories of psychoanalysis follow principles of systematization, as do theories in other fields. Freud, however, did not speak of analysis as a "system," but rather accentuated its unfinished character, its flexibility, and the tentative nature of a considerable part of it.

Family Therapy

Readers of recent journal issues, particularly in Australia and Britain, can testify to an unexpected psychoanalytic renaissance in family therapy (e.g. McFayden 1997, 241-262). Casting off a mantle of theoretical correctness, family therapists have taken back what was dismissed or split off in the founding of their discipline, namely things psychoanalytic. This integration has followed the political, cultural and feminist debates of the past decade, which have encouraged family therapists to deconstruct their own theoretical dogmas before critiquing other approaches to therapy, like psychoanalysis. What allows a common ground between family therapy and psychoanalysis today is a mellowing of foundational ideologies in both disciplines, an approach to theory as 'both/and' rather than 'either/or'.

In this context of theoretical diversity and respect for difference there is less need to maintain polarised epistemological positions; rather, theory: is grounded in the pragmatics of everyday therapeutic practice. Rigid theoretical boundaries between disciplines are deconstructed by eclectic and pragmatic practitioners in the field. As Derrida (1995) notes, conceptual or theoretical borders, for example, of' the kind, 'therapy is this/but not that', are 'codes that we cast like nets over time and space in order to reduce or master differences' (p. 19). Contemporary psychoanalysts and family therapists are currently less bound by the tradition of theory and more informed by an ethic of practice as dialogue and collaboration in the therapeutic encounter.

In family therapy this means that a systemic or social constructionist perspective does not have to exclude a psychoanalytic focus; indeed, such a narrative of exclusion is a power hierarchy in theoretical discourse that itself requires deconstructing. Or, using the terminology of Michael White (1995), the current dominant story of family therapy is increasingly derived from social construction theory; one way to deconstruct it is to bring out the alternative, hidden or subjugated psychoanalytic story. This tells of the rich inner psychological life (symbolic, unconscious and emotional) of the person in the ...