Toward an Integrative Approach: Refiguring Essential Developments in Family Therapy

ABSTRACT It is highlighted that the application of general system theory (GST) – including the developments from the intrapsychic to interpsychic and the lineal to nonlineal perspective – to the family, consolidated the field of family therapy, itself. A limitation, however, was the excessive emphasis on the system as self-regulating; this emphasis also obscuring a sine qua non of this approach, namely, observation of interaction. Accordingly, it is recommended that an earlier name – one accentuating interaction and circumventing emphasis on self-regulation – the “interactional” approach, be retained as a more suitable designation of this approach. This development was followed by narrative therapy. In applying the narrative metaphor, though, narrative therapy incurs an error of logical typing by confusing: (a) the observer’s frame of reference (i.e., observing is subjective); with (b) inferences about another’s frame of reference (i.e., the intrapsychic perspective). This, with an unsubstantiated claim that the narrative metaphor is preferable to the system one, resulted in the developments of the intrapsychic to interpsychic perspective and the interactional approach being unnecessarily discarded. The interactional approach thus serves an extraordinary development; observing psychopathology as a communicational or interactional difficulty. Returning to narrative therapy, its emphasis – as an application of postmodernism – on the frame of reference constitutes an extremely significant contribution. Furthermore, its attention to meaning and interpretation reemphasizes the significance of the intrapsychic perspective. Also, narrative therapy’s sensitivity to the client represents a profound reemphasis of the significance of a humanistic, person-centered approach. Having refigured these developments, the paper concludes with reflections about a truly integrative approach.