Family Therapy Approaches

Family therapy is a branch of psychology that works with families and couples in intimate relationships to nurture change and development. It tends to view change in terms of the systems of interaction between family members.

Salvador Minuchin

Salvador Minuchin, MD, developed Structural Family Therapy, which addresses problems within a family by charting the relationships between family members, or between subsets of family. In 1981, Minuchin began his own family therapy center in New York. After his retirement in 1996, the center was renamed the Minuchin Center.

Virginia Satir

For almost forty years, Virginia Satir has practiced and taught psychotherapy. One of the founders of family therapy, she has co-authored four books and authored five. Additionally, there are a number of books about her approach. She was recipient of the Distinguished Family Therapy Award from the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy.

Carl Whitaker

Carl Whitaker, MD, was an American physician and psychotherapy pioneer family therapist. Whitaker is most well-known for acknowledging the role of the entire family in the therapeutic process. He is the founder of experiential family therapy, or the symbolic-experiential approach to therapy. Rather than scapegoating one family member or even a specific family problem, experiential family therapy looks at the entire family system. Several other approaches to family therapy have drawn heavily from Whitaker's theories.

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