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Mastering Family Therapy: Journeys of Growth and Transformation

Joan J. Zilbach, M.D.

As an educated general reader, I have read The New Yorker for more years than I can recall. In recent issues I recognize and appreciate the changes that have occurred, and I also experience some pleasure as I reminisce about the past. As a family therapist, I had a similar experience as I read Mastering Family Therapy: Journeys of Growth and Transformation.

I first met Sal Minuchin at a meeting of the American Association of Orthopsychiatry in the mid-1950s, at a roundtable gathering of therapists interested in treating families. This was a very new endeavor—the early stages of a fascinating journey for all of us. Among others around the table were Don Jackson, Lyman Wynne, Dick Auerswald, and Murray Bowen. The conversations were vigorous, intense, and at times contentious. We were embarking on a long journey, creating and developing the now large and well-recognized field of family therapy.

Structural Family Therapy, under the leadership of Dr. Minuchin, emerged early as a significant school. This school of family therapy has continued to grow and change, and the thread of that story path is woven into the text of this book.

Mastering Family Therapy contains personal and interesting recollections of Minuchin's journey. At the outset there is a brief discussion of the early history of family therapy organized in categories: "Activist Family Therapy," as practiced by Minuchin and his colleagues and Satir; "A Dissenting View," which describes Gregory Bateson and the MRI group, including Watzlawick; and the work of a few other major figures as summarized under the heading "Interventionist versus Restrained Therapy." These brief discussions of the past "masters" may not be clear or understandable to new students of family therapy. They are summary evaluations by Minuchin, and the omissions may be of interest to more knowledgeable and senior family therapists.

The main body of the book consists of nine interesting stories. They are best read as semi-autobiographical novelettes co-constructed by a supervisor (Dr. Minuchin) and his various supervisees. Some of the plots are more compelling than others. Minuchin as supervisor-playwright-storyteller and change agent is a dominating presence throughout the varying stories. Their titles ("The Feminist and the Hierarchical Teacher," "One Head, Many Hats," "The Poet and the Drummer," "The `Oedipal Son' Revisited," "Into the Crucible," "Confronting the Gorilla," "Men and Dependency: The Treatment of a Same-Sex Couple," "The Shit-Painter," and "Filling the Empty Vessel: Andy Schauer's Story") provide some indications of the flavor and variety of the plots. The co-storytellers/therapists also vary in character and experience, and they are usefully self-revealing in their portrayals of the supervisory/transformational experience.

The supervisory issues in these stories will be familiar to senior family therapy supervisors. Readers less familiar with Structural Family Therapy will benefit from the details of the supervisory process as experienced and described by both supervisor and supervisee. The intent of supervision, says Minuchin, is to produce "a complex, flexible therapist having a successful experience with a family in therapy." Later in the book this process is called the "self-transformation" of the therapist.

This emphasis represents a major change: the inclusion of and emphasis on the "self" of the therapist in the intricacies of family therapeutic interactions. The references to this change are intermingled with the stories. Structural Family Therapy has changed since the days of Minuchin's Families and Family Therapy,¹ which has become a standard text. This new book and other writings have been influenced by the recent emphases on social constructionism² and other developments in understanding self and therapeutic change.

The supervisory process occurs in a group, but there is little explicit attention given to understanding the group processes. This is puzzling, since Minuchin emphasizes the importance of the group: "[T]he supervisor uses his relationship with each supervisee, together with the group processes that he instigates as leader of the supervision group, as the mechanism to elicit therapist expansion" [my italics].

Mastering Family Therapy: Journeys of Growth and Transformation is an important historical document in the development of the field of family therapy. As Minuchin himself says in the epilogue, "I am a tinkerer, a meddler, a storyteller, some kind of playwright." I would add, "and historian." Enjoy the stories of this journey, which perhaps will expand readers' appreciation of themselves as family therapists.

Footnotes

Dr. Zilbach organized the first family therapy program at Judge Baker Guidance Center, 1960–1976. She is a faculty member of the Fielding Institute, Santa Barbara, CA.

References

1. Minuchin S: Families and Family Therapy. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1974
2. Gergen K: The social constructionist movement in modern psychology. Am Psychol 1985; 40:266–275

This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Zilbach, J. J. Search for Related Content PubMed Articles by Zilbach, J. J. Related Collections Other Psychotherapy