“One Is a Fiction”: Family Therapy Is Social Psychiatry (original) (raw)

2024, FTA Newsletter

The smallest indivisible human unit is two people, not one; one is a fiction. From such nets of souls societies, the social world, human life springs.-Playwright Tony Kushner Family therapy has an intimate relationship with social psychiatry because the family is the basic unit of society. The family is the bridge between the individual and society. For every child, the family is their vehicle for socialization. John Bowlby demonstrated that family attachments create "a secure base." From this secure base, the multigenerational family shapes society. It's a circular process: the family affects the child, the child affects the family, and together, they both affect/are affected by their community and, eventually, the larger society. Here's what we learn from the relationship between family therapy and social psychiatry: Family relationships form the basic "unit" for individual growth and relational well-being while society is the largest "envelope" or "frame" for shaping and understanding human beings.

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