MY THEORY OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY COUNSELING
Although I favor the general systems approach to marriage and family counseling, I tend to advocate an eclectic approach. In other words, I believe that general systems theory is large enough that it can be used as a conceptual foundation even when methods, and notions are incorporated into it from other psychological schools of thought.
I would say that my overall theoretical approach to counseling is multifaceted in that I have conceptual views not only about counseling goals, objectives and specifics (such as preferred therapeutic interventions and strategies) but also about ethical concerns, the training of counselors and pre-marital counseling. My views in each of these areas are delineated below.
I feel that the best approach to marriage and family counseling is general systems theory. This theoretical view characterizes marriage/family as resembling a living system. The theory views the marriage or family as an "open system" with the properties of:
(1) wholeness, in that whatever affects one part of the system affects the entire system;
(2) equifinality, in that an open system may attain a state independent of initial conditions and determined only by system parameters; and
(3) feedback, (that part of a system's output which is reintroduced into the system as information about the output and the process of the system) were feedback in the therapy context can be related to either to the maintenance of a characteristic state or to seeking new goals.
Another way of saying this is that I tend to view marriage and family counseling as the treatment not of any given individual or even groups of individuals but rather as the treatment of relationships among family members. When relationships are sound, open, and loving, the family system can be said to be functioning properly. However, when these relationships are closed or non-loving, the family syst...