Psychoanalytic Approach in Family Counseling (Research Paper Sample)

Psychoanalytic Approach in Family Counseling
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Psychoanalytic Approach in Family Counseling
Psychoanalytic approach was the most dominant paradigm of psychology that influenced counseling and psychotherapy and counseling in the first part of the 20th century. However, it was replaced by behaviorism and then by cognitive-oriented programs. Nevertheless, psychoanalytic theory has persisted in the 21st century in relation to family counseling. Family therapy has no collected works or standard edition. Many people would view this as the main strength of the movement of family counseling, which is not founded on a unitary theory, but is together in looking at human phenomena via a family pair of eyes (Brodiea &Wright, 2002).
A central picture normally rises between the interventions founded on communications theory and those based on psychoanalytic theory. One of the main objectives of reviewing family counseling approaches is to differentiate the approaches based on communications theory from methods that have an origin in psychoanalytic theory. One point that is often emphasized in many communication writings is that the approach is not based on repression theory (Brodiea &Wright, 2002).
Psychoanalytic approach
Family counseling is not a therapy related to bringing about self-understanding or lifting repression. Psychoanalytic approach to family therapy aims to express emotions and to bring about understanding and insight. These distinctions are based on topographical model of the psychoanalytic approach. The model is founded on classical instinct theory. Repression, within the model, might be viewed as holding in feelings, instincts, or emotions (Goldenberg & Goldenberg, 2013).
Psychoanalytic approach provides a different repression model through the object-relations view. Repression is perceived as a mechanism for keeping powerful relationships outside explicit arena of life. The goal of such repression is to ensure the remaining relationships are tolerable. Psychoanalytic model is based on a modification of the object-relations theory of personality. Another extrapolation of personality theory of object-relations is provided in relation to marital therapy. Primary goals of psychoanalytic approach to family therapy include preservation of self-integrity, separation, and exploration, and intimacy with another (Brodiea &Wright, 2002).
The implication of psychoanalytic theory is that the central task for a family counselor it to establish a setting in which repressed relationships can be re-experienced properly. Bringing aspects of intimate relationships that have been repressed previously into the current interaction orbit is not the same as encouraging free emotion expression (Goldenberg & Goldenberg, 2013).
The capacity of the family to accommodate change is likely to be promoted if they fulfill certain factors: the boundary development between the child and parent sub-systems, if the intensity of the parent’s intimate relationships can be more experienced, and internalized repressed relationships being safer in the interactional family arena (Cooklin, 1979).
Fulfillment of these factors is in line with the structural theory. The factors answer questions as to which painful intimate family relationships the children need to share during counseling. Precipitating the conflict between the parents and the structural methods of delineating the boundary between parents and children both tend towards the intimate relationship re-experiencing (Cooklin, 1979).
Strategic methods founded on the paradox may also produce the same results eventually, if they upset the system that keeps the repression of intimate relationships. Widely speaking, there are two distinct models to thinking about families and interactions. These can be an inside-out model that considers the internal family fantasy world and how it impinges on external relationships; and an outside-in model that takes account of the manner in which family members relate to each other and to the external world, and how it impinges on individual family members’ awareness, thoughts, and beliefs concerning each other (Cooklin, 1979).
One critical difference, in the developments in psychoanalytic theory, may be that it focuses on anything that pressures the external circumstances. The way of engagement is also significantly affected by how individual members of the family function internally. On one hand, that is, the tendency of the family to organize members around the intolerance of adversity and pain, and on the other hand, to organize the family members around the promotion and enjoyment of well-being and hope, whatever the external situation (Sklarew, Handel & Ley, 2012).
From the perspective of the psychoanalytic approach, which is derived from the Freud-Klein-Bion meta-psychology development in psychoanalysis, it is understandable that come modes of learning and thinking can become dominant with certain families. These patterns are founded on the processes of identification that operates within an internal reality. As a result, the understanding of family emotional nurturance and life may be viewed as widely organized under three general types of learning (Sklarew, Handel & Ley, 2012).
The learning types include learning from experience, learning from narcissistic mechanisms, and learning from a parasitic level. As a result of the fundamental differences between these types of learning, the personality growth is either opposed or facilitated, thereby impeding the development (Sklarew, Handel & Ley, 2012).
One of the implications of understanding mental life aspects is that it clarifies other phenomena related to the aspects, particularly countertransference and transference. For example, in a family where projective identification and splitting predominate, one would anticipate that unwanted states of mind or intolerable feelings will be situated elsewhere. What is observed in the therapeutic encounter is that countertransference and transference are current processes that actively use the counselor as an object where the unwanted states of mind are put (Oni, 1997).
The repetition is the reenactment of the way the family has had a relationship with the objects in the past. It infers that relationship patterns are not repeated for the sake, but because the family cannot or is unwilling to relate emotionally in a developmentally complex manner (Oni, 1997).
In psychoanalytic approach of family counseling, counter-transference is viewed as a significant source of confirmation of mastering the communications in the family. For example, if the family cannot tolerate aggressive feelings but rather projects such feelings into the therapists, then the counselor may observe a growing sense of aggression, in turn, towards the family and potentially reenact it (Goldenberg & Goldenberg, 2013).
One of the tasks of counselors, in the psychoanalytic approach on family therapy, is to determine what part of the object is being represented at any particular moment in the family mind. The task is fundamentally anticipated on the presumption that therapists have the capacity to maintain a sense of which they are within them, and has been a controversial aspect in counseling psychology (Prosky, 1998).
Psychoanalytic approach in family counseling also looks at the mother-infant relationship where the infant is in need of something other than the mother’s duty. The infant needs a mother who can feel the emotional disturbance and think about it in a more meaningful way. The emotional nonverbal interaction characteristic of mother and infant has become a core analytic relationship model. The knack is to feel the dread and still maintain a balance of mind, containment (Prosky, 1998).
Psychoanalytic theory attempts to explain both non-pathological and pathological behavior on the foundation of human innovation. Nearly all the main pioneers in family counseling were psychoanalysts. The theory viewed mental activity as the final product of the early interpersonal relationships of a person. It made it attractive, particularly for family therapy (Reiner, 2000).
The psychoanalytic approach in family counseling is based on understanding of transference as the externalization of internal elements that operate within the interpersonal domain, but evolves with time. Contemporary psychoanalytic family counseling approach holds that the family is a social unit where there are interpersonal rules. Members of the family are best evaluated when the family is viewed as one unit (Reiner, 2000).
While a functional family has a high degree of freedom from inflicted restriction by failures in development from original phases of the family members and family development, a dysfunctional family is burdened to a high degree with failures in family development. Counselors who are psychoanalytically-oriented operate on the presumption that partners in a marriage relationship are selected based on either complementary or similar developmental experiences or failures. It can be, specifically, earlier patterns of father-child and mother-child relationships are linked to oedipal and pre-oedipal patterns (McWilliams & Malette, 2004).
The earlier patterns of father-child and mother-child relationships regulate early experiences of the marriage partners. The failures in the family development can come from various phases including traumatic events taking place in the partners’ childhood, traumatic events in the sphere of inter-generation, or traumatic events taking place in the early phases of the partners’ family life (McWilliams & Malette, 2004).
Psychoanalytic family therapists hold to the notion that a family is a system just like other family therapy orientations. The psychoanalytic approach uncovers repetitive inte...