For those who are curious and want to undertake online psychotherapy using this method.
I would like to briefly describe systemic psychotherapy, its main assumptions in order to avoid problems in recognizing the form of work for psychotherapists and difficulties for you as patients with distinguishing methods.
I explain why this is so important:
For a long time, the most popular psychotherapeutic school was psychodynamic psychotherapy (known and supported in Poland). Everyone who knows about addiction psychotherapy and has been interested in sexology knows CBT as an effective method.
For those who are more searching, psychotherapy is primarily psychoanalysis, Jungian analysis, also behaviorism (parents encounter this school if, for example, their child needs help and it turns out that he suffers from autism spectrum disorders). They are also known in literature, also to people without psychological education.
Apart from them, there are such psychotherapies as psychotherapy through art (art therapy, music therapy, psychodrama, choreotherapy, bibliotherapy, fairy tale therapy). There are also Gestalt psychotherapy, humanistic and existential psychotherapy, which grow out of the knowledge of the lack of resources (slow birth and development after World War II).
We will also find currents related to spirituality. Of course, you can come across other, new methods, which systemic psychotherapy will probably use to some extent. However, these are the main family on which it is based.
Systemic psychotherapy may be unknown to many. If it evokes associations, it is mainly with family psychotherapy, couples and marriage psychotherapy and a few famous names who practice it.
So what is it really? Systemic psychotherapy deals with exploring knowledge about systems and structures, their elements and the influences between them and all the factors in them. It also draws attention to the effects of these mutual interactions. It may also apply to an individual when it is conducted as individual psychotherapy.
What does this mean? It is assumed that each element of the system affects the other and all at once (relationships are important), through feedback (e.g. a message), striving for homeostasis for this system, which does not necessarily have to take into account the well-being of each of the elements of the system. There may be negative effects for someone, e.g. in the form of mental or health disorders.
Families differ from each other in the way they build their system (dependencies are important here) and structure (boundaries), as well as in expectations, understanding of relationships and ways of communication (boundaries within the system and its dependencies).
Families also pass on knowledge, the so-called a transgenerational message that allows us to observe whether certain patterns of behaviour and even stories are repeated at the level of generations.
Within this message, one can come across myths. These are universal beliefs that are formed on the basis of observation and acquired in the course of family history. It doesn’t matter if you believe in them, but whether you know about them.
Frequent patients are very disturbed families, in which there are problems such as m.in. schizophrenia, anorexia, bulimia, personality disorders, suicide attempts, depression, guilt and harm, anxiety disorders (mainly the recurrence of these disorders or when children or teenagers start to get sick, showing that the family system is failing because they cannot leave the family nest. They can also be young adults).
In the course of such family psychotherapy, the figures of the deceased are also returned. All elements of the system are taken into account, including roles, responsibilities, forms of communication, the nature of relationships, whether there is violence in an area, delegations to a given responsibility, education, illness and whether young adults can leave the family nest.
During psychotherapy, the system is also examined with the help of a genogram, i.e. a graphic representation of the family tree from a therapeutic perspective, which has its own symbolism (legend). It is an element of confrontation and information where change can be introduced. It is also a form of intervention for a given system.
In the case of couples psychotherapy, the system is less extensive, as there are only two people in the session, but the other elements mentioned above are taken into account. An attempt is made to understand what is failing and why (message-relation-homeostasis/feedback-dependence-effect). Attention is also paid to the stages of the couple’s relationship.
The psychotherapist’s communication is based on questions, building hypotheses, intervening by naming the world told by the patients and trying to create a certain whole, a little unclosed, so that change is possible. Elements of gestalt psychotherapy, CBT tasks and art therapy, understanding psychopathology from the perspective of the psychodynamic method are used. It seems that the personality and interests of the psychotherapist are the key to his method.
In systemic psychotherapy , we also rely on knowledge about violence, its effects and ways of prevention. We also use psychoeducation if there is a need to explain phenomena in order to come to the best possible understanding of the patient’s world.
In the case of individual psychotherapy, the systemic approach is much closer to insight-support psychotherapy. Other methods are also used to help concretely, thinking systemically, and to look for the limits of a given person in communication. This type of psychotherapy likes to be simply eclectic.
In addition, systemic psychotherapy is distinguished by the fact that many of its elements indicate a certain postmodern attitude (something is created, but based on knowledge). An example of a method that has arisen within this paradigm is, for example: Bert Hellinger’s method, however, described as extreme and controversial.
To sum up a little jokingly, systemic psychotherapy is a method created as a result of the impatience of a group of psychoanalysts, and it is still evolving (because psychoanalysis can last for years!).
These basic elements for systemic psychotherapy are also the basis in my work with my method, taking into account an additional cultural element (i.e. cultural differences, religion, worldview, environmental, social and spiritual factors). This also includes an evolutionary and psychophysiological flair, trying to capture the factors influencing the construction of specific survival strategies in a given system in which dysfunctions occur.
I cordially invite you
Paulina Kubś, MA
Interventional Systemic-Cultural Psychotherapy Clinic
