Introduction
Family therapy is a structured psychotherapy form seeking to reduce conflict and stresses through improving interaction systems between family members. Family therapy aims to treat a family unit to improve relations, communications, and dynamics within the family; this can then ensure harmony in the family life. As such, family therapy treats relationships without necessarily getting into a romantic relationship making it an ideal counseling method to help family members adjust and respond to each other. Licensed and trained mental health professionals like counselors, therapists, or psychologists use specialized family therapy knowledge to understand specific needs and circumstances and combine elements from various therapeutic approaches to meet familial needs. Family therapy theories function as a basis for family therapy modalities, identifying the most effective treatment forms. Such forms include family engagement as a single unit, treatment of the family through various lenses per day, separation of the family for individual treatment, or tackling challenges and situations when they happen. Various family therapy models can improve family relationships and create a home with stability and health. Depending on the model used, the sessions may be strategic (a few) or psychodynamic (many), and the techniques used depend on the family’s understanding during the assessment by the therapist. This paper defines and discusses the psychodynamic model, detailing the theoretical and developmental aspects, the Biblical view, and the functional aspects of family therapy.
Psychodynamic Model
This model of therapy is based on the therapist’s understanding of the dynamics of the various family members and the interrelationships they have with each other. It focuses on the unconscious process as manifested through the client’s present behavior. This form of therapy aims to create self-awareness in the client and understand the influence of the past on the present behavior (Haggerty, 2016). The members define the family ego defenses, and the therapy goal is to ensure emotional insight, working through new defense patterns. Thus, the client can examine any unresolved symptoms and conflicts arising from past dysfunctional relationships and manifest the need and desire for bad behavior in themselves.
As the oldest of the modern therapies, psychodynamic therapy is based on a multifaceted and highly developed form of human interaction and development. This therapy model was developed as a concept by Sigmund Freud, defining the ideas of defense mechanisms manifesting due to the desire to protect the conscious mind from unpleasant memories and thoughts. The assertion by Freud was that the individual’s unconscious ideas, feelings, wants, and memories are motivators of their behavior, molding the human personality from childhood and developing further into adulthood to form behavior (Goldenberg, Stanton, & Goldenberg, 2017). This means that childhood experiences are key elements in forming personality, affecting the emotions and behavior of a person into adulthood, built through the conflicts between the socially acceptable desirable of controlling uninhibited urges and the biological drivers for gratification, trying to establish stability between the two. The psychoanalytic approach defined by Freud became the foundation for the development of modern psychodynamic therapy in terms of the duration and timeline, the layout of the therapy room, and the relationship between the client and the therapist, with modifications made to accommodate the various issues being tackled. In this case, to be effective, the therapist has to focus on a process of getting into the system through engagement, receiving the accumulated projections of the family by transference, interpreting the transferred projections through objectivity in countertransference, and implementing alternative responses that can be practiced, taught, and mastered through intervention by the family (Yarhouse & Sells, 2008). In family therapy, it is notable that the observed models of family members are governed by the family patterns set as rules as a response for people in being the man or woman, father or mother, wife or husband, developing out of the personal history of each family member, the mythology and history of the family, and their cultural history.
Freudian psychology in psychodynamic therapy indicates that the past life determines the present, emphasizing that the first years of life are significant in forming the personality of individuals. This is seen through the object relations theory noting that the first three years of life form a person’s personality based on the relationship with the caregiver or mother, which forms the issues of attachment and the development of the self (Goldenberg et al., 2017). The unconscious object relationships internalized since infancy can then be used to understand the current problems and relationships within the family. According to Freud, the ego is part of the human being that interacts with reality with the ability to recognize the general revelation of God and the knowledge that God created us. This is indicated in Ecclesiastes 3:11 and Romans 1:20, noting the eternal power and divine nature of God perceived by all creatures of the world. Self and ego psychology indicates that the early life experiences of a person with others are important in creating the ego identity or building the true self and thus are based on subjective experience (Goldenberg et al., 2017). However, this model fails to indicate the spiritual reality as it is ego-centric, rejecting human freedom and spirituality in the Christian life. The superego refers to a person’s conscience where there is a battle between our past sinful nature and the new goldy nature given by God. According to Freud, the superego is aimed at social influence, but according to Scripture, morality comes from God. The claim is that an individual’s ego and self-awareness are needed to maintain a healthy life, but the Bible indicates that the Word and Christ provide such health. It thus becomes the therapist’s responsibility to make the conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings familiar to the individual so that there can be a revelation of the heart’s attitudes and thoughts, as required in Hebrews 4:12.
The foundational approach of Nathan Ackerman to psychoanalysis and family dynamics emphasizes the family as a dynamic psychosocial unit where the whole family is integrated into both the diagnostic and therapeutic purposes, obtaining the whole picture of family functioning (Goldenberg et al., 2017). In this approach, the family is seen as a system of interacting personalities where each individual is a subsystem within the family. The unique personalities of each member, the family’s commitment to human values set the dynamics of role adaptations, and the family behavior as a social unit defines the family functioning. Therefore, any symptoms within the family could be viewed as a predictable interactional pattern that assures the individual is balanced but still impairs the family functioning through distortions in the role relationships. Therefore, the symptoms in an individual in a family are a unit of interpersonal behavior seen through shared family conflict, defenses, and anxiety. This is the “failure of complementarity,” as defined by Ackerman, where there is construction in growth and change, and the roles become narrowly defined, rigid, or stereotyped, leading to confusion. In such a family, the therapist helps by ensuring the family understands the new experiences and takes on the new complementarity levels in the role relationships (Ackerman, 1966). This form of adaptability and flexibility ensures all individuals, especially children, are mature to have the required autonomy.
Ackerman indicated that the family therapist plays the significant role of moving into the family living space and initiating interaction so that the family has a meaningful emotional exchange while nurturing and encouraging them to better understand themselves (Goldenberg et al., 2017). This reflects the requirements of the Bible in Isaiah 61: 3, where the therapist accepts the projection, observes and feels it, tries to understand it, and instead of defending against it or trying to fix it, contains and detoxifies it by benevolently reacting to bring beauty from ashes, and festive praise instead of despair. This way, the family members can honestly and openly express their feelings through gentle provocation, exposing their self-rationalizations. Therefore, the chronic problems stemming from the unconscious mind are brought out as the client gains self-awareness, enabling them to understand how to deal with them. The sessions, in this case, are open-ended and intense as dictated by the free association of the individual with the therapist probing the past of the client to discover the patterns and their significance, observing the interaction of the individuals within the therapy relationship session, and finding the internal resources that can solve the problems. The therapy sessions, in this case, may last for about 15 to 30 sessions lasting for a long-time and may be used in persons with psychological sophistication with the ability to understand the interpretations and dynamics. For such therapy, there must be high and sustained motivation. The therapy is relatively long-term and influenced by chronic family problems, focusing on unresolved conflicts and unconscious processes of family relationships. Therefore, the therapist leads the family members by exploring aspects of family history, like traumatic family events that may have led to conflicts or issues. Nonetheless, this therapy does not include God as a helpful entity for family relationships because it indicates that psychological health is only attained by relieving and understanding the past. Scripture indicates that to gain self-awareness, there must be Christ (John 8:32), healing past wounds and making functional changes. From a Christian perspective, this entails loving others, as highlighted in John 13:34, with the Holy Spirit bringing health from within instead of projecting the issues and feelings to the therapist.
Conclusion
Psychodynamic therapy is significant for family therapy because the therapist attempts to help the clients find patterns in their beliefs, thoughts, and emotions, gaining insight into the present self that began in childhood and is thus built on early life experiences. Through this approach, there may be evidence of family transferences that may need to be interpreted. In this way, there is the emphasis that the adult family members work out the conflicts with their own parents so that they can understand the conflicts that arise with their children and partners. In this way, the families can discover and address issues deeply held within to lead to their family issues, and thus enable happier and healthier family dynamics to develop. However, the concepts do not align with Scripture as they exclude God and Christ as important in ensuring that family members have healthy relationships. It is, therefore, important for therapists to relate to their clients as a form of Christian charity, incorporating Christian counseling and manifesting the true love of God to the family members so that they can find nourishment in the Word and thus resolve their issues through Christ.
References
Ackerman, N. W. (1966). Treating the troubled family. New York: Basic Books.
Bible. New International Version
Goldenberg, I., Stanton, M., & Goldenberg, H. (2017). Family Therapy: An Overview. Ninth Edition. Cengage Learning.
Haggerty, J. (2016). Psychodynamic therapy. Psych Central. Retrieved from https://psychcentral.com/lib/psychodynamic-therapy/
Yarhouse, M.A., & Sells, J. N. (2008). Family Therapies: A Comprehensive Christian Appraisal Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic.
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