Evolutionary kinship therapy: basic principles and treatment implications.

Abstract

The idiom of kinship is a powerful one that stretches across many levels of social behaviour (van den Berghe, 1979), and Daly, Salmon & Wilson (1997) recently outlined the basic principles of a comprehensive, evolution-based kinship psychology. Their approach merges traditional kinship theory, Hamilton's inclusive fitness model and the broader realm of evolutionary psychology into an exciting and provocative call to arms. They address biological, psychological (viz. fictive kinship) and kin-like levels of analysis, and they argue for a relationship-specific kinship psychology that deals with the particular demands of being a mother, father, mate, offspring or grandparent. Our particular approach to kinship psychology has focused primarily on the distinction between biological kinship and psychological kinship (Bailey, 1988; Bailey & Wood, 1993; Nava & Bailey, 1991), and more recently on the role of kin-like relations in psychotherapy and other social contexts (Bailey, 1997a; Wood, 1997). The kin-like category is especially noteworthy in modern industrialized countries where acquaintanceships and stranger-to-stranger interactions often predominate over biological and psychological kinships (Ahern & Bailey, 1997).