Psychoanalytic Ideas and Systemic Family Therapy: Revisiting the Question ‘Why Bother?’

Abstract

Despite a history of ambivalence, systemic family therapy has shown signs of a re-engagement with psychoanalytic ideas over the past fifteen years. This article revisits the question: why bother with psychoanalytic ideas in family therapy? A brief description of work with a family is used to prompt the theory discussion, which identifies and discusses particular ideas from psychoanalysis that are potentially very useful for everyday family therapy practice. These ideas are the unconscious and unconscious communication; the concepts of transference, countertransference and projective identification, used for understanding particular kinds of experiences in the therapeutic relationship; attachment theory, particularly if allied with the recent research on the transforming potential of coherent narratives; and ideas about emotional containment and the capacity to think. Reflection on the initial therapy example finds the value in practice of these psychoanalytic ideas. The article concludes with a discussion of the current debate about how the use of psychoanalytic ideas in the systemic context of family therapy can, or should, be framed.