Salvador Minuchin: the 'individual in context'

Abstract

Working in the 1940s in Israeli orphanages and in the 1950s in New York slums, Argentine-born psychiatrist Salvador Minuchin, MD, decided that too often Freudian psychoanalytic methods were not effective. There must be a better approach that could take into account the "systems" in which a person lived and interacted, he thought. And so, some unorthodox ideas began to germinate. Today, at 57, Minuchin probably is the best-known family therapist in the world. Director of the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic since 1965, he believes in changing the dysfunctional aspects of a family system instead of treating a person individually. Minuchin's ideas are provocative and in this age of mind-body medicine are of interest to many physicians. Applied in practice, they may offer a rewarding view of a patient's attitude toward sickness and toward optimal physical and psychological functioning. One of his primary credos is: The locus of pathology is the