Family therapy workshops in the United States: Potential abuses in the production of therapy in an advanced capitalist society

Athena McLean

Social Science & Medicine, 1986, vol. 23, issue 2, 179-189

Abstract: A market for family therapy workshops has mushroomed in recent years. Treatment of families by therapists conducting such workshops, however, can be dispassionate and dehumanizing. Using the distinction between curing and healing, I do not question the curative potential of family therapy, but I question whether this kind of doctor/patient interaction promotes healing. Also, by demonstrating how the systems model tends to objectify patients and alienate therapists from those they treat, this paper challenge claims that family therapy recognizes the social nature of illness. The dehumanizing treatment cannot be attributed solely to the therapists, but requires further interpretation by analyzing the biases of the therapy model, the commodified context of the workshops,and epistemological issues arising from the application of general systems theory to a social model of treatment. Family systems therapy shares epistemological features with biomedicine, and like the biomedical model, alienates therapists from patients. This alienation, ironically, can be even greater when the family systems model is used than in biomedical treatment. Finally, I suggest that family therapy workshops have grown in popularity because the mechanistic features of the treatment model, drawn largely from cybernetics, promote the production and reproduction of a form of therapy compatible with the emphasis on 'functional health' favored in an advanced capitalist society.

Date: 1986
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