Structural Family Therapy

Structural family therapy (SFT) is a method of psychotherapy developed by Salvador Minuchin that addresses problems in a family's functioning. Structural family therapists strive to enter, or "join," the family system in therapy to understand the invisible rules governing its functioning, map the relationships between family members or subsets of the family, and ultimately disrupt dysfunctional relationships so the family stabilizes into healthier patterns; Minuchin contended that pathology rests not in the individual but within the family system. SFT uses a special systems terminology and diagrammatic means of depicting key family parameters, focusing on the structure of the family and its substructures, following systems and communication theory since Minuchin defined structures by transactions among interrelated systems within the family and subscribed to the systems notions of wholeness and equifinality central to his idea of change. An essential trait of SFT is that the therapist actually joins the family system early in the therapeutic relationship as a catalyst for positive change, and structural and strategic therapy are widely used as bases for treatment by therapists conceptualizing problems and developing theory-based treatment plans.