Systemic Family Therapy

Systemic family therapy, practiced and developed by the Milan School of family therapy, is also known as the Milan Approach. Like most family systems theories, this theory sees the family, not the individual, as the symptomatic client and ultimately allows the family to understand the complex interactions and relationships of its members. Systemic family therapists seek to understand how the family has come to organize itself by using unspoken and subtle family dynamics and processes, with the goal of helping the family find new ways to organize itself relationally and emotionally so that the family members no longer produce symptoms.