Marriage and Family Therapy

Historical Bases of the Field

As noted by Broderick and Schrader (1981), the historical origins of marriage and family therapy may be found in the social assistance and family education movements developed in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s. Given the recognition of the importance of marriage and its central role in the life of the entire family, many specialized centers were founded in order to improve marriage and family living. The nature of these centers was frequently religious, and their activities were mainly marriage education and marriage counseling, with the primary aim of giving support to the marital relationship.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the interest in family relationships grew in conjunction with the development of the Systemic Movement. The attention shifted from support of the marital couple to the detection of the causes of psychopathology, especially the severe ones (i.e., schizophrenia or other psychoses). The aim then became to promote new family learning styles and new family rules of functioning in order to prevent psychopathology and to contrast the maintenance of severe personality and relationship disorders. In this regard, it is necessary to underline the influence of the “American spirit,” with its strong faith-based educational values and trust in the possibility that people can change their behavioral patterns as well as their systems of beliefs, ways of expressing emotions, and ways of relating to the other.

The history of the development of marriage and family therapy in Europe is quite different. In the 1940s, David and Vera Mace established in England the first Marriage Guidance Council, an institute where a large number of paraprofessional workers were trained to give assistance and support to couples throughout the country. Even though the Maces' institute was quite similar to the early developments in the United States, in Europe the dominant influence on psychotherapy came from the psychoanalytic movement and its reluctance to alter its typical individual clinical setting. Some reasons for this unwillingness can be found in the psychoanalysis philosophical heritage (idealism and romanticism) and in its suspiciousness toward the possibilities of changing (in opposition to the American tradition).

As a result, the developing group of the European marriage and family therapists split into two, taking different pathways. The first group of therapists moved into the new fields of marriage and family therapy without repudiating their psychoanalytic theoretical orientation (e.g., Henry Dicks in England and Jean Lemaire in France). The other group broke off from traditional perspectives, which they considered an insurmountable hindrance. The research of Mara Selvini Palazzoli and her colleagues (Selvini [Page 677]Palazzoli, Boscolo, Cecchin, & Prata, 1978) is a case in point. Between the 1970s and the 1980s, the second group was further influenced by the antipsychiatric movement and the increased number of contacts between European and American family therapists.

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