Psychoanalysis PAPER

History Psychoanalysis plus family therapy is the study of individuals and their deepest motives combines with the study of social relationships to help a person solve inner conflict(s). The history of Psychoanalytic Family Therapy can be found as early as the 1930s. The six pioneers of family therapy are Nathan Ackerman, Murray Bowen, Ivan Boxzormenyi-Nagy, Carl Whitaker, Don Jackson and Salvador Minuchin. They were all psychoanalytically trained, but some turned away from the old psychodynamics approach and toward the new systems-dynamics approach. Jackson and Minuchin moved far away from looking at their psychoanalytic roots. Bowen and Boszormenyi-Nagy retained analytical influences in their work. Ackerman maintained the strongest allegiance to psychoanalysis. There are lead figures in time and major advances in family dynamics therapy. From the 1930s to the 1950s, psychoanalytic researchers become more interested in the contemporary family. A child psychiatrist, Burlingham, began to analyze mothers and children concurrently. The superego lacunae was explained as Johnson studied the phenomenal gaps in personal morality passed on by parents who do things like telling their children to lie about how old they are to save a couple of bucks at the movies. Families as a group of interlocking and intrapsychic systems were revealed of married couples analyzed by Mittlemann and Oberndorf. In addition, there were other family therapy leaders during this time. Erik Erickson explored the sociological dimensions of ego psychology; Erich Fromm observed the struggle for individuality; and Harry Stack Sullivan’s interpersonal theory emphasized the mother’s role in transmitting anxiety to her children. In the 1940s, Henry Dicks established the Family Psychiatric Unit at the Tavistock Clinic in England, were social workers attempted to reconcile couples referred by the divorce courts. By the 1960s, Dicks was applying object relations theory to the understanding and