Family systems theory

Family systems theory treats a family as an interconnected system in which members’ behaviors, roles, and relationships influence one another over time.

Circular causality: A pattern in which each person's actions both affect and are affected by others' actions. It replaces one-way blame with attention to reciprocal influence among family members.
Family therapy: Psychotherapy that works with family relationships and interaction patterns as part of treatment. It is the broad clinical practice most directly shaped by family systems thinking.
General systems theory: An interdisciplinary framework that studies organized wholes and the relationships among their parts. Its concepts supplied a foundation for treating families as interconnected systems.
Individual psychotherapy: Psychotherapy conducted primarily with one person as the focus of treatment. Family systems theory shifts attention from an isolated person to interaction within relationships.
Homeostasis: A system's tendency to maintain familiar patterns and stability despite disturbances. Families may resist changes that disrupt established roles, even when those roles cause distress.
Structural family therapy: A therapeutic approach that changes family organization, boundaries, and interaction patterns. It applies systems ideas by mapping and restructuring family relationships.
Gregory Bateson: An English anthropologist and systems thinker whose work influenced communication and family therapy. His research group helped bring systems and communication ideas into family study.
Linear causality: An explanation in which one event or factor produces another in a one-way sequence. Systemic accounts emphasize reciprocal influence rather than a single cause and effect.
Family rules: Explicit or implicit expectations that organize behavior and relationships within a family. Rules help explain how recurring interaction patterns become stable across situations.
Bowen family systems theory: Murray Bowen's model of emotional processes across family relationships and generations. It develops a distinct systemic account of anxiety, differentiation, and multigenerational patterns.

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