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Basic concepts in family therapy: a differential comparison with individual treatment

Published Online:https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.132.10.1045

The author presents basic differences between the approaches of family therapy and of the individual therapies on three dimensions: personality development, symptom formation, and the approach to producing therapeutic change. Family therapy bases its view of these factors in psychotherapy on the idea that they are determined by the family's functioning as an interderdependent transactional unit; the individual therapies base their views of these factors on the idea that they are determined by the dynamic intrapsychic functioning of the individual alone.

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