Healing in the family

Summary and Reflection on: Nagy Contextual Family Therapy
Virginia Satir: Experiential Approaches

Nagy Contextual Family Therapy:

A. HONOR THY FATHER AND THY MOTHER
By Mona Dekoven Fishbane

Even if the starting point in this chapter is the Jewish understanding of the 5th commandment, honoring one’s parents seems to be rooted in most cultures with different variations and implications.

The Jewish tradition connects honoring one’s parents with honoring God, for when people recognize their creatureliness before their parents; they recognize the ultimate creatureliness and the ultimate creator, as well. In this context respect for parents is spiritualized, linked both to maintaining the tradition and revering God.

In the Jewish understanding of this commandment, honor and service to parents are to be done because COMMANDED from above. And people have to observe it in order to perpetuate the tradition. While these premises have value, however there seems not to be room for love and gratitude. The personal touch of individuals seems to be lacking. I would add the fact that we have to honor our parents out of love and gratitude. Most of us have been loved by father and mother and we respond by love to them.


That your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God gives you…
This seems to be a “plus”. I see it in the sense that all may go well with you…This is not to be understood as a moral reward but as something that flows from the nature of those who love and are still connected to their source of life. The more you love and honor your parents, the better quality of life you have.

The author also contrasts this view to the modern psychology approach (at least the Western psychology) of self that emphasizes differentiation. Many people find themselves caught up between honoring their parents and respecting themselves.

I like very much Nagy and colleagues understanding of our obligation to parents. For their contextual approach, honoring parents is a central task of adult development. Their assumption is that the individual is not free to cast away or cut off from the family of origin without paying an enormous personal price. Therefore differentiation of self is ultimately a relational process, forged in ongoing interactions with family as well as other members.

As a African, who was born and raised in Africa but traveled and lived in many different continents for a considerable number of years, I sometimes struggle with finding the balance between being rooted in my African traditions and being open to change. However I agree with the author that cutting oneself from heritage results in spiritual death but in the other hand, repeating the old text without reinvigorating it with new interpretation and creativity, kills by suffocation. Yet I still need to find a balance because I belong to two worlds.

B. It is at this point that Nagy contextual therapy makes sense. The contextual view suggests that real human health and growth are promoted when rooted loyalties are respected and given fair consideration. This view recognizes that significant relationships in a person’s life are indeed significant. Because the family here is viewed as a group of people bound together in rooted relationships. They have common roots and loyalties that bind them to one another.

The following are contextual family therapy assumptions:

Family context: A person who thinks contextually is interested in intergenerational patterns. At least 3 generations.

Legacy: Each one of us has special legacy of baggage we carry with us and bring to our relationships. These can include expectations of how one will be treated by or is entitled to treat, self-images or roles that one lives by…

Trust: priority is given here to create an atmosphere of trust and caring not only with the counselee but also with family.

Loyalty: The practice of family therapy should foster loyalty balanced with autonomy. This approach presumes that the loyalty force is deeply and indelibly imbedded within family relationships.

So the contextual approach uses listening, learning, empathizing, and inviting dialogue with parents as primary tools for healing work.


Virginia Satir: Experiential Approaches

Experiential Family therapy is founded on the premise that the root cause of family problems is emotional suppression. Many parents have the tendency to confuse the instrumental and expressive function of emotions. They try to regulate their children’s action by controlling their feelings and as a result, children learn to suppress their emotional experience to avoid making waves.

Thus, Experiential therapy strengthens families by encouraging individual self expression. It is distinguished by a commitment to emotional well-being of individuals within the family unit. Because the underlying premise here is that the way to promote individual growth and family cohesion is to liberate affects and impulses. It is believed that personal integrity and self-fulfillment are innate human capacities that will emerge spontaneously once defensiveness is overcome.

Susan Johnson’s emotionally focused couples therapy and Schwartz’s internal family systems have invigorated this approach. The first works on two levels, namely uncovering the hurt and longing beneath defense expressions of anger and withdrawal on one hand and helping families understand how these feelings are played out in their relationship, on the other hand. The latter, by introducing the language of parts, he helps clients to begin to distinguish among their conflicting inner voices. This approaches reveals the truth that people in conflict with each other are also often in conflict within themselves.

Definitely the major contribution of the experiential family therapy is to remind us not to lose sight of the self in the system.

I grew up in the family of many children. To make peace at home and to pretend that everybody was equally treated, my parents did not allow much individuality to emerge. Differences were not much encouraged. I was among the smartest guys at school but rarely would my parents congratulate me. I knew they were proud of me but I needed to hear it from them. It was when I expressed my desire to go to a better school, more expensive probably, that I felt frustrated by a strong NO. My father never explained to me the reason why he opposed me. He even became aggressive as a way of stopping me from insisting. Through that experience and many other similar experiences, I learn to blunt my emotional experience to avoid having problems. I experience a lot of boredom and anxiety in my family. I developed a distant relationship with my father. The healing process started for me when I was able to express the frustration and sadness I bore in my heart for many years. I felt relieved and my relationship with my father improved.

By Kathemo Mukucha