A Systems-Centered Approach to Inpatient Group Psychotherapy

Book excerpt: Systems-centered therapy is theory driven, therefore every intervention is in fact an hypothesis that tests both the validity of the theory and the reliability of its practice as it applies to short and long-term therapy with individuals, families, couples and groups. This book is built around the transcript of an inpatient therapy session, giving the reader the opportunity to follow verbatim how systems-centered therapy actually works. The script tracks the initial techniques that introduce systems-centered norms to a group. These include encouraging patients to explore their experience instead of explaining it, and to join together in subgroups around the common human resistances that interfere with being able to do therapeutic work. Wherever appropriate, the author annotates the script with the rational behind a particular method. Other chapters give an overview of the systems-centered ideas, their formulation as a theory of living human systems, and the systems-centered methods of boundarying, vectoring, contextualizing and functional subgrouping that put the theory into practice. Agazarian's book is an important text for all those who are interested in applying systems thinking to therapy, and, with its many practical examples, particularly useful to those who are interested in using systems-centered techniques.