Family Therapy: A Phenomenological and Active Directive Approach

Because the most popular forms of family therapy, psychodynamic and systems-oriented therapy, appreciably fail to consider family members as individuals in their own right, a phenomenological-humanistic view of families who come for therapy would serve to correct this oversight. The particular phenomenological view espoused by those who do client-centered family therapy, however, is too passive and neglects some of the realities of human disturbance. A "third force" in family therapy is therefore outlined in this paper, which combines a phenomenological-humanistic approach with a highly active-directive attempt to help family members surrender their misperceptions of themselves and others and to make profound philosophic changes in their intrapersonal and interpersonal attitudes and behaviors. As an example of this kind of phenomenological and active-directive approach, some of the principles and practices of rational-emotive therapy (RET) are outlined and applied to family counseling.