Jonathan Cogburn, LMFT

Did you know that Marriage and Family Therapy approaches were always intended to address and change unconscious processes in individuals? Well, it’s true! MFT treatment from its outset was primarily designed to facilitate change in the constantly interacting unconscious processes across a patient’s entire family by addressing them from the level of a family’s relationship structure and communication patterns. The field began when a handful of psychiatrists, psychologists, and at least one anthropologist began to notice that schizophrenic patients *virtually always* regressed in treatment progress during/after family visits to inpatient facilities. They became frustrated with the lack of available interventions to prevent this kind of regression across the therapy field as a whole, and began exploration in new directions (e.g. the application of General Systems Theory to individual and family behavior.) Practitioners like Murray Bowen, Gregory Bateson (our anthropologist, and his Palo Alto Group collaborators especially Don D. Jackson, Jay Haley, John Weakland, and Virginia Satir), followed quickly by others like Salvador Minuchin, kicked off this area of exploration into systemic therapy as an alternative treatment to intrapsychic & analytic methods they understood very well, having been well trained in them up to that time (1950-1952 as the very beginning.) The MFT field has persisted as a viable and effective alternative to individual & intrapsychic methods to this day, with both sub-fields influencing one another in (hopefully) very productive ways over time. Neither should be viewed as “less than” the other, but instead as complementary approaches that each possess limitations, but moreover bring strengths that can each potentially benefit a wide spectrum of patient needs. On a personal note, I decided to write this in detail here because I don’t believe that many modern colleagues outside of the MFT world would have any reason to know of this history. And because too many of my own colleagues have viewed this history, and strong mastery of General Systems Theory, as something to “get through quickly so I can get to the good stuff (treatment models)”, which has led to impoverishment of skill in some places. We need to remember and elevate this knowledge rather than allow it to fade away.

Well earned. 🔥🔥

I should’ve thought of this one. 😂😂

Founding Father of Founding Fathers: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and citizens. - George Washington (Farewell Address in 1796.)

Another Founding Father quote for Election Day: “If Virtue & Knowledge are diffus’d among the People, they will never be enslav’d. This will be their great Security.” - Samuel Adams

Hear me out…

Endorsed with all the Saiyan Pride in my body:

I’ve decided to continue posting the words of founding fathers throughout Election Day. This is a hard time in our country, but nothing has been broken that cannot be preserved or remade. We have the words of some of the wisest leaders in history to guide us: “Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth itself and all it contains rather than do an immoral act. … Encourage all your virtuous dispositions, and exercise them whenever an opportunity arises; being assured that they will gain strength by exercise… From the practice of the purest virtue, you may be assured you will derive the most sublime comforts in every moment of life, and in the moment of death.” - Thomas Jefferson (letter to Peter Carr, a young man, 1785)

George Mason (Virginia Declaration of Rights, 1776): “No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.”

I’ve thought about weighing in on the Anakin memes, but I don’t have a lot to add to what’s been said within the dialectic on the topic. I’m just gonna post a John Adams quote: “There must be a positive passion for the public good, the public interest, honour, power and glory, established in the minds of the people, or there can be no republican government, nor any real liberty: and this public passion must be superiour to all private passions.” Those are things I hope my sons cling to no matter how dark their surroundings become.