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1920s - 1940s: Early Theories and Group Dynamics 

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1920s - 1940s: Early Theories and Group Dynamics 

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1920s-1940s: Early Theories and Group Dynamics

1920: William McDougall publishes The Group Mind, emphasizing group dynamics in social psychology, laying groundwork for understanding family systems (Nichols & Davis, 2020).

1940s: Kurt Lewin develops Field Theory, contributing to the understanding that a group is more than the sum of its parts, relevant to family therapists who later explore systems theory (Nichols & Davis, 2020).

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1930s: Emergence of Marriage Counseling 

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1930s: Emergence of Marriage Counseling 

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1930s: The first centers for marriage counseling are established, recognizing the need to address marital issues systematically (Nichols & Davis, 2020).

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1950: Peter Laqueur develops multiple family group therapy at Creedmoor State Hospital in New York.

1952: Gregory Bateson begins the schizophrenia project in Palo Alto, California, leading to significant insights into family communication and double bind theory.

1955: Nathan Ackerman organizes the first session on family diagnosis, initiating collaboration among early pioneers like Jackson, Bowen, Wynne, and Ackerman.

1957: Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy founds the Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute, advancing ideas around trust, loyalty, and the balance of entitlement and indebtedness within families (Nichols & Davis, 2020).

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1960s: Salvador Minuchin identifies common patterns in troubled families, such as enmeshment and disengagement, which become central to structural family therapy (Nichols & Davis, 2020).

Minuchin’s experiences in his native Argentina, as a physician in the Israeli Armed Forces, and with displaced Jewish and Arab children sparked his interest in working with families and were the precursors to his view of the therapist as

expert needing to intervene quickly (Kaslow, 2007).

1961-1962: John Elderkin Bell adapts group therapy methods for family group therapy, focusing on stimulating open discussions to resolve family issues.

1963: Jay Haley explores covert messages in relationships, emphasizing the struggle for control, a key theme in strategic therapy.

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Murray Bowen, the progenitor of this school, presented a seminal professional paper in 1967 on his own process of differentiation from his family of origin. This laid the groundwork for his focus on the awareness of, and disengagement from, toxic triangles in one’s family of origin (Kaslow, 2007).

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1970-1985: The Golden Age of Family Therapy

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1970-1985: The Golden Age of Family Therapy

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1970-1985: Family therapy flourishes, with training centers established and models solidified. The communications model from Palo Alto dominates the 1960s, while the 1980s sees the rise of strategic therapy, influenced by Milton Erickson and groups led by Jay Haley and Cloe Madanes.

1976: Carl Whitaker, known for his spontaneous and emotionally provocative interventions, highlights flexibility as a central theme in family therapy (Nichols & Davis, 2020).

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1980s: The strategic therapy model gains prominence, with a pragmatic focus on helping families achieve their goals. Postmodernism influences therapy by encouraging therapists to follow clients' leads rather than imposing fixed goals (Nichols & Davis, 2020).

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1990s-2000s: A shift towards more individualized and flexible approaches to therapy, integrating insights from postmodernism, and addressing societal influences on family dynamics (Nichols & Davis, 2020).

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Kaslow, F. W. (2007). A brief history of the field of family psychology and therapy. In F. Shapiro, F. W. Kaslow, & L. Maxfield (Eds.), Handbook of EMDR and family therapy processes (Appendix D). John Wiley & Sons.

Nichols, M. N.A, & Davis, S. D. (2020). Family Therapy: Concepts and Methods [Kindle Android version].