Talk:Systemic therapy

Article is improperly titled – move to redirect
This article is improperly titles as "Systemic therapy". What is described is in fact "family therapy" which was a forerunner to systemic therapy. Systemic therapy does not restrict itself solely to families but instead focuses more broadly on systems which may include families but is not limited to them.

Given this the article should be titled "family therapy" not "systemic therapy". I move that we merge the content of this page with the "family therapy" page and put the content of the improperly titled "systemic psychology" page here instead redirecting that page to this one.

Since this a major change I'll wait a bit to see if others would like to discuss other options before I do this. --Sharktacos (talk) 03:37, 10 March 2008 (UTC)


 * If you want to propose a merge you should add an template to the two articles and start a discussion. You can also leave a note at the WikiProject Psychology and WikiProject Systems talk page. -- Mdd (talk) 12:17, 10 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I oppose the proposal: see Talk:Family therapy. Marschalko (talk) 07:20, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Major rewrite
Based on the discussion on the more trafficked Family therapy talk page, I made a first pass at a re-write of this page in order to have the subject matter address systemic therapy as opposed to the earlier version which was erroneously focused on family systems therapy. It still needs a lot of work, for example it lacks any info on praxis and methods of systemic therapy at the moment, but it's a start. --Sharktacos (talk) 14:57, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Redirect on 3 March 2015
I see that the content of Systemic therapy was recently moved to Systemic therapy (psychotherapy), and [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Systemic_therapy&diff=649636603&oldid=649636578 Systemic therapy] was redirected to Therapy. At the current moment, I see two problems with this redirect: As a temporary resolution of the second problem, I have redirected Systemic therapy to Systemic therapy (psychotherapy) instead of Therapy. One resolution of the first problem would be to create an article titled Systemic therapy (medicine) for the medical meaning. I do not have the medical expertise required to write that article. Another possible resolution would be to restore the content of Systemic therapy to its previous, psychotherapeutic, content and include a hatnote to Systemic therapy (medicine). As already mentioned, most pages on Wikipedia that link to Systemic therapy refer to the psychotherapeutic meaning (see Special:WhatLinksHere/Systemic therapy). However, there are a few pages that link to the medical meaning and that probably should be relinked: Any feedback on this issue would be appreciated. Biogeographist (talk) 13:48, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
 * 1) First, there is currently no "Systemic therapy" section header in the Therapy article.
 * 2) Second, and more importantly from my perspective, almost all of the pages on Wikipedia that link to Systemic therapy refer to the psychotherapeutic meaning (see Special:WhatLinksHere/Systemic therapy).
 * Adjuvant therapy
 * Index of oncology articles
 * List of therapies


 * Hi. My motive was that the way I set it up is how it ought to be from an optimal ontologic perspective, and the way it could/should have been set up originally if someone had devoted more thought to it. But your concern #2 is a valid point to straighten out. Regarding your first concern, if you actually follow the link Therapy, you will see it takes you straight to the anchor for that discussion, so that's not a problem. Regarding what happens when people search for "systemic therapy", it will land them at the general-sense meaning, and then a link to systemic therapy (psychotherapy) takes them here in the same way a hatnote would, so that case works well, too. But regarding your concern #2, the final part of my move that didn't occur to me is that I should have gone to "What links here" and updated the link for them all. Sorry I didn't think to do that. If you'd be willing to put things back, I'd do that step. Actually, never mind, things can stay as they are and I will just make a good hatnote at this page to send people to Therapy if they are looking for the general sense of the term. Regards, Quercus solaris (talk) 18:15, 5 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks for taking the initiative to address this disambiguation issue. I see what you mean about the anchor for Therapy. Thanks for adding the hatnote to this article. Relinking all those psychotherapy pages would not be a good use of my time, nor probably a good use of your time either, so this may be the best solution for now.
 * By the way, regarding the content of this article (which may not interest you): I think it needs a lot of improvement, especially more references. Systemic therapy is often classified as one of the four main schools of psychotherapy (along with psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, and humanistic) and has an extensive English-language literature, but the only reference cited in the article is a German-language book! As a result, I'm concerned that this article's POV is insufficiently comprehensive and neutral. I'm not interested in revising it now, but I will keep an eye on it and consider working on it in the future if nobody else takes up the task. Biogeographist (talk) 19:01, 5 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Sounds good. I'm not knowledgeable enough about psychotherapy to work on it, but sounds like a good goal if anyone gets time to improve it. Best, Quercus solaris (talk) 19:13, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Article is due for a rewrite (April 2015)
I am tagging this article with Template:Update because no major work has been done on this article since 2008. In addition, I am tagging the article with Template:Cite check because most of the claims in this article are not supported with citations to appropriate sources; there are currently only two citations, one to a German-language book from 1998 and one to a book on medical family therapy from 1992. I can't read German, so I can't verify the German-language text. The reference to the medical family therapy book looks fine, although a more recent edition was published in 2014 along with another major book on medical family therapy, and the topic of medical family therapy probably deserves its own article as well. In general, this article needs more references and more recent references.

As it currently stands, the history section is too vague; it has a number of vague passive-voice claims that could be labeled with Template:By whom, although I haven't bothered to apply inline tags because I think the whole article needs to be rewritten. The praxis section is also too vague, and should be broken down with a number of subsections on different approaches and techniques. For example, the survey of systemic therapy in has subsections on: 1. cybernetics and family systems theory (this subsection is mostly theoretical, with a diagram of Olson, Russell, and Sprenkle's circumplex model of marital and family systems); 2. strategic family therapy (conceptual framework and intervention techniques); 3. multigenerational approaches (conceptual framework and intervention techniques); 4. structural therapy (conceptual framework, intervention techniques, and case illustration); 5. experiential therapy with couples and families (introduction on Whitaker and Satir's early approaches, followed by conceptual framework of Johnson and Greenberg's emotionally focused couples therapy, intervention techniques, and case illustration); and 6. attachment-based family therapy. Obviously that list could be expanded, but the idea is to differentiate between a number of systemic approaches, explaining the conceptual framework and intervention techniques of each.

I think the article's portrayal of the difference between systemic and psychodynamic forms of family therapy is too simplistic. As pointed out, interpersonal psychoanalysis from the 1930s through the 1950s developed systemic concepts, if not systemic techniques. And in the last twenty years, the emphasis on integrative psychotherapy has led a number of therapists to integrate psychodynamic and systemic concepts and techniques; see, for example: and.

In addition to a more extensive and well-referenced history of theory, research, and practice in systemic therapy, it seems important to include some information on the current state of process and outcome research in systemic therapy. appears to be a particularly important reference on this topic.

There is an extensive English-language literature on systemic therapy. Below I have included a list of potential recent sources that come to mind.

Potential references


I am willing to rewrite the article myself, but it's unlikely that I will have time to do so soon, so I am documenting my ideas here in case anyone else wishes to take up the task. Biogeographist (talk) 22:35, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Based on what you described, Cite check wasn't the correct template; I'm going to switch it for More citations needed. --Xurizuri (talk) 14:24, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

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