[Family therapy in divorce]

Area of Science:

• Family Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Clinical Psychology

Context:

• Divorce presents unique challenges for parents and children across ambivalence, divorce, and post-divorce phases.
• Therapeutic interventions require adaptable focal points to address evolving family needs.

Purpose:

• To outline a multi-generational family therapy approach for families experiencing divorce.
• To facilitate constructive solutions for practical and emotional divorce-related issues, including "psychic divorce" and co-parenting.
• To support individuation and re-orientation processes for family members.

Summary:

• The therapeutic approach focuses on resolving divorce-related conflicts and altering pathogenic relationship and conflict-resolution patterns.
• Key aims include achieving decisional clarity, managing practical and emotional fallout, and fostering parental cooperation.
• Therapy addresses challenges like aggression, destructivity, and resistance stemming from anxiety, shame, guilt, anger, and mourning.

Impact:

• Aims to prevent the repetition of maladaptive relationship and conflict-solving patterns in future partnerships and subsequent generations.
• Provides a framework for addressing complex emotional and practical issues arising from family dissolution.
• Enhances understanding of multi-generational dynamics in divorce and informs therapeutic strategies.