My undergraduate education as a psychology major at UCLA in the 1960s was pretty standard for that time, with an emphasis on normal child and adult development, brain processes, psychopathology, assessment methods, and other aspects of individual functioning. To a significant degree, those foci were similar in the clinical psychology graduate program I completed at UCLA, with an emphasis on individuals’ diagnosable psychological disorders. However, in a case of being in the right place at the right time, that traditional psychology training was enhanced by the faculty’s pioneering work on family therapy.
My first case as a therapist trainee (teamed with an advanced student co-therapist) was a family consisting of a mom, dad, 8-year-old son, and 5-year-old daughter. They had sought help for the son’s “misbehavior” at home and in school, and he clearly was on the hot seat in our first session. As the junior therapist, I sat quietly and observed my co-therapist interacting with the family. While the parents described their son’s transgressions (especially being aggressive toward his little sister), I noticed that the daughter was subtly poking and provoking her brother, until his attempts to ignore her failed and he yelled at her and kicked her leg, resulting in her screaming. The parents immediately chastised the son and told us therapists, “See, he’s so mean to her!”
I was so energized by the opportunity to do something therapeutic, that I pointed out what I had observed. Suddenly our therapy expanded from a focus on figuring out what was wrong with the son to understanding and intervening with family relationships. I became hooked on family therapy! Although treatment of individuals’ psychological........