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.

Ordinance Subwooooffeeerrrsss!

News Flash: @GeorgesStPierre ain’t was scared. 😂 He was such a disciplined technician. Every. Single. Time. Dude trained harder and smarter than virtually everyone. He’s always been a very imitable person in how he represents himself in public. And his story of overcoming bullying is truly inspiring. I use YouTube clips of his interview with Joe Rogan about that to teach students about overcoming bullying and about growth mindset.

When you have a really good top-down *and* bottom-up integrative approach to therapy, it be like:

EHR companies, online box-therapy corps, AI platforms designed for mental health care, and insurance companies should all have to apply for a licensure status in the states where they intend to do business, for all the areas of practice that they reimburse, and on each panel that their providers do. That way, there’s direct accountability for their actions with issues of patient privacy and malpractice. I’m not a big government guy, but there hasn’t been equal protection under the law with these issues for a long time. These large entities trample all over privacy with no consequences while giving individual providers the shaft in a way that limits access and reduces quality of care.

Good men are everywhere. I think Ryan is one. Lots of men also need help, mentorship, encouragement, and hope in order to become good men.

Good men are everywhere.

He really was, and I’ll miss his presence in great stories that won’t be the same without him. 🥺

GM fellow psyop audience! 🫶🏼🍿

Uhhhh…😅 “Art supplies” are tax deductible for therapy purposes, right? riGhT??!