Family Systems Therapy

Program Overview

The Doctor of Marriage and Family Therapy in Family Systems Therapy teaches the idea that changed the field: a symptom in one person often makes sense only when you see the system around it. A child's school refusal, a spouse's drinking, or an adolescent's defiance can serve a function in the family's balance, and change in one member reverberates through all the others. Systems therapists learn to treat the pattern rather than the individual alone. Students master the theoretical foundation — general systems theory, Gregory Bateson's cybernetics, feedback, and homeostasis — and then the major systemic schools. Bowen family systems theory receives sustained attention: differentiation of self, chronic anxiety, triangles, the nuclear family emotional process, the family projection process, multigenerational transmission, emotional cutoff, sibling position, and societal emotional process, with the genogram as the central instrument of assessment. Salvador Minuchin's structural family therapy adds boundaries, subsystems, hierarchy, joining, and enactment; the strategic and Mental Research Institute traditions add first- and second-order change and the insight that an attempted solution can become the problem; the Milan team adds hypothesizing, circularity, and neutrality. Edwin Friedman's application of Bowen theory to congregations makes this the systemic program most directly useful to church leaders: the differentiated, non-anxious presence of a leader is as much a pastoral discipline as a clinical one. The doctoral project applies systemic assessment and intervention to a family, clinic, or congregation and evaluates the result. Graduates practise and supervise systemic therapy, consult with congregations in conflict, and teach family systems theory. The program is formation for practice, not a licensing pathway.

Core Courses

• FST 801 — General Systems Theory and Cybernetics (6 credits)
• FST 812 — Bowen Family Systems Theory (6 credits)
• FST 824 — Structural and Strategic Family Therapy (6 credits)
• FST 836 — Milan, Post-Milan, and Systemic Interviewing (6 credits)
• FST 848 — The Genogram and Systemic Assessment (5 credits)
• FST 860 — Applied Research Design in Systemic Practice (4 credits)
• FST 899 — Doctoral Project in Family Systems Therapy (24 credits)

Admission Requirements

• Master's degree in marriage and family therapy, counseling, psychology, social work, ministry, or a related field
• Experience in counseling, family ministry, chaplaincy, or human services
• Statement of purpose describing the families you serve and the question you want to pursue
• Current resume or professional profile
• Official transcripts from prior institutions when available
• Signed acknowledgment that the degree does not by itself confer a license to practise therapy in any jurisdiction