METHOD OF FAMILY PSYCHOTHERAPY Russian patent published in 2009 - IPC A61M21/00 

FIELD: medicine.

SUBSTANCE: invention concerns psychology, psychotherapy, and can be applied in activities with spouses and families in critical transition periods characterised by psychoemotional conflicts and controversies causing psychosomatic disorders of family members and various forms of addictive behavior, sexual disorders, appearance of new family member, including childbirth or adoption. At the first analytical cycle, anamnesis is collected, psychic and psychosomatic heredity and family structure are researched by registration of hereditary and family factors of disease origin and formation in interpersonal and family relations; paternity and maternity, sympathy, love, sexual and erotic and housekeeping needs of spouses are examined, nervous psychical stress level is assessed. Second correction cycle involves communication and dialog skill studies allowing for creation of safety space, overcoming intimacy barrier, building constructive, emotionally congruent communication between family members; therapist takes part as initiator of psychotherapeutic changes and assists in communication dialog aimed at clarifying boundaries between such family subsystems as parents, children, grandparents, revealing hidden interaction patterns, discovering morphostatic and morphogenetic symptom function at biographic level by performing symbolic drama, relations space installation, simulated by things and photos of family members, and corporal therapy expanding individual notions of reality, decentralising set family relations and individual Ego image, increasing will activity and responsibility for creation of new relation space in family. Third structurising cycle includes construction and transition to new family reality by actualisation of existential dynamic conflict revealing morphostatic and morphogenetic symptom function at archetype level. At the first stage it involves transition of participant(s) from common to dramatic reality on the background of world creation myth, when patient installs internal space and its centre through composition of items symbolising elemental arches such as air, fire, water, soil; then therapist, with his/her detached and integral space outlook, assists participants in diagnostic comparison of existing boundaries in family system with the structure of individual symbolic space presented in installation, binding the boundaries with symptom functions; at the second stage participants transit into liminality state by symbolic drama and active imagination methods, with visual image represented by actualised installation with communicative projective symbolic expression of all elemental arches, beginning with air; afterwards the process performance is implemented and sketch of most probable scenario picture is made, followed by conscious rearrangement of space created in installation, through performance, symbolic drama, psychodrama where both individual existential experience and family psychosomatic problems are amplified, and corporal therapy where intentional dialog between patient and therapist reveals symbolic sense of actualised feelings in symbolic drama and psychodrama at biography and archetype level, links them to symptom function and family relation dynamics; at the third stage therapist suggests new structure of common space in installation and focuses attention on division of spousal and parental needs, subsystem boundaries, thus promoting efficiency and competence improvement of participants, both spouses and parents; at the fourth stage therapist brings participant(s) out of dramatic reality and liminality state by focusing their attention on the structure of new space, common feelings and sharing basic values, role position, which are the basis of new family status of patient and new Ego image related to it; positive family development strategy is designed, new, more flexible family relations are shaped. For family crisis, creation of new communicative space is performed in three cycles.

EFFECT: enhanced efficiency of psychotherapeutic assistance to family in reality 'construction' and development including physiological, social, psychological and existential spiritual aspects of development and realisation of both personality and family in general; due to eliminated destructive strategies and search for new adaptive behavior forms, by overcoming existing dissonance and transiting to new relation space allowing for realisation of needs and tasks from other level and period, and family support in critical period by reassessment of values and life experience; envisioning links between internal conflict, somatic disease or psychoemotional disorder of family member with individual world outlook and selected behavior strategy; shaping new view of situation and transition to new understanding level, development of new behavior and relations strategy in family and in society in general by taking more mature position both as personality and as family; for child adoption it is a conscious capability and desire to overlook and build new subsystem boundaries in family in concordance with all family members, including adopted child; soft and delicate introduction of adopted child by projective methods in new family, acquaintance with family structure, set relations and values, participation in shaping new space.

2 cl, 1 ex