THE FAMILY EMOTIONAL PROCESS AND ITS ROLE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SYMPTOMS

Abstract

In understanding psychological problems, the conventional medical model examines, diagnoses, and treats the patient's pathology. In the systemic family model, the therapist tries to avoid diagnosing the patient and to focus on the family emotional process that creates the patient. This paper is not intended as a theoretical discussion of the ultimate implications of family theory, but its goal is to point out that there is an family emotional process that helps the family create and maintain the "disease" in the "patient". The greater the anxiety in the family system, the more intense this process. The emotional process of the nuclear family plays a particularly important role in the development of children, as it establishes and maintains the specific context of family relationships in which the child develops. This work points to the theoretical compatibility of biology, developmental psychopathology and the systemic family perspective, which opens up space for future research that would enable the integration of these approaches, in a way that will mutually enrich them.