A family is a small social entity that shapes the complex experiential processes in our daily life. Newly compounded families may seem to be 'not-normal' families, but they are the logical expression of new relations between people in a new set-up of their life together.
Describing the way that people live together will establish a social identity that sometimes does not account for the individual experiential processes of the family members. In a therapeutic context, the implicit worlds of meaning assignment are important. Every member of the family has his own emotional history that is built out of various story lines. In a newly compounded family a multitude of such histories meet, and need to be combined in a 'new story', their narrative.
From a interactional perspective, the therapist tries to restart the interactional process in a co-construction with the clients. In their mutual assignments of new meaning, we can discern the following core theme's: acknowledgment of great variety in experiential processes, a language for various and sometimes contradictory alliances, knowledge of societal rules, and finally the awareness of their own strength and creativity in shaping the new life together.
A newly compounded family is a unique constructive dialogue in a unique social context. As far as a therapeutic approach is concerned, we propose the integration of various approaches.
newly compounded families, client-centered experiential processes, interactional/solution-centered
The tPeP (Journal Person-centered experiential Psychotherapy) is the scientific journal for Dutch and Flemish psychotherapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists, that work from, or are interested in a client-centered perspective.