Contextual Family Therapy

What is Contextual Family Therapy?

Contextual Family Therapy was pioneered and developed by Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy. Dr. Nagy has written many books and articles on family therapy and Contextual Family Therapy. He was one of the founders of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy in the late 1970s and was a well-respected humanitarian.  

Contextual Family Therapy focuses on the emotional healing that can occur within families. Everyone is considered, yet all family members should benefit from contextual therapy. When a family works on increasing fairness in their relationships, problems or symptoms will decrease. Fairness is based on adequately understanding the other’s side, being responsible and accountable for one’s behaviors, and taking action. Insight regarding one's relationships is helpful and leads to exploring actions that might be taken to re-balance or heal relationships.

Contextual Family Therapy uses the tools and ideas of other family therapy models. However, CFS's approach is not eclectic. There is an overlying guideline for treatment, which Dr. Nagy called the Ethical Dimension of treatment. The ethical dimension of relationships influences the focus and nature of contextual therapy. One such ethical concept is called multidirectional partiality.

Contextual therapists utilize, model, and teach multidirectional partiality throughout treatment. This concept focuses on the best interests of everyone, even those not in the room, and relational fairness. For example, treatment cannot take a focus that would be genuinely harmful to any family member. A woman should not decide or take action that would seem reasonable for her but would be detrimental to her mother or her children.