Systemic Approach, Essay Example

Systemic thinking: Systemic thinking is an ordered and logical approach to a system of inquiry. Systemic thinking allows one to understand the relationships shared by different variables within a particular system. One attempts to understand the individual elements independently of the system and then the same elements as part of the overall system. By being able to understand the components that form the system, one develops a better understanding of the overall system. This allows one to be able to understand the source of the problems as well as the impact of the problem on the overall system. Just as a car mechanic is quickly able to diagnose a problem because he understands all the components of the car engine and how they work together to make the car run, systemic thinking allows us to quickly understand the problems that may be crippling the system.

Linear Thinking:  Linear thinking or lateral thinking is a thought process that follows an orderly sequence. One starts at the beginning and follow the thought process in an orderly fashion without skipping a step in between. A good example is human life cycle where one cannot move from childhood to adult age directly but only after going through adulthood. Similarly, childhood, adulthood, and old age always follow the same order. Adulthood cannot come before childhood just as old age cannot come before adulthood.

System approach applied to families: Family systems theory is a body of knowledge derived from the work of clinical and counselling psychologists and works for both individuals and families. The theory states that individuals cannot be understood in isolation because they are part of a network of relationships. Thus, to understand an individualbehaviour, one has to look at the individual’s various roles and relationships such as father,

mother, son, daughter, aunt, and uncle etc. Each role has different contribution towards a family and different people have different expectations from the same individual depending on the relationship they have with that individual. One can be a father to one person, a brother to another and thus, different people will have different expectations from the same person.

Individual Therapy:Individual therapy is a psychological counselling on a one-to-one basis and is the most common form of psychological counselling for children and adults.  It requires the counsellor to form a trustable relationship with the patient in order to resolve a specific issue.The issues as hand may be trying to kick a specific habit such as smoking, drinking, drugs or substance abuse or the goal of the counselling may be to deal with emotional issues such as marital problems and grief etc.In case of more acute forms of mental illness, the psychologists often work closely with medical practitioners and social workers because it takes a multi-level approach to deal with more acute forms of mental illness and it requires the intervention of specialists from different areas.