Interview with Anna Yakovlevna Varga about family and systemic family psychotherapy. About the systems approach

Varga Anna Yakovlevna,Moscow

Candidate psychological sciences. Systemic family consultant.

Associate Professor of the Department of Psychology of the Faculty social sciences, Academic Supervisor educational program"Systemic Family Psychotherapy" National Research University "Higher School of Economics".

Chairman of the Board of the Society of Family Counseling Psychotherapists. Member of the International Family Therapy Association, European Association of Psychotherapists. Member of the Training Committee of the European Association of Family Therapists.

In 1978 she graduated from the Faculty of Psychology of the Moscow state university them. M.V. Lomonosov. In 1991-1993 Completed a system training course family psychotherapy(Milan school. Coach and supervisor Hana Weiner, AFTA coach and IFTA President) and in 1991-1994. internship in psychodrama (Scandinavian Academy of Psychodrama).

In 1986 she defended her Ph.D. thesis on the topic "Structure and types of parental relationship."

After graduating from Moscow State University, she conducted a reception at the Counseling Center psychological help parents experiencing difficulties in raising children, the first in the history of the USSR psychological consultation founded at the Faculty of Psychology.

1988–1990 - Associate Professor of the Faculty of Psychology and Pedagogy, Moscow State Pedagogical University. Lenin.

In the late 80s, she left public service to devote full time to family counseling.

1990–2014 - Head of the Department of Systemic Family Psychotherapy of the Institute practical psychology and psychoanalysis.

Since 2014 he has been working at the National research university"High School of Economics".

Creator of the fundamental training program for systemic psychotherapists.

Reads courses and conducts research seminars:

Research on the effectiveness of psychotherapy
Supervision in classical and postclassical systemic family therapy
Theory and methodology modern psychology
Introduction to family psychology and family psychotherapy
Family System Research
Methods and schools of classical systemic family therapy
Supervision Models in Systemic Family Therapy

Grants:

2002–2004 Institute Grant Open Society"College of Helping Specialists", aimed at professional network support of specialists helping organizations in the regions of Russia. Responsible executor of the project.
2005–2008 Grant from the KAF Foundation - The Future of the Children of Beslan. Destination coordinator.

Main publications: more than 60 works, including 2 monographs

Systemic family psychotherapy. Lecture course. St. Petersburg, from-in "Rech", 2001
Introduction to systemic family therapy. M. Kogiito-center, 2011.

Awarded American Association of Family Therapists and the AVANTA Society for the development of V. Satir's theory in Russia.

Families have become very diverse. And this diversity is equally likely to be healthy and functional, and may be dysfunctional. For example, there is such a thing as " white marriage when people decide they won't have sex with each other. Is it bad or good? Or an open marriage, when spouses can openly have relationships with other people. Is this good or bad? And there is also a consciously childless marriage. There are still families where both parents work, and everything else, including children, is outsourced. Binuclear families have appeared when, after a divorce, people continue to raise a child together, new partners are in friendly contact with the old ones. If people feel good together, in any variant of life arrangement, no one makes unbearable internal compromises for the sake of togetherness, then today this is considered a functional family.

Thus the first distinguishing feature modern family - its diversity. Second important point- the disappearance of childhood. In addition to biological childhood (up to 5-7 years old), there is the so-called socially constructed childhood: public ideas about who is considered a child, how children and adults differ, how to treat themselves in broad sense with a child, etc. Now social childhood is disappearing. It's a consequence global process shifts communication technologies. Therefore, the institution of education itself disappears - in its place comes the "growing" of the child. The child is at the top of the family hierarchy - and as a result, both children and adults disappear from it. Because adults can exist in it as a socially constructed category only if there is childhood. All this leads to two negative consequences. Firstly, the family becomes child-centric (a child is born - disappears married life as a subsystem). The child begins to manage everything, and this is bad for him - he becomes neurotic. Mutually exclusive information comes to him: on the one hand, he remains dependent on his parents in many ways ( Small child cannot take care of himself, without adults outside the home he can simply die), on the other hand, in his family he is a king and a god. Because of this, he does not have an adequate idea of his place in life, of his real possibilities.

When parents “serve” a child, do not set boundaries for him, subordinate family life to children’s needs, they lose such important function as providing security and protection to the child. If adults are not the main ones in the family, then they are not the protectors and support for the child. When you start working with such a family, you understand that they, having built such an inverted hierarchy, are not helpers for their child, and in general, the therapeutic potential of such a family is very low. This is a very serious challenge for modern family therapy.

13.08.2018

Psychotherapist family relations Anna Varga is the author of over 60 scientific publications, 2 monographs, periodically reflects on the topic "fathers and children" in magazines and on psychological sites. Has rich teaching experience. chief professional achievement considers the developed training program for systemic psychotherapists.

Education and career

Born in Moscow, in a family of scientists. In the capital, she received her primary education.

She then graduated from the Faculty of Psychology of Moscow State University in 1978. After, on the basis of the same faculty, she began to conduct receptions in the first psychological consultation in the USSR, providing assistance to parents experiencing difficulties in raising children. Over the next few years, she teaching activities at the Moscow State Pedagogical University IN AND. Lenina - Associate Professor of the Faculty of Psychology and Pedagogy.

In the late 1980s, she left her teaching career and focused on family counseling. Anna Yakovlevna invested a lot of work in the development and implementation of new methods of family psychotherapy. As a result, she founded the Society of Family Relations Consultant Psychotherapists.

From 1990 to 2014, he was the head of the Department of Systemic Family Psychotherapy at the IPPIP, a private institute for advanced training of psychologists. Since 2014 on this moment operates in high school Economics NRU.

“The family is big, complex and very beloved”

It seems that the life of Anna Yakovlevna consists entirely of scientific papers, dissertations, lectures and reports. However, there is a place for the family, which is of great value and importance. Long walks in unfamiliar cities, communication with interesting people, watching movies and reading books - what inspires you to be productive professional activity. “The dream is to be active for up to a hundred years,” is an excellent mood of a person who has done so much to develop the psychology of family relationships, which means that new articles, books and hundreds of families are ahead, which they will help maintain or establish mutual understanding.

Books

Anna Yakovlevna Varga published two monographs: “ Systemic psychotherapy married couples, a book about actual problems in families, their solution and prevention. It is written in an understandable language, which makes it possible to assimilate the material not only for professionals in the field of psychology, but also for those who are concerned about the problems of the modern family.
Systemic family psychotherapy. Course of lectures”, - the family is single system, with the interaction of all its individual elements. Professionally written material is easily perceived even by an unprepared reader.

Testing

Our portal presents the test "Questionnaire of parental attitude", the author of which is A.Ya. Varga and V.V. Stolin. The technique will help to diagnose the attitude towards the child, both father and mother. Under the attitude you need to understand a complex of influencing factors: the emotional component, rationalism and behavior.