Systemic Dialectical Multi-level Multi-focus Approach

The initial impetus came from social conditions in post-civil-war Greece, where ways were sought to support individuals, families, and communities to rebuild unity in their lives and a sense of meaning.

Meaning is central. The foundation of the approach is essentially existential, stemming from the founders’ vision to offer the fragmented society an approach that respects the basic unity of life: individual and group as an indivisible entity, developing together on a cooperative basis. A group and a plan were created to acquire skills and initiate a center that would provide a framework for processing new emerging theoretical schemas and applications. The search for meaning in life as a creative member of a community became the foundation of the approach. In the words of Giorgos Vasileiou himself: “The worst addiction is addiction to a life without meaning.”

Man as a system. In his early writings, G. Vasileiou states, “Man (the human being in Greek) and the group are considered aspects of the same process” – a fundamental Aristotelian idea. Individuals, families, and groups are perceived as open, dynamic, bio-psycho-social-economic-cultural systems in interaction, interdependence, and transaction with other systems in their broader context.

Functionality is defined as a spiral process at levels of increasing organized complexity, through morphogenesis and remodeling – key mechanisms of change – toward emotional, cognitive-social differentiation and integration. G. Vasileiou proposed the concept of “anotropy” instead of negative entropy, focusing on promoting functionality versus blocking dysfunction, continuously seeking openness in organization and organization in openness (Vasileiou 1973).

Lack of balance. Anotropy relates to managing lack of balance when new information is filtered through the system, a concept central to theoretical discussions at AIA in the early 1970s: Spiral development, at certain points, requires deconstruction, experienced as discomfort or crisis, which allows reconstruction that incorporates new elements from experience and the changing environment. Introducing the optimal therapeutic imbalance in family therapy is considered important for cultivating the system’s change receptors. Techniques from psychodrama and paradoxes are used in this regard.

Dialectical. The approach takes into account the dialectic created between interdependent systems – arising from co-evolutionary processes within and between them. It is distinct from the concept of dialogical, which refers to the actual dialogue occurring between systems (e.g., family or group members). In therapy, the dialectical principle may lead the therapist working with a difficult parent-child relationship to focus mainly on their separate but co-evolving parenting patterns, rather than their immediate dialogue.

Multi-level. The central role of the concept of unity in human processes is further grounded in the principle of hierarchy of interconnected social systems at different levels of organized complexity (Vasileiou and Vasileiou 1982). Any system (individual, family, small and large group, school, organization, community) is approached as an integral part of the specific hierarchy within which it operates, its supra-systemic context; to understand, relate to, and participate in therapy or education, one must observe both how the system, e.g., a family, is internally organized – how members interact – and how the family interacts and functions in the broader context of extended family, community, work, school, and especially culture and developmental stage.

Multi-focus. The holistic view of processes unfolding at different system levels allows the intervener – therapist or educator – to shift focus within sessions from one system to another or from one level to another (e.g., from the family as a whole, to the couple’s relationship with the children’s subgroup, to the relationship between female and male members, or among three generations or different cultures, as needed). Shifting focus facilitates maintaining an optimal level in therapy and learning motivation, and in opening new alternatives (Polemi-Todoulou et al. 1998).

Combined therapeutic settings. Individuals are treated as members of the groups in which they function: family, social groups, community, and culture (Dionysis Sakkas 1990). Therefore, therapists use individual sessions, family sessions (for the whole group or any subgroup), and group sessions, combined as deemed appropriate for each case: shortly after initial family sessions, the couple or one or more members may be encouraged to join group therapy to become agents of change for themselves and the family. Similarly, individuals starting with individual therapy and entering group therapy are encouraged to attend family therapy sessions to complement and consolidate desired changes in the family context. The therapeutic schema may also include participation of one or more members in a parent or life-orientation group or experiential educational group. The combined use of different settings was developed as a key feature of therapy at AIA while group and family therapy movements were still relatively distinct in conferences, networks, and journals.