A warm welcome to the New South Wales Family Therapy Association  web site.  We hope you find this site useful and informative. Within this site you will find a range of information about family therapy as well as our association.

About Family Therapy

The earliest approaches to psychotherapy in the 20th Century focused on individual therapy, and the patient-therapist relationship as the best way to treat psychological problems. Patients were segregated from their families for therapy and treatment focused on their individual symptomatic behaviours.

The advent of family therapy ushered in a whole new way of understanding and explaining human behaviour.  Family therapists shifted the focus of treatment in a way that allowed for social context, communication and relationship to have primary importance in therapy.

This way of working involves engaging with the whole family system as a functioning unit. While the individuals in the family are as important in family therapy as in individual therapy, family therapists also deal with the personal relations and interactions of the family members, both inside the family and in the therapeutic system which comprises the family, the therapist or therapists, and their broader community.

The NSW Family Therapy Association

The NSW Family Therapy Association was established in the 1980’s for the purpose of promoting the study and effective practice, research and teaching of family therapy in NSW.  The NSW Association is a not-for-profit organisation that is overseen by a volunteer management committee.

Our Committee members are as follows:

• Lyndal Power (President)
• Gail Westcott (Vice President)
• Nicola Carter (Committee Member)
• Peter Melser (Committee Member)