Salvador Minuchin

Salvador Minuchin
Salvador Minuchin
Born	1921 San Salvador, Entre Ríos, Argentina
Residence	Boca Raton, Florida, United States
Known for	Structural family therapy

Salvador Minuchin (born 1921) is a family therapist born and raised in San Salvador, Entre Ríos, Argentina. He developed structural family therapy, which addresses problems within a family by charting the relationships between family members, or between subsets of family (Minuchin, 1974). These charts represent power dynamics as well as the boundaries between different subsystems. The therapist tries to disrupt dysfunctional relationships within the family, and cause them to settle back into a healthier pattern.

Salvador Minuchin served as a physician in the Israeli army after obtaining his degree in medicine. Once his service was finished, he travelled to New York City to be trained in child psychiatry with Nathan Ackerman. When his training with Ackerman was complete, Minuchin returned to Israel to assist displaced children as a child psychiatrist (Nichols, 2010). In 1954 he returned to the United States to be trained in psychoanalysis at the William Alanson White Institute with Harry Stack Sullivan.Harry Stack Sullivan died in 1949. After completing his psychoanalytic training, Minuchin worked as a child psychiatrist at the Wiltwyck School for delinquent boys, where he decided that treating whole families would be worthwhile.

While he held his position at the Wiltwyck School, Minuchin developed a form of family therapy with his co-workers. Their method involved Minuchin or another psychiatrist performing a therapy session with a family while the other psychiatrists viewed the session through a one-way mirror (Nichols, 2010). Observing one another work allowed the therapists to learn techniques easily and led Minuchin to develop structural family therapy. In 1962, once Minuchin had generated his theoretical formulations for family structure, he travelled to Palo Alto to work with Jay Haley. Minuchin's work at the Miltwyck School led to his first book, Families of the Slums (1967), which outlined his theoretical model of family therapy.