Türk Eğitim Değerlendirmeleri Dergisi

Öz

Virginia Satir, one of the pioneers of family therapy, is a the- rapist who has worked in practice for more than 40 years and whose theory has widely reached. Virginia Satir’s accepting attitude towards clients in therapy, her open communication with clients, and her “here and now” in therapy has been influential in her professional success. She believed that positively oriented change is possible for both individuals and interpersonal systems. Satir’s theory went through different phases, from his first family therapy in 1951 until his death in 1988. These stages are the communication model, the validation model, the change model, and the transformational systemic change model, respectively. It is essential to have five key elements for transformational change in therapy to occur. These elements are being positively directional, experiential, change-focused, systemic (working in the internal and interpersonal systems), and the therapist’s self-congruence. The aim of therapy is to make clients aware of how problems become problems within the framework of these five elements, and to show clients how to use their different aspects for change, especially in couple and family therapy, instead of using distance or conflict as a coping method in solving these problems. In therapy, the impact of events and situations on clients are paid attention rather than their content. In addition, clients are helped to realize the dysfunctional coping patterns they have used so far, to discover useful patterns and to integrate them into their lives.