Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

A concept proposed by Reuben Hill and Evelyn Duval in 1948 (see Cuisenier, 1977), describing the succession of phases which a family unit passes through, from its formation to its disappearance. The notion was taken up again explicitly in the 1970s with the contributions of Satir (1972), Haley (1973), Minuchin (1974), Bowen (1978a)and Carter and McGoldrick (1980). Although the term is widely criticized by psychosociologists, it seems in fact to be unanimously accepted by family therapists of all schools, though admittedly it is interpreted and understood in various ways. The concept of cycle is useful because it introduces both the notion of return and perpetuity, and the notion of irreversibility and temporal bifurcation. Family life-cycles thus make it possibnle to describe the development of the family over time, the return of periodic phases over several generations and the effects of tranformation/permancence which each return involves. Such cycles are correlated and regulated by other cycles: the inter-individual micro-cycles of daily life, economic, political, social and religious macro-cycles. These enter into resonance with the cycles of the earth (nycterohemeral, the seasons etc.). These adjustments between cycles lead to a self-regulating model which would remain merely superficial if it attempted to establish the existence of a standard cycle, but which becomes of practical ... log in or subscribe to read full text