Psychogenetic system
The psychogenetic system is the transgenerational approach to couple and parenting therapy that was first developed by Anne Teachworth in 1991. The psychogenetic system is a program that facilitates a psychotherapeutic resolution to a romantic couple's relationship problems. This theorizes that each is reinventing a dysfunctional roleplay of how, as a child, they learned to act in a relationship, based on their youthful experience of their own parents' relationship roles. Counseling sessions focus on discovery and reprogramming the inner parent relationship demonstrated by each partner's parents in their early childhood. The theory includes: hidden Introjected Interactional Patterns (IIPs), which are imprinted in a couple's unconscious bonding, that were inherited from each partner's parents and in many cases, even earlier family generations.
This phenomenon is first described by Teachworth in her chapter "Three Couples Transformed" in Bud Feder and Ruth Ronall's A Living Legacy of Fritz and Laura Perls: Contemporary Case Studies (1997). The psychogenetic system is described in depth in Anne Teachworth's book on the subject, Why We Pick The Mates We Do, first published in 1997, now its Seventh EDition, revised in 2007.
Further reading
- Anne Teachworth. (1997) Why We Pick The Mates We Do. Gestalt Institute Press. ISBN 1-889968-53-6
- Bud Feder and Ruth Ronall. (1997) A Living Legacy of Fritz and Laura Perls: Contemporary Case Studies. Bud Feder Publishing. ISBN 978-0966310900