Virginia Satir

Virginia Satir (26 June 1916 – 10 September 1988) was an American author, clinical social worker and psychotherapist, recognized for her approach to family therapy.

Her pioneering work in the field of family reconstruction therapy honored her with the title "Mother of Family Therapy".

Virginia Satir was born on 26 June 1916 in Neillsville, Wisconsin.

She was the eldest of five children born to Oscar Alfred Reinnard Pagenkopf and Minnie Happe Pagenkopf.

When she was five years old, Satir suffered from appendicitis.

Her mother, a devout Christian Scientist, refused to take her to a doctor.

By the time Satir's father decided to overrule his wife, the young girl's appendix had ruptured.

Doctors were able to save her life, but Satir was forced to stay in the hospital for several months.

When Satir was three years old, she taught herself to read and by age nine, she had read all of the books in the library of her small one-room school.

From early years, Satir demonstrated an interest in family dynamics.

When she was five, she decided that she would grow up to be "a children's detective on parents, inclinations that would later become true through her therapeutic practices."

She later explained that "I didn't quite know what I would look for, but I realized a lot went on in families that didn't meet the eye."

In 1929, her mother insisted that the family move from their farm to Milwaukee so that Satir could attend high school.

Satir's high school years coincided with the Great Depression, and to help her family she took a part-time job and also attended as many courses as she could so that she could graduate early.

In 1932, she received her high school diploma and promptly enrolled in Milwaukee State Teachers College (now University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.) To pay for her education she worked part-time for the Works Projects Administration and for Gimbels Department Store and further supplemented her income by babysitting.

She graduated with a bachelor's degree in education, and worked as a teacher for a few years.

During her time as a schoolteacher, she recognized that involved and supportive parents not only help students in the classroom but could also heal family dynamics.

Satir began meeting and cooperating with the parents of her students and saw the family system as a reflection of the world at large, stating "if we can heal the family, we can heal the world".

Beginning in 1937, for three summers she took courses at Northwestern University in Chicago.

Her interest in families led her to enroll full-time at the University of Chicago School of Social Services Administration where she obtained a master's degree in social work.

She finished her coursework for her master's degree in 1943, and completed her thesis for her degree in 1948.

After graduating social work school, Satir began working in private practice.

She met with her first family in 1951, and by 1955 was working with Illinois Psychiatric Institute, encouraging other therapists to focus on families instead of individual patients.

By the end of the decade she had moved to California, where she cofounded the Mental Research Institute (MRI) in Palo Alto, California.

MRI received a grant from NIMH in 1962, allowing them to begin the first formal family therapy training program ever offered; Satir was hired as its training director.

Innovation

Satir's skills and views about the important role the family has and its connection to an individual's problems and/or healing process led her into becoming a renowned therapist.

One of Satir's most novel ideas at the time was that the "presenting issue" or "surface problem" itself was seldom the real problem; rather, how people coped with the issue created the problem.

Satir also offered insights into the particular problems that low self-esteem could cause in relationships.

In addition to Satir's influence in human sciences, she helped establish organizations with the purpose of educating therapists around the world and granting them with resources to help families and clients.

Long interested in the idea of networking, Satir founded two groups to help individuals find mental health workers or other people who were suffering from similar issues to their own.

Her most well-known books are Conjoint Family Therapy, 1964, Peoplemaking, 1972, and The New Peoplemaking, 1988.

She is also known for creating the Virginia Satir Change Process Model, a psychological model developed through clinical studies.

In 1970, she organized Beautiful People, which later became known as the International Human Learning Resources Network.

In 1977 she founded the Avanta Network, which was renamed to the Virginia Satir Global Network in 2010.

Recognition

Two years later, Satir was appointed to the Steering Committee of the International Family Therapy Association and became a member of the advisory board for the National Council for Self-Esteem.

She has also been recognized with several honorary doctorates, including a 1978 doctorate in Social Sciences from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Honors and awards received

Change management and organizational gurus of the 1990s and 2000s embrace this model to define how change impacts organizations.