Salvador minuchin born

The life of Salvador Minuchin (1921– 2017) offers a good example of the influence of family and social context in shaping individual identity—a central tenet of his Structural Family Therapy model.

He was born in Argentina on October 13, 1921, the first of three children, to a strict and fair father, who owned a small business, a protective mother, who ran the household, and a large extended family ensconced within a closely knit community of immigrant Russian Jews, which represented one quarter of the population of a small rural town. Within this multilayered context, the young Minuchin grew up as an Argentinean Jew, not only embracing the Hispanic code of honor but also relying on his family and community for protection from the anti-Semitic undertones of the host culture —a complex experience that sensitized him to the workings of families and larger systems and to the need for interdependence, mutual loyalty, and social justice. He also experienced the impact of socioeconomic c

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Minuchin, Salvador

1921-
Argentinian physician, one of the founders of family therapy and of structural family therapy.

The eldest of three children born to the children of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Salvador Minuchin was born and raised in a closely knit small Jewish community in rural Argentina. His father had been a prosperous businessman until the Great Depression forced his family into poverty. In high school he decided he would help juvenile delinquents after hearing his psychology teacher discuss the philosopher Rousseau's ideas that delinquents are victims of society.

At age 18 he entered the university as a medical student. In 1944, as a student, he became active in the leftist political movement opposing the dictator Juan Peron who had taken control of Argentina's universities. He was jailed for three months. Upon graduation in 1946 he began a residency in pediatrics and took a subspecialty in psychiatry. In 1948, as Minuchin was opening a pediatric practice, the s

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Salvador Minuchin

Therapist in Argentina

Salvador Minuchin (October 13, 1921 – October 30, 2017) was 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.

Career

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Salvador Minuchin served as a physician in the Israeli army after obtaining his degree in medicine. Once his service was finished, he traveled 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