Lecture room: Oddi – 106. Click for a map.
Interview and conversation with Kristin Gústavsdóttir and Karl Gustaf Piltz, two pioneers in family therapy in Iceland and Sweden.
Interviewed by Guðlaug Helga Ásgeirsdóttir
Together Kristin and Karl Gustaf have followed the development of family therapy from the late sixties and have become acquainted with many schools of family therapy. They developed their own model of co-therapy to work with reconciliation in families and professional groups. They have continuously worked with implementing family therapy in institutions. Authors of the book Den osynliga familjen (The invisible family)
Presentation of the interviewers
Kristin Gústavsdóttir, MSW and Karl Gustaf Piltz, licensed psychologist. Kristin has a MSW from Smith College, and has worked as a psychiatric social worker at the University Hospital in Iceland, where she started a family therapy program in the early seventies. Karl Gustaf Piltz is a lawyer and psychologist. He started a family therapy program in a psychiatric clinic in Gothenburg. Both are licensed psychotherapists , family and grouptherapists and accredited supervisors and trainers.
They met 1969 in Philadelphia where many of the pioneers in family therapy were working at that time. Salvador Minuchin, Jay Haley, Murry Bowen, Ivan Bosnormenyi-Nagy and Virginia Satir gave seminars and introduced their ideas and work. It was an open community with enthusiasm and open exchange of ideas. This became the start of a lifelong commitment to Family Therapy and each other.
Three years later they were married and had started a private institute for family therapy in Gothenburg, which they ran from 1972 to 2012 when they moved to Iceland. There they continued to practice therapy and participate as teachers and supervisors in family therapy programs. All those years they have worked together in cotherapy with couples and families in addition to training and implementing family therapy in institutions both in Sweden and in Iceland.
They have developed a model for co-therapy with division of responsibility, using a gender perspective and a three-generational approach.This model has been useful in working with couples and families to enable deeper listening, preventing violent communication with the goal of reconciliation. This also includes ”Go-home-therapy ”and building bridges between generations.