Virginia Satir

Virginia Satir was an American author 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." Her most well-known books are Conjoint Family Therapy, 1964; Peoplemaking, 1972; and The New Peoplemaking, 1988. She also created the Virginia Satir Change Process Model, a psychological model developed through clinical studies. 

Change management and organizational gurus of the 1990s and 2000s embrace this model to define how change impacts organizations. Satir published her first book, Conjoint Family Therapy, in 1964, developed from the training manual she wrote for students at MRI. Her reputation grew with each subsequent book, and she traveled the world to speak on her methods. She also became a Diplomate of the Academy of Certified Social Workers and received the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy's Distinguished Service Award.

Satir often integrated meditations and poetic writing into both her public workshops and writings. One of her most well-known works, "I Am Me," was written by Satir in response to a question posed by an angry teenage girl. Satir's entire work was done under the umbrella of "Becoming More Fully Human." From the possibility of a nurturing primary triad of father, mother, and child, she conceived a process of Human Validation. 

She viewed the reconciliation of families as a way to reconcile the world. As she said: "The family is a microcosm. Knowing how to heal the family means I know how to heal the world." With this overview, she established professional training groups in the Satir Model in the Middle East, the Orient, Western and Eastern Europe, Central and Latin America, and Russia. The Institute for International Connections, Avanta Network, and the International Human Learning Resources Network are concrete examples of teaching people how to connect with one another and then extend the connections. 

Her world impact could be summed up in her universal mantra: peace within, between, and among. In the mid-1970s, her work was extensively studied by the co-founders of Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), Richard Bandler and John Grinder, who used it as one of the three fundamental models of NLP.

Bandler and Grinder also collaborated with Satir to author Changing With Families for Science and Behavior Books, which bore the subtitle 'A Book About Further Education for Being Human.' The Virginia Satir Global Network, originally named "AVANTA" by Satir, is an international organization that carries on her work and promotes her approach to family therapy.