Ivan Böszörményi-Nagy

Iván Böszörményi-Nagy (born Budapest, May 19, 1920; died Glenside, Pennsylvania, January 28, 2007) was a Hungarian-American psychiatrist and one of the founders of the field of family therapy. He emigrated from Hungary to the United States in 1950.

Contextual therapy
Böszörményi-Nagy developed the Contextual approach to family therapy and individual psychotherapy. It is a comprehensive model which integrates individual psychological, interpersonal, existential, systemic, and intergenerational dimensions of individual and family life and development.

The Contextual model emphasizes the ethical or "justice" dimension - the relational ethics - of close relationships: in particular, the roles of caring, connectedness, loyalty, guilt, fairness, accountability, and trustworthiness - within and between generations. It sees relational ethics as not just a set of prescriptive norms, nor simply as psychological phenomena, perspectives, or constructions. Rather it sees relational ethics as (i) having some objective ontological and experiential basis by virtue of being derived from basic needs and from real relationships with concrete consequences (ie, as distinct from abstract or "value" ethics); and (ii) as being significant explanatory and motivational dynamics operating - in both beneficial and destructive ways - in individuals, families, social groups, and broader society.