Solving Modern Family Dilemmas

Context is the unifying principle that guides a therapist’s formulation of the modern family’s presenting dilemmas, functioning, relationships, and attitudes. We can no longer assume that a family is comprised of a mother, father, and children; the composition and systems a family operates within can be fluid and ever-changing, requiring an equally elastic model. The Assimilative Family Therapy Model is sensitive to the many unique contexts presented by the modern family and is shaped by the inclusion of necessary interventions to address the specific dilemmas of a client or family. In Solving Modern Family Dilemmas, readers will learn about many schools of thought and experience their integration to help heal clients through differentiation, anxiety reduction, and lowering emotional reactivity. There is also no need for readers to abandon their theoretical framework; theories, concepts, and interventions can be inserted into the model, enabling readers to create their own model of family therapy. End-of-chapter questions enable self-examination, and readers are treated to references for further exploring theories, concepts, and interventions. Family therapists, psychologists, social workers, and mental health counselors find this book essential in their work with all clients, and professors use it in courses to teach different modes of integrating theories, concepts, and interventions.

Context is the unifying principle that guides a therapist’s formulation of the modern family’s presenting dilemmas, functioning, relationships, and attitudes. We can no longer assume that a family is comprised of a mother, father, and children; the composition and systems a family operates within can be fluid and ever-changing, requiring an equally elastic model. The Assimilative Family Therapy Model is sensitive to the many unique contexts presented by the modern family and is shaped by the inclusion of necessary interventions to address the specific dilemmas of a client or family. In Solving Modern Family Dilemmas, readers will learn about many schools of thought and experience their integration to help heal clients through differentiation, anxiety reduction, and lowering emotional reactivity. There is also no need for readers to abandon their theoretical framework; theories, concepts, and interventions can be inserted into the model, enabling readers to create their own model of family therapy. End-of-chapter questions enable self-examination, and readers are treated to references for further exploring theories, concepts, and interventions. Family therapists, psychologists, social workers, and mental health counselors find this book essential in their work with all clients, and professors use it in courses to teach different modes of integrating theories, concepts, and interventions.

Context is the unifying principle that guides a therapist's formulation of the modern family's presenting dilemmas, functioning, relationships, and attitudes. We can no longer assume that a family is comprised of a mother, father, and children; the composition and systems a family operates within can be fluid and ever-changing, requiring an equally elastic model. The Assimilative Family Therapy Model is sensitive to the many unique contexts presented by the modern family and is shaped by the inclusion of necessary interventions to address the specific dilemmas of a client or family. In Solving Modern Family Dilemmas, readers will learn about many schools of thought and experience their integration to help heal clients through differentiation, anxiety reduction, and lowering emotional reactivity. There is also no need for readers to abandon their theoretical framework; theories, concepts, and interventions can be inserted into the model, enabling readers to create their own model of family therapy. End-of-chapter questions enable self-examination, and readers are treated to references for further exploring theories, concepts, and interventions. Family therapists, psychologists, social workers, and mental health counselors find this book essential in their work with all clients, and professors use it in courses to teach different modes of integrating theories, concepts, and interventions.

Written for researchers, practitioners, and students in advanced courses, this book furthers our understanding of the complexity of contemporary families. Seven types of families are the focus of this book, based on the research available and the challenges they present for mental health professionals. The family forms discussed are • Adoption • Foster care • Interracial families • Family members with special needs (with a focus on autism) • Families with LGBTQ members • Grandparent-headed Families • Family members with chronic medical conditions The volume establishes an innovative format that fits the new age of evidence-based practice. Each chapter is written by a collaborative team of authors consisting of researchers and practitioners. The former address the prevalence and characteristics of the family form and then present the research findings most relevant to clinical practice; the latter use this as the foundation for their portion of the chapter, in which they discuss strategies for good therapeutic intervention, representing a true integration of science and practice. Readers learn about relevant research findings regarding each family described, as well as gain explicit instruction and case material for which to augment therapeutic efforts with these populations.

How does the family art therapist understand the complexities of another’s cultural diversity? What are international family therapist’s perspectives on treatment? These questions and more are explored in Multicultural Family Art Therapy, a text that demonstrates how to practice psychotherapy within an ethnocultural and empathetic context. Each international author presents their clinical perspective and cultural family therapy narrative, thereby giving readers the structural framework they need to work successfully with clients with diverse ethnic backgrounds different from their own. A wide range of international contributors provide their perspectives on visual symbols and content from America, Canada, Britain, Ireland, Australia, Israel, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Trinidad, Central America, and Brazil. They also address a diversity of theoretical orientations, including attachment, solution-focused, narrative, parent-child, and brief art therapy, and write about issues such as indigenous populations, immigration, acculturation, identity formation, and cultural isolation. At the core of this new text is the realization that family art therapy should address not only the diversity of theory, but also the diversity of international practice.

The field of family, child, and couple assessment continues to evolve and change since the first edition of this book appeared in 2004. Couple and Family Assessment, Third Edition, is a thoroughly revised and updated resource for anyone working with children, adolescents, couples, and families. It provides an in-depth description of an even larger number of clinically useful assessment tools and methods, including issue-specific tools, self-report inventories, standardized inventories, qualitative measures, and observational methods. Each chapter provides strategies for systematically utilizing these various assessment methods and measures with a wide range of family dynamics that influence couples and families. These include couples conflict, divorce, separation, mediation, premarital decisions, parenting conflicts, child abuse, family violence, custody evaluation, and child and adolescent conditions, i.e., depression, anxiety, conduct disorder, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, autism, Asperger’s syndrome, and learning disorders that can significantly influence family dynamics. This third edition features the latest, most common and important assessment tools and strategies for addressing problematic clinical issues related to working with families, couples, and children. Chapters 3 through 11 include matrices that summarize pertinent information on all instruments reviewed, allowing readers to instantly compare more than 130 assessment devices. Finally, the book provides extensive clinical case material that illustrates the use of these various assessment tools and strategies in a wide array of clinical situations. Couple and Family Assessment, Third Edition, will be useful to both trainees and practitioners as a ready reference on assessment measures and strategies for working with families, couples, and children.

Understanding Domestic Violence not only highlights and reexamines the different challenges that we continue to face in effectively addressing issues of domestic violence but provides innovated approaches to interventions that are more in keeping with the complex nature of domestic violence. This book provides a comprehensive and multifaceted examination of conditions and factors involved in domestic violence, including psychological, sociocultural, sociopolitical, and socioeconomic issues. The authors look at domestic violence through the trauma lens and intersectionality to develop intervention strategies within that context. Statistics and clinical examples from the field highlight unique culturally-based issues related to domestic violence among Latino, African American, and Arab Muslim communities, issues with woman perpetrators, and violence in the LGBTQ community, to name a few. In the end, Understanding Domestic Violence offers opportunities for the reader to engage in further discussion of the poignant issues discussed in the book, with the invitation to become part of the solution.

Grounded in a deep understanding of what makes intimate relationships succeed, this book provides concrete guidelines for addressing the complexities of real-world clinical practice with couples. Leading couple therapist Ellen Wachtel describes the principles of therapeutic interventions that motivate couples to alter entrenched patterns, build on strengths, and navigate the “legacy” issues that each person brings to the relationship. She illuminates the often unrecognized choices that therapists face throughout the session and deftly explicates their implications. The epilogue by Paul Wachtel situates the author's pragmatic approach in the broader context of contemporary psychotherapy theory and research.