The Origins Of Family Psychotherapy

Family therapy has become a well-established treatment modality across many mental health disciplines including clinical social work, psychology, psychiatry, nursing, and counseling. This book tells the story of how family therapy began based on the work of one of the pioneers of family theory and therapy, Murray Bowen, M.D. Bowen's psychiatric training began at the Menninger Foundation in 1946. It was during the later part of his eight years at Menninger's that he began his transition away from conventional psychoanalytic theory and practice. Bowen left Menninger's in 1954 and began a historic family research program at the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, Maryland. This program, called the Family Study Program, involved hospitalizing entire families on a specialized research ward. He was interested in families with a child diagnosed with schizophrenia. There were two central findings of Bowen's four year project. The first was the concept that the family could be conceptualized and treated as an emotional unit. The second, was family psychotherapy, which began as staff-family daily meetings on the inpatient unit. The findings of Bowen's project remain part of mainstream mental health practice today. From that project, Bowen went on to develop his well known eight interlocking theoretical concepts that continue to be highly influential both in mental health and business. Bowen's project also significantly transformed the therapeutic relationship. The psychotherapist tried to achieve a balance when working with the families by making emotional connections while staying out of intense emotional reactions. They also worked diligently to avoid psychologically replacing parents. This book details the story of how these transformative changes came about by highlighting the original papers of the project.

Considers the family-of-origin approach to the psychiatric counselling of adults in marital, family and individual therapy. The text discusses theoretical and clinical implications and provides three case studies to illustrate the application of this method.

The founding volume of the European Family Therapy Association book series presents new ideas confirming the crucial importance of systemic family therapy for family practice. Spanning paradigms, models, concepts, applications, and implications for families as they develop, experts in the field demonstrate the translatability of session insights into real-world contexts, bolstering therapeutic gains outside the treatment setting. Chapters emphasize the potential for systemic family therapy as integrative across theories, healing disciplines, modes of treatment, while contributors’ personal perspectives provide unique takes on the therapist’s role. Together, these papers promote best practices not only for therapy, but also research and training as professionals delve deeper into understanding the complexity and diversity of families and family systems. “div>Included in the coverage:• The story of an encounter: the systemic approach at the heart of innovative clinical practice. • Steps to an ultramodern family therapy.• From networks to resonance: the life journey of a family therapist.• How to give a voice to children in family therapy.• Systemic theory and narratives of attachment: integration, formulation, and development over time.• Virtual relations and globalized families: the Genogram 4.0 interview. Origins and Originality in Family Therapy and Systemic Practice offers practitioners and other professionals particularly interested in family therapy practice timely, ethical tools for enhancing their work./div

This text will provide a comprehensive overview of traditional and evolving theoretical models of family therapy and intervention techniques. The objective of this text is to enable a student to gain beginning proficiency as a family therapist along with understanding the impact of a client's race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender issues, age, socioeconomic status, disability, and differences from the “traditional” family on family assessment and intervention. The book has six goals, as follows: (1) acquaint students with the theoretical underpinnings of various approaches to assessing and intervening with families (2) assist students in understanding the similarities, differences and strategies of change among the major models of family therapy (3) introduce the student to the current available research on the effectiveness of different approaches to family intervention (4) help students assess family functioning from a life cycle perspective and make a valid plan, taking into account client's race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender issues, age, socioeconomic status, disability, and differences from the “traditional” family (5) help students develop techniques and strategies related to stages of the intervention in family therapy (6) enable the student to critique the appropriateness of the theoretical models and its intervention techniques according to family developmental factors as well as the particular needs of the family. Features: (1) Comprehensive coverage of familty therapy theory and research 2) Presentation of clinical process issues unique to family therapy (3) Inclusion of family live cycle and developement issues and the impact on family assessment and treatment planning (4) Interventions in diverse family structures (5) Interventions with special family issues such as substance abuse, domestic violence and poverty (6) An emphasis throughout on helping students to develop beginning competencies in family therapy practice (7) Numerous case examples

When Bowen was a student and practitioner of classical psychoanalysis at the Menninger Clinic, he became engrossed in understanding the process of schizophrenia and its relationship to mother-child symbiosis. Between the years 1950 and 1959, at Menninger and later at the National Institute of Mental Health (as first chief of family studies), he worked clinically with over 500 schizophrenic families. This extensive experience was a time of fruition for his thinking as he began to conceptualize human behavior as emerging from within the context of a family system. Later, at Georgetown University Medical School, Bowen worked to extend the application of his ideas to the neurotic family system. Initially he saw his work as an amplification and modification of Freudian theory, but later viewed it as an evolutionary step toward understanding human beings as functioning within their primary networkDtheir family. One of the most renowned theorist and therapist in the field of family work, this book encompasses the breadth and depth of Bowen's contributions. It presents the evolution of Bowen's Family Theory from his earliest essays on schizophrenic families and their treatment, through the development of his concepts of triangulation, intergenerational conflict and societal regression, and culminating in his brilliant exploration of the differentiation of one's self in one's family of origin.

While iconic popular images celebrated family life during the 1950s and 1960s, American families were simultaneously regarded as potentially menacing sources of social disruption. The history of family therapy makes the complicated power of the family at midcentury vividly apparent. Clinicians developed a new approach to psychotherapy that claimed to locate the cause and treatment of mental illness in observable patterns of family interaction and communication rather than in individual psyches. Drawing on cybernetics, systems theory, and the social and behavioral sciences, they ambitiously aimed to cure schizophrenia and stop juvenile delinquency. With particular sensitivity to the importance of scientific observation and visual technologies such as one-way mirrors and training films in shaping the young field, The Pathological Family examines how family therapy developed against the intellectual and cultural landscape of postwar America. As Deborah Weinstein shows, the midcentury expansion of America's therapeutic culture and the postwar fixation on family life profoundly affected one another. Family therapists and other postwar commentators alike framed the promotion of democracy in the language of personality formation and psychological health forged in the crucible of the family. As therapists in this era shifted their clinical gaze to whole families, they nevertheless grappled in particular with the role played by mothers in the onset of their children's aberrant behavior. Although attitudes toward family therapy have shifted during intervening generations, the relations between family and therapeutic culture remain salient today.

A master of family therapy, Salvador Minuchin, traces for the first time the minute operations of day-to-day practice. Dr. Minuchin has achieved renown for his theoretical breakthroughs and his success at treatment. Now he explains in close detail those precise and difficult maneuvers that constitute his art. The book thus codifies the method of one of the country's most successful practitioners.

For courses in Marriage and Family Counseling, Marital Therapy, and Family Therapy. Inviting, well-illustrated, and developmental in approach-a comprehensive look at the theory and practice of working with families. Considered the most thorough, well-written text in the field, Samuel T. Gladding's, Family Therapy: History, Theory, and Practice, give readers clear coverage of all aspects of working with couples and families from proven, evidence-based theories. In a user-friendly organization and writing style, it covers important background information on healthy and functional families and different types of families, and includes an overview of how individual and family life cycles intertwine. The basic processes involved in treating couples and families are made clear, before delving into a dozen theoretical ways of treating families. Thoroughly updated, the Sixth Edition of Family Therapy, includes an abundance of examples and case studies, new illustrations, more than 175 new references, helpful learning objectives at the beginning of each chapter, a new chart comparing the different therapies, and more.*User-friendly and well illustrated, this book is developmental in its approach to working therapeutically with families. *The practitioner-oriented focus shows how to work with different types of families. *Illustrations, diagrams, summaries, examples, case studies, and a glossary help readers understand and retain the main points in the text. *NEW Realigned chapters put new emphasis on some of the materials in former chapters.