Family Therapy: A Systemic Integration » (7th Edition)

This comprehensive, yet user-friendly survey of the field of marriage and family therapy takes a holistic view and looks at people within the context of their environment.

The systemic-cybernetic framework helps readers understanding people and families in context. The text — divided into three sections including "The Systemic Framework," "The Practice of Family Therapy," and "The Systemic Practitioner" — includes historical information, current developments, and ongoing debates. Various family and developmental theories are integrated into a “dynamic process model” for viewing and understanding family interactions and relationships. The family therapy models considered include psychodynamic, natural systems, experiential, structural, communications, strategic, and behavioral/cognitive as well as several postmodern approaches. Within the context of practice, Assessment; Intervention; Training/Supervision; Research; and Epistemological Challenges are described and discussed

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A course text explaining the basic tenets of systems theory and how it is applied to family therapy. First published in 1988, and here revised from the 1996 edition with discussions of two different histories and projections of the field, the influence of postmodernism on family therapy, a more broadly defined family, and other topics. Suggested reading lists and many of the therapy modalities have been moved to the instructor's manual. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)