Assessing Families and Couples: From Symptom to System
Description
A step-by-step guide to assessing couples and families, this text offers a clear delineation of the process of family therapy through richly illustrated case material, featuring clients from a diversity of backgrounds
Appealing to both experienced and novel therapists, Assessing Families and Couples portrays a clear picture of what occurs in a two-session model in conducting a family therapy assessment. In the absence of a videotape to depict the process of therapy, readers can still visualize the details of the therapeutic journey in a step-by-step manner. Students and instructors, alike, will find this book an invaluable tool for the learning and teaching of family therapy assessment.
The text begins with a brief historical review of family therapy today and continues with a detailed explanation of the authors' four-step assessment model. The assessment model is illustrated by a series of thoroughly detailed case studies, featuring African-American, European, Latin-American, Spanish, Irish, and Chinese families.
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Content
PREFACE.
1. Introduction: A Four-Step Model for Assessing Couples and Families.
I. TROUBLED CHILDREN AND THEIR PARENTS.
2. The Parentified Child.
3. Conflictual Couple/Triangulated Children.
II. STEP-FAMILIES.
4. The Teenager Who Was a Liar.
5. Three Dyads Are Less Than a Whole Family.
III. COMPLEMENTARY COUPLES.
6. . Agitated Depression in an Adult Woman.
7. The Woman Whose Hands Were Always Dirty.
IV. PSYCHOSOMATIC FAMILIES.
8. Oedipus with Stomach Cramps.
9. A Young Chinese Man with Anorexia Nervosa.
V. THE FAMILY AND SOCIAL SERVICES
10. Three-Generations of Women.
11. Residential Treatment of Drug Addiction and the Family.
EPILOGUE.