Family Therapy Practice Research Articles

Rationale and directions for an increased emphasis on the therapeutic relationship in family therapy

This paper argues the need for an increased emphasis on the therapeutic relationship in family therapy. The ways in which the field of family therapy has eschewed the importance of the therapeutic relationship are discussed. Therapeutic alliance research from the field of individual psychotherapy and research on the importance of relationship factors to family therapy are reviewed. Suggestions for family therapy theory, practice, and research are presented.

The Intent to Parent among Young, Unmarried College Graduates

Issues surrounding intentions to parent are crucial given new reproductive technologies and increased infertility. Six hundred young, unmarried college graduates were interviewed concerning parenting plans. Coding categories, developed from their responses, were narcissistic concerns, societal concerns, generative concerns, attitudes toward children, and relationship concerns. Findings revealed a strong pronatalist bias that was supported primarily by narcissistic reasoning. The older men gave significantly more narcissistic and fewer generative reasons than did younger women. These results have important implications for family life education and family therapy practice.

Intergenerational Relationships across Cultures

Ethnic background and cultural roots affect how individuals think, feel, and behave. These factors have only recently begun to be considered in family therapy training and practice. Differences among groups need to be valued and integrated into family therapy practice. The authors provide an overview of ethnic and cultural issues in clinical work with African American, Hispanic, Irish, Asian Indian, and Jewish clients.

Codependent or Empathically Responsive?

This paper contrasts treatment based on two different models of conceptualizing female behavior, Codependency and Self in Relation. It applies each model to the marital problems of one couple, focusing on the female partner. It demonstrates that Self in Relation theory is more consistent with principles of feminist family therapy practice.

Object relations family therapy as a model for practice

This paper provides an introduction to a new approach to the practice of family therapy called object relations family therapy. It is viewed as especially appropriate for social work practice due to its ability to combine individual, couple and family modalities. In addition it permits work on multiple levels of latent and manifest content. Its derivatives in the work of the objects relations theorists, Klein, Fairbairn, Guntrip, Winnicott and Bion are described. Illustrative case examples are provided.

CORRESPONDENCE OF FAMILY THERAPISTS' PERCEPTIONS WITH FRCCCS CODING RULES FOR TRIADIC INTERACTIONS

Family therapy theory, practice, and research across many orientations are concerned with multiperson interactional phenomena such as intercepts, disconfirmations, and indirect communications. This study reports a successful criterion validity test of the rules for coding these triadic features in the Family Relational Communication Control Coding System (FRCCCS) (Friedlander & Heatherington, 1989). Thirty‐five experienced family therapists observed two videotaped family therapy interactions and reported their perceptions of each of 25 communications. These perceptions‐the criterion‐significantly corresponded with the FRCCCS coding rules about the relational control aspects of triadic communications. Discussion focuses on the future use of the FRCCCS in research on family therapy.

Tyranny and Freedom: Looking at Ideas in the Practice of Family Therapy

This article comments upon recent "second-order" family therapy concerns about the nature of the therapeutic relationship, and explores how ideas held by therapists may rule and restrict therapeutic conversations. Ideas are examined in the light of how adherence to them might open space (free) or close space (tyrannize) with respect to the therapeutic relationship. The authors propose a philosophical viewpoint, a methodology, and practical suggestions for therapists wishing to maintain a stance of relative freedom with respect to ideas in their work with clients.

The reentry female student in marriage and family training

The challenges of feminist family therapists of gender bias in family therapy training and practice models need to be considered in relation to the predominance of reentry women in masters degree programs in marriage and family therapy. This article describes a developmental training model that incorporates feminist-informed values into curriculum, program policies, instructional strategies, and program structure. The model builds on the assumption that gender-associated behaviors of both sexes have contextually determined value. Training for the appropriate application of gender-associated behaviors rather than for their inclusion or exclusion can increase female reentry student flexibility and self-confidence.

Family law issues in family therapy practice

Abstract The American Journal of Family Therapy is pleased to innaugurate this new section with the intent of being at the cutting edge of the interface of the interrelationship of family law and family therapy. We introduce this endeavor with several articles on child custody-an arena of crucial concern in both disciplines. One article is a summary of child custody laws extant throu hout the United States. to commend it psychologically and legally. The third item, in keeping with the theme, is a speculative fable about joint custody written by a matrimonial attorney who practices family mediation and who has training as a family therapist. It captures the tenor of the times. The second article discusses a model for child custody ev a f uations, which has much

Projective identification: Pros and cons. An essay review of Samuel Slipp,the technique and practice of Object Relations Family Therapy

This paper is a critical appraisal of Samuel Slipp's book on Object Relations Family Therapy (ORFT), which uses the concept of projective identification as a central thesis in explaining interpersonal influence. Slipp's book is praised for its excellent review of the literature of object relations theory and the major schools of family therapy, classification of families according to complementary projections, and revealing case material. Interpersonal-Systemic (I-S) theory and methodology with its use of the concepts of empathy, interpersonal influences, search for intimacy, maintenance of self-esteem, selective inattention, and reflected appraisals is offered as an alternative view to projective identification.

ON BALANCE AND SYNERGY: FAMILY THERAPY AND QUALITATIVE RESEARCH REVISITED

Our respondents have provided though‐provoking counterpoints to our original paper (Moon, Dillon, & Sprenkle, 1990). Our response is one of synthesis. First, we describe a continuum of social science inquiry paradigms as a framework for exploring the assumptions underlying our respective positions. Second, we address the key issues raised by our respondents. Third, we encourage balance in our research efforts and continuing dialogue. Finally we restate our basic thesis‐that qualitative research methodology has the potential to advance the science and practice of family therapy.

Analysis of projective identification: An object-relations approach to marital treatment

Projective identification is an important construct to both analytic and family therapy practice approaches. It is an especially useful concept in marital therapy, and can be used as the foundation for assessment and intervention. This paper provides an overview of projective identification and an illustration of its use in marital treatment.

Family Therapy Training Issues of Male Students in a Gender-Sensitive Doctoral Program

Gender bias has been strongly demonstrated in counseling/ therapy services in general and family therapy in particular. The counseling psychology doctoral and master's programs at Texas Woman's University emphasize family therapy and women's/gender issues. As the programs integrated the feminist critique of family therapy theory and practice, it became clear that both women's and men's sex-role stereotyping must be addressed if students were to be effective change agents working with families. This paper describes training issues involved in male student reactions to feminist family therapy perspectives and outlines course content for coverage of male issues in the training program.

Introduction to the special issue on the creative arts therapies and the family

The family, they say, is dying. The family has been blended, extended, enmeshed, disengaged, and torn apart. The nuclear family has had a meltdown. The average person’s sentient feelings are increasingly attached to images of products, processes, and news from their work setting or the mass media. The ongoing sagas of “Dallas” or “Thirtysomething” may have more immediacy to us than our own families, whose members often live far apart. We return to family gatherings fueled by warm hopes, only to find tension, worn out traditions, and disappointment. Perhaps we are experiencing the transition to a new form of human communion, and the family should cautiously be let go. Or perhaps we are witnessing the breakup of human bonding that will lead to an even larger increase in crime, drug abuse, perversion, alienation, and suicide. In response to these threats to its integrity, some families have retreated into rigidified systems with overlycontrolled interactions with the environment. The delicate balance between integrity and integration appears to be difficult to achieve. The death of the intergenerational transmission of family stories, myths, and images contributes to the death of the family as a powerful source of meaning in our lives. The interest recently in discovering our “roots,” in terms of genealogy, is a symptom of this alienation from our family. However, we also need to find our roots in the present, to find nourishment from our membership in our family now. The creative arts therapies may be an effective method for accomplishing this task. What do families do together? Most eat, share chores, drive each other to events, argue, talk about problems, worry about each other, and go to movies. Some families take walks, some do sports together. Creating art, role-playing, singing, or dancing are less likely activities. Playing together may be the rare, if often most remembered, moments a family life can treasure. Creative arts therapists should be able to help the family to play: bring greater intimacy to a disengaged family, more freedom and spontaneity to the rigid or enmeshed family. Increasing the integrity and flexibility of the family is essential in maintaining it as a supportive environment for individuals’ growth, instead of as an incubator of psychopathology. Family therapists have discovered that to impact on the complex family system, powerful and often intrusive techniques are required. Given the fact that the creative arts therapies are successful at overcoming and circumventing strong defenses, bringing unconscious or covert ideas to the surface, their application to family therapy should hold a great deal of promise. Despite the fact that many family therapy practitioners utilize action-oriented techniques such as rituals, tasks, or sculpting, the creative arts therapies have not to date had a significant impact on the practice of family therapy. It is not clear if this is due to creative arts therapists’ lack of access to families or to inherent resistances of families to the arts media. The articles in this Special Issue describe the various ways in which the creative arts therapies have been applied to family treatment, and through them one can glean a vision of what we have to offer the families of the future: a re-assertion of family identity through creative and collective acts. The Special Issue begins with Helen Landgar-

Family therapy and the glamour of science

It is argued that family therapy has adopted esoteric and unrelated theories from ‘New Science’ in order to maintain its glamour and individuality in comparison with other therapies. One unfortunate consequence of this is to limit the development of the practice of family therapy by prejudicing empirical validation. An alternative approach which attempts to integrate linear and systemic viewpoints is suggested.

Is There a Place for Psychiatric Diagnosis in Family Therapy?

In this paper, the process of psychiatric diagnosis is contrasted with the practice of family therapy. The ‘mental illness' metaphor suggested by the acts of diagnosis is critiqued on the grounds that it obscures issues of class, gender and power, that it deletes the clinician's role in the development of diagnoses, and that the overall schemata in it contain serious philosophical and methodological insecurities. It is suggested that, as psychiatric diagnosis seeks to name individual pathology and as family therapy aims at contextual analysis, the two processes belong to different quests. The paper concludes with a discussion urging for the inclusion of the moral‐ethical‐aesthetic domain in both quests.

BASIC FAMILY THERAPY SKILLS, II: STRUCTURAL FAMILY THERAPY1

The Basic Family Therapy Skills Project has yielded empirically derived skills important for beginning family therapists. This article reports the results of ratings from the 103‐member panel of experts who practice and teach Structural Family Therapy. A total of 100 competencies of Structural Family Therapy were rated in terms of importance on a 5‐point Likert scale by the panel. Panelists were also given alternative responses such as “appropriate as a generic skill,”“inappropriate for beginning therapists,” and “don't understand what this means.” Rationale for the approach and results are discussed in terms of the importance of empirically based competencies for the practice of Structural Family Therapy.

Family law issues in family therapy practice: Appropriate education for handicapped children: Introducing family therapy to school-based decision making

Family law issues in family therapy practice: Appropriate education for handicapped children: Introducing family therapy to school-based decision making

Family law issues in family therapy practice: Early intelligence scores and subsequent delinquency: A Prospective study

Abstract Most early studies found that delinquents obtained lower IQ scores than nondelinquent controls. A criticism of early findings related to sample selection subsequent to identification as juvenile offenders. Of 3,164 births enrolled in the Brown University cohort of the National Collaborative Perinatal Project, 13.6% appeared in Family Court charged with juvenile offenses prior to age 18. In this study, those delinquency cases were compared with controls at three age levels. At 8 months, based on the Bayley Scales of Mental and Motor Development, there were no significant differences in mental or motor development scores between delinquents and nonoffenders. At 4 years, Stanford-Binet scores were significantly lower among the delinquent sample. Similarly, at age 7, the delinquent sample scored lower on the Wechsler Iiztelligence Scale for Children (WJSC) on both verbal and performance measures. Performance scores were consistently higher than verbal scores in both the delinquent and nonofender grou...

Further Thoughts on Second‐Order Family Therapy — This Time It's Personal

A series of articles has recently appeared in which implications of second-order cybernetics for the practice of family therapy have been discussed. In this article, we attempt to advance the discussion by addressing ideas that we think have not been adequately emphasized thus far. Specifically proposed are ideas about conditions that might facilitate the emergence of consciously pragmatic strategy informed by the kind of systemic wisdom that delicately balances natural systems without the benefit of human planning. It is argued that a shift in the personal habits of knowing and acting that typically organize individual human experience is required. After attempting to specify what this shift might involve, implications of these ideas for the practice of family therapy and for human action in general are discussed.