Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
"Family Therapy as an Alternative to Medication" critically and passionately explores the concepts and practices that constitute the interface between family systems based psychotherapy and modern biological psychiatry. This diverse collection of essays, eight by psychiatrists, is neither for nor against medication, but takes a skeptical view of the unquestioned dominance that medication-based treatments have achieved among mental health practitioners. Its viewpoint is that therapeutic attention to context and relationships, regularly diminished when medications are prescribed, interferes with the development of psychiatric disorders, adds to maturity, and expands consciousness. Clinical examples, by both practitioners and patients, are used to define potential problems that arise from trying to combine a medical model with family systems work and also illustrate the decision-making processes and methods for applying family systems based therapies. This book will stimulate thoughtful conversation among students and practitioners of all mental health disciplines.
Table of Contents
Biometaphorical psychiatry : family therapy and the poetics of experience / David V. Keith -- When more is less : a common difficulty in collaborative treatment of human distress / Phoebe S. Prosky -- Family healing and planetary healing : three paradigms in search of a culture / Edgar H. Auerswald -- Psychobiology family therapy : toward an ecological psychiatry / Larry Freeman -- A systemic frame for mental health practices / Marcelo Pakman -- Can giving heal? Contextual therapy and biological psychiatry / Catherine Ducommun-Nagy -- Medicating the ghost in the machine / Paul Schaefer -- Rethinking illness / Zhao Mei -- The myth of the magic pill / Barry Duncan, Scott Miller, and Jacqueline Sparks -- Pig pharma : psychiatric agenda setting by drug companies / Sharon Beder, Richard Gosden, and Loren Mosher -- The headache / Patricia Dyer -- Love of a lifetime / Noralyn Masselink -- The therapy that almost wasn't, or, Imaginary therapy / Oscar Davis -- The therapist replies : observations from a therapist who didn't do anything in the therapy that almost wasn't while attempting to salvage the love of a lifetime / David V. Keith -- Expert therapist--beginning therapist / John Flynn, and Phoebe S. Prosky -- The jazz consultation : improvisation in family therapy / Amy Begel and David V. Keith -- Goldilocks and the three bears revisited / Fred Ford -- My journey with Allison in wonderland / John M. Benda -- Deficit of attention disorder / Felix Yaroshevsky and Vivian Bakiaris -- Thinking about thinking in family therapy / Edgar H. Auerswald.