Synopses & Reviews
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Follow a family therapist’s narrative diary as he documents the process of working with the Salazars, as they explore each stage of their relationship-from courtship through the departure of the children from the home.
This unique casebook provides an in-depth, personal account from the counselor’s perspective, while also looking at the personal viewpoints of family members. Each major stage of the family life is presented in a separate chapter and the book includes discussions of the effects of gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation on individuals and families.
What Reviewers Are Saying:
“Strengths include presentation of therapy scenarios; focus on one family going through the therapy to demonstrate the stages of therapy and the stages of family life; real life experiences of the Salazar family members (students get inducted into this and usually ‘read ahead’ of what is assigned, something not normally done!).”
William Quinn, Clemson University
“The Inside Family Therapy book is perfect. What is so very impressive about the content and the writing style is how Mike Nichols weaves and threads ways of thinking as he sits with this family, along with specific skills he utilizes in his work with them. It allows students to see and experience what is going on within Nichols and how that is played out in what he says and does with the family. This is not an easy thing to do with the written word (except in novels) but he does it so very well. It also leads to much greater self awareness on the part of the students.
Robert Jackson, University of Iowa '
Synopsis
Follow a family therapist’s narrative diary as he documents the process of working with the Salazars, as they explore each stage of their relationship-from courtship through the departure of the children from the home.
This unique casebook provides an in-depth, personal account from the counselor’s perspective, while also looking at the personal viewpoints of family members. Each major stage of the family life is presented in a separate chapter and the book includes discussions of the effects of gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation on individuals and families.
What Reviewers Are Saying:
“Strengths include presentation of therapy scenarios; focus on one family going through the therapy to demonstrate the stages of therapy and the stages of family life; real life experiences of the Salazar family members (students get inducted into this and usually ‘read ahead’ of what is assigned, something not normally done!).”
William Quinn, Clemson University
“The Inside Family Therapy book is perfect. What is so very impressive about the content and the writing style is how Mike Nichols weaves and threads ways of thinking as he sits with this family, along with specific skills he utilizes in his work with them. It allows students to see and experience what is going on within Nichols and how that is played out in what he says and does with the family. This is not an easy thing to do with the written word (except in novels) but he does it so very well. It also leads to much greater self awareness on the part of the students.
Robert Jackson, University of Iowa
Synopsis
Follow a family therapist’s narrative diary as he documents the process of working with the Salazars, as they explore each stage of their relationship-from courtship through the departure of the children from the home.
This unique casebook provides an in-depth, personal account from the counselor’s perspective, while also looking at the personal viewpoints of family members. Each major stage of the family life is presented in a separate chapter and the book includes discussions of the effects of gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation on individuals and families.
Synopsis
Often recounted in a clinical manner from a therapist's perspective, the story of family therapy is many times viewed in an academic, theoretical context. Such analyses, while scholarly, tend to lack the real stories, the heart and soul of the counseling experience for those in it. Now, however, such a story is available. Following one family through their years of therapy, this book delves into the hearts and minds of the characters. So by the story's end, readers will come to view the family members not so much as characters in a therapist's drama, but rather as heroes of their own stories. And in turn, the readers will then be able to reflect on their own experiences. In this book, Mike Nichols, a family therapist, offers his narrative "diary" as he develops and enters into the process of family therapy with one family. In addition to providing his own personal account of the therapy process as the counselor, he includes the rich, detailed study of a family as they progress through life's stages from their initial courtship to the departure of their children from home. Social workers, therapists or others interested in the topic.
Table of Contents
Preface
1 Disturbing the Peace
“Can You Help Us?”
Looking for Leverage
Dialogue: Setting the System in Motion
It Must Be a Marital Problem
Linear versus Circular Causality
2 The Making of a Family Therapist
Behind the One-Way Mirror
3 Love’s Young Dream
“We’ll Sing in the Sunshine”
Why Do Fools Fall in Love?
“I Do”
4 The Progress of Love
“Why Are You so Mean to Me?”
Idealization
Accommodation
Boundaries
How to Succeed as a Couple by Really Trying
5 In-Laws
“Alone at Last”
Invaders from Another Planet
Accommodation and Boundary-Making with the In-Laws
Invisable Loyalties
Past Tense and Imperfect Future
6 The Depressed Young Mother
The Impossible Job
The Family Life Cycle
2 + 1 = 2
Heather’s Birth
The Young and the Restless
Renegotiating Boundaries with Grandparents
Reciprocity
Bitter Fruit
7 Why Can’t Jason Behave?
Fix my Child without Disturbing Me
Family Rules
Family Structure
The Strucural Model
Blueprint for a Healthy Family
Uncovering the Structure in a Family
Building Children’s Self-Esteem
8 The Overinvolved Mother and Peripheral Father
The need to Restructure the Family
Shared Parenting
The Best of Intentions
Pursuers and Distancers
Self-Defeating Cycles
9 Family Feud
Sibling Rivalry
Enmeshment
Disengagement
Brotherhood and Sisterhood
10 Loss of Innocence
To Tell or Not to Tell, That Is the Question
All Hell Breaks Loose
“Why, Why, Why?”
Moving On
11 Divorce, Remarriage, and Stepparenting
Families in Transition
Uncoupling
Reorganizing
Blending
12 Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘n’ Roll: The Rebellious Teenager
That Awful, Awkward Age
“How Worried Should I Be about My Teenager?”
The Terrible Teens
13 The Salazars’ Family Therapy
Shifting Boundaries
All Together Again, and Out
14 Letting Go
“It’s the End of Our Family”
The Long Good-Bye
Boomerang Kids
“Under Certain Conditions” Index