Secrets in Families and Family Therapy

Secrets in Families and Family Therapy PDF Author: Evan Imber-Black
Publisher: W. W. Norton
ISBN: 9780393701470
Category : Communication dans la famille
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
Secret-keeping is a seemingly unavoidable part of human interaction, from governments to married couples. Unlike privacy, which in the West is considered a healthy characteristic of the autonomous adult, secrets are often troublesome, creating distorted perceptions and strained relationships. Secrets, moreover, are complex. They differ in significance (a surprise party versus hidden incest), in the ways they shape family relationships (who knows what about whom), in their location (between family members or between the family and society), and in their effects on individual functioning (Does the secret affect only one relationship or the overall way the individual responds to others?). Because of this complexity, secrets are resistant to simple "rules": Therapy must comprise more than opening up the secret or addressing only the context and not the content or vice versa. Therapists are confronted with the difficult task of examining their own values regarding secrecy while, at the same time, providing an effective therapeutic environment. Practical issues of individual safety, the meaning of the secret for the family, the therapist's attitude towards secrets in general and the family's secret in particular - all must be considered in order for treatment to be effective. Here, Imber-Black and her contributors offer a vast array of approaches to helping families deal with secrets involving sexuality, race, violence, parentage, substance abuse, illness, and death. The contributors explore the therapeutic, social, and political issues of secrets, while always keeping families firmly in mind. Through the many case examples, they show us how families, at first constricted by the need tomaintain secrecy, can gain strength through greater openness. Part I sets the stage by defining secrets and their often shame-bound origins. Part II examines secrets throughout the family life cycle: in couples, between parents and children, and with loss. Part III shows how addictions such as drug abuse and eating disorders are often symptoms of unhealthy secrets. In Part IV, secrets of violence and abuse are discussed. Part V offers a comprehensive look at social secrets involving sexism, heterosexism, and taboos. Part VI discusses two very charged topics: secret-keeping involving race and racism and with AIDS. Part VII concludes the book by offering a pattern for teaching and handling secrets in therapist training. This diverse cast of talented therapists provides an elastic model for treating family secrets, while compelling us to reevaluate our own thinking about secrets.

Secrets in Families and Family Therapy

Secrets in Families and Family Therapy PDF Author: Evan Imber-Black
Publisher: W. W. Norton
ISBN: 9780393701470
Category : Communication dans la famille
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
Secret-keeping is a seemingly unavoidable part of human interaction, from governments to married couples. Unlike privacy, which in the West is considered a healthy characteristic of the autonomous adult, secrets are often troublesome, creating distorted perceptions and strained relationships. Secrets, moreover, are complex. They differ in significance (a surprise party versus hidden incest), in the ways they shape family relationships (who knows what about whom), in their location (between family members or between the family and society), and in their effects on individual functioning (Does the secret affect only one relationship or the overall way the individual responds to others?). Because of this complexity, secrets are resistant to simple "rules": Therapy must comprise more than opening up the secret or addressing only the context and not the content or vice versa. Therapists are confronted with the difficult task of examining their own values regarding secrecy while, at the same time, providing an effective therapeutic environment. Practical issues of individual safety, the meaning of the secret for the family, the therapist's attitude towards secrets in general and the family's secret in particular - all must be considered in order for treatment to be effective. Here, Imber-Black and her contributors offer a vast array of approaches to helping families deal with secrets involving sexuality, race, violence, parentage, substance abuse, illness, and death. The contributors explore the therapeutic, social, and political issues of secrets, while always keeping families firmly in mind. Through the many case examples, they show us how families, at first constricted by the need tomaintain secrecy, can gain strength through greater openness. Part I sets the stage by defining secrets and their often shame-bound origins. Part II examines secrets throughout the family life cycle: in couples, between parents and children, and with loss. Part III shows how addictions such as drug abuse and eating disorders are often symptoms of unhealthy secrets. In Part IV, secrets of violence and abuse are discussed. Part V offers a comprehensive look at social secrets involving sexism, heterosexism, and taboos. Part VI discusses two very charged topics: secret-keeping involving race and racism and with AIDS. Part VII concludes the book by offering a pattern for teaching and handling secrets in therapist training. This diverse cast of talented therapists provides an elastic model for treating family secrets, while compelling us to reevaluate our own thinking about secrets.

The Secret Life of Families

The Secret Life of Families PDF Author: Evan Imber-Black
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0307423352
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Secrets come in all shapes and sizes. And for families as well as individuals, they are built on a complex web of shifting motives and emotions. But today, when personal revelations are posted on the Internet or sensationalized on afternoon talk shows, we risk losing touch with how important secrets are--how they are used and abused, their power to harm and heal. In this important work, Evan Imber-Black explores the nature of secrets, helping us understand: The distinction between healthy privacy and toxic secrecy What to tell--and not to tell--young children How to safely confront a family "zone of silence" Why adolescents need to have some secrets--and where to draw the line The effect of "official" secrets, like sealed adoption records and medical testing What to consider before revealing an important secret And much more Filled with moving first-person stories, The Secret Life of Families provides perspective on some of today's most sensitive personal and social issues. Giving voice to our deepest fears and to our power to overcome them, this is a book that will be talked about for years to come.

Bowen Theory's Secrets: Revealing the Hidden Life of Families

Bowen Theory's Secrets: Revealing the Hidden Life of Families PDF Author: Michael E. Kerr
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393713628
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 446

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Book Description
A much-needed update to one of the most significant family therapy theories of the past century. Murray Bowen (1931–1990) was the first to study the family in a live-in setting and describe specific details about how families function as systems. Despite Bowen theory being based on research begun more than seventy years ago, the value of viewing human beings as profoundly emotionally-driven creatures and human families functioning as emotional units is more relevant than ever. This book, written by one of his closet collaborators, updates his still-radical theory with the latest approaches to understanding emotional development. Reduced to its most fundamental level, Bowen theory explains how people begin a relationship very close emotionally but become more distant over time. The ideas also help explain why good people do bad things, and bad people do good things, and how family life strengthens some members while weakening others. Gaining knowledge about previously unseen specifics of family interactions reveals a hidden life of families. The hidden life explains how the best of intentions can fail to produce the desired result, thus providing a blueprint for change. Part I of the book explains the core ideas in the theory. Part II describes the process of differentiation of self, which is the most important application of Bowen theory. People sometimes think of theories as "ivory tower" productions: interesting, but not necessarily practical. Differentiation of self is anything but; it has a well-tested real-world application. Part II includes four long case presentations of families in the public eye. They help illustrate how Bowen theory can help explain how families—three of which appear fairly normal and one which does not—unwittingly produce an offspring that chronically manifests some time of severely aberrant behavior. Finally, the book proposes a new "unidisease" concept—the idea that a wide range of diseases have a number of physiological processes in common. In an Epilogue, Kerr applies Bowen theory to his family to illustrate how changes in a family relationship system over time can better explain the clinical course of a chronic illness than the diagnosis itself. With close to four thousand hours of therapy conducted with about thirty-five hundred families over decades, Michael Kerr is an expert guide to the ins and outs of this most influential way of approaching clinical work with families.

Families and Larger Systems

Families and Larger Systems PDF Author: Evan Imber-Black
Publisher: Guilford Press
ISBN: 9780898621099
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
If individuals cannot adequately be understood without reference to the family system, families themselves are comprehensible only in a broader social context. FAMILIES AND LARGER SYSTEMS is the first single-author book on families and larger systems designed specifically for the practicing therapist. It offers rich descriptions of the difficulties families and larger systems often pose for one another; presents a detailed assessment model for therapists; and provides a careful interviewing format as well as directions for designing creative interventions. Imber-Black offers a consultation model for dealing with families and larger systems who have become embroiled with one another, and methods for longer term work with those families who must engage with larger systems across significant portions of their life cycle, due to illness, handicaps, or poverty. Problems of labeling, stigma, and secrecy in families are addressed, and an entire chapter is devoted to women's issues in families and related systems. Utilizing numerous case illustrations and interview excerpts, Dr, Imber-Black first delineates the problems common to family-larger system situations, analyzing the origins of these interactions, the assessment model and interviewing methods used, and the design and implementation of intervention. In the second half of her book, she presents in-depth discussions of strategies for improving the relationship between families and related systems. Through concrete example and hands-on analysis, Imber-Black shows how the misconceptions, assumptions, and subsequent labeling of family functioning and family members give rise to stalemated situations. FAMILIES AND LARGER SYSTEMS provides a practical guide for all clinicians regardless of theoretical orientation. Therapists who wish to maintain a career in public sector settings, such as mental health clinics, hospitals, and schools, will find in this volume direction for effective work with families and the maintenance of good working relationships with colleagues. Therapists in private practice will discover that Imber-Black's model will aid their conceptualization of cases that have involved multiple therapists or other practitioners. Much of the material presented will also be useful to human services workers, both professional and paraprofessional, in welfare, child welfare, probation, drug counseling, schools and other institutions. The book's ecological viewpoint, which enables such professionals to see their own position in the system, also helps them to avoid the traps of replicating existing patterns, and to position themselves for therapeutic change. Finally, this book will be of interest to human service system administrators and program planners. The case examples offer a seldom seen view of the struggles families and multiple helpers can have with one another, while its theoretical models can be utilized to assess current inter-systematic functioning among larger systems in a community, with implications for program design and burn-out prevention.

Rituals In Families And Family Therapy 1e

Rituals In Families And Family Therapy 1e PDF Author: Black Evan Imber
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393700640
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
Uses case material to demonstrate how normative family rituals can be identified and used as the basis for therapy. A practical treatment. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Adult Children Secrets of Dysfunctional Families

Adult Children Secrets of Dysfunctional Families PDF Author: John Friel
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0757393357
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
It is estimated that as many as 34 million people grew up in alcoholic homes. But what about the rest of us? What about families that had no alcoholism, but did have perfectionism, workaholism, compulsive overeating, intimacy problems, depression, problems in expressing feelings, plus all the other personality traits that can produce a family system much like an alcoholic one? Countless millions of us struggle with these kinds of dysfunctions every day, and until very recently we struggled alone. Pulling together both theory and clinical practice, John and Linda Friel provide a readable explanation of what happened to us and how we can rectify it.

Basic Concepts in Family Therapy

Basic Concepts in Family Therapy PDF Author: Linda Berg Cross
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317789822
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 652

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Book Description
Gain confidence and creativity in your family therapy interventions with new, up-to-date research! Basic Concepts in Family Therapy: An Introductory Text, Second Edition, presents twenty-two basic psychological concepts that therapists may use to understand clients and provide successful services to them. Each chapter focuses on a single concept using material from family therapy literature, basic psychological and clinical research studies, and cross-cultural research studies. Basic Concepts in Family Therapy is particularly useful to therapists working in a family context with child- or adolescent-referred problems, and for students and clinicians treating the problems they see every day in their community. The book builds on the strengths of the first edition, incorporating ideas and articles that have become worthy of investigating since 1990 into the original text. This new edition also introduces five new chapters on resiliency and poverty, adoption, chronic illness, spirituality and religion, and parenting strategies. The new chapters make the book far more relevant for students and clinicians try ing to use family theory and technique in response to the problems they see in their communities. Basic Concepts in Family Therapy will assist you in offering clients better services by providing a deeper understanding of the contemporary family in its various forms, the psychological bonds that shape all families, and the developmental stages of the family life cycle. This exploration of how family demography, stages and life cycles affect family functions is a solid foundation from which all of the therapeutic concepts in this book can be explored. Some of the facets of family therapy you will explore in Basic Concepts in Family Therapy are: the importance of spirituality and religion in family therapy generational boundaries, closeness, and role behaviors managing a family's emotions defining problems and generating and evaluating possible solutions teaching children specific attitudes, values, social skills, and norms transracial adoptions and normative processes and developmental issues of adoptive parents strategies for reducing conflict . . . and much more! Basic Concepts in Family Therapy will help to broaden your understanding of the ways families function in general. You can use the effective concepts explored in this text to make a thorough assessment of the impact of a disorder on a child and on the rest of his or her family, as well as how family dynamics might have shaped or exacerbated the problems. The concepts described in this text can be customized to clients’cultural values to avoid unnecessary resistance. As a new therapist, you will gain confidence in your assessments, and if you are already a seasoned professional, you will gain creativity in your interventions.

Family Therapy

Family Therapy PDF Author: Mark Rivett
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134129408
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
Family therapy is increasingly recognised as one of the evidence based psychotherapies. In contemporary therapeutic practice, family therapy is helpful across the age span and for distress caused by family conflict, trauma and mental health difficulties. Because of this, many psychotherapists integrate elements of family therapy within their approaches. Family Therapy: 100 Key Points and Techniques provides a concise and jargon-free guide to 100 of the fundamental ideas and techniques of this approach. Divided into helpful sections, it covers: Family therapy theory Essential family therapy practice Using family therapy techniques Common challenges in family therapy Contemporary debates and issues Self issues for family therapists. Family Therapy: 100 Key Points and Techniques is an invaluable resource for psychotherapists and counsellors in training and in practice. As well as appealing to established family therapists, this latest addition to the 100 Key Points series will also find an audience with other mental health professionals working with families and interested in learning more about family therapy techniques.

The Secret Life of Families

The Secret Life of Families PDF Author: Evan Imber-Black
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780722537145
Category : Communication in families
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
What are the consequences of keeping a family secret? When is it appropriate to tell the truth?

Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family

Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family PDF Author: Ellyn Satter
Publisher: Kelcy Press
ISBN: 0967118948
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Ellyn Satter's Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family takes a leadership role in the grassroots movement back to the family table. More a cooking primer than a cookbook, this book encourages singles, couples, and families with children to go to the trouble of feeding themselves well. Satter uses simple, delicious recipes as a scaffolding on which to hang cooking lessons, fast tips, night-before suggestions, in-depth background information, ways to involve kids in the kitchen, and guidelines on adapting menus for young children. In chapters about eating, feeding, choosing food, cooking, planning, and shopping, the author entertainingly helps readers have fun with food while not eating unhealthily or too often. She cites current studies and makes a convincing case for lightening up on fat and sodium without endangering ourselves or our children. The book demonstrates Satter's dictum that “your positive feelings about food and eating will do more for your health than adhering to a set of rules about what to eat and what not to eat.”