Tales from Family Therapy


Book Description

You often see books on theoretical approaches and new interventions in therapy, but you rarely, if ever, find a book where therapists discuss their personal reactions to and views of the therapy they offer. In this amazing volume, Tales from Family Therapy: Life-Changing Clinical Experiences, psychologists, psychotherapists, and marriage and family counselors come together to share their unique experiences in therapy sessions and how they’ve learned that often the clients know more than they do! As you will see, and as these therapists reveal, sometimes all the top-notch and most innovative theories in the world won’t help a client in distress.Tales from Family Therapy isn’t just about therapists learning a lesson or two from their clients. It’s about compassion, healing, being taken by surprise, thinking on your toes, and encouraging people to believe in their strengths--not just their weaknesses. These stories represent to the authors some of the most special, most rewarding, and most puzzling moments in all their years of therapy. They invite you to share in their recollections and discussions of: the power of speaking accepting, respecting, and working with the realities clients bring the importance of first impressions in counseling how personal narratives develop through relationship coloring outside the lines of the dominant culture helping clients determine when rocking the boat is needed listening to your clients and not just your theories developing the self-of-therapist In the therapy room anything can happen, and as Tales from Family Therapy shows, anything does. Graduate students, counselors, licensed therapists, family educators, and family sciences professionals, as well as lay readers, will find this insightful book a helpful forum where the struggles, doubts, and triumphs of psychotherapy are revealed to encourage and inspire those who participate in the therapeutic process.




Unlocked


Book Description

Unlocked tells the stories of ten different people in therapy in various cultural and geographical contexts - from Saudi Arabia to Venice or New York. Each narrative explores a unique presenting situation and uncovers the complexities of the therapeutic experience. All therapeutic work described in this book happens online. Inspired by real client sessions, the therapist narrator and the clients' stories are fictionalized for privacy. Rather than presenting a barrier, Unlocked demonstrates how a curious and skilled therapist can make the most of the unexpected gifts that the 'screen' offers--be it the intrusion of a pet, a parent breaking into the session, or a client taking her therapist for a ride outside. Therapeutic conversations that happen on the screen have a surprising close-up quality; these stories convey the renewed intimacy and intensity of such practice and present new possibilities for the therapeutic process. They will be of interest not only to therapists who are transitioning their practice online but also to those considering therapy or curious about the therapeutic process.




Grendon Tales


Book Description

A definitive account of the UK's first - and until recently only - therapeutic community prison that deals with some of the most serious violent and sexual offenders in the UK - based upon unprecedented access to the prison that was granted to Waterside Press and Professor Ursula Smartt of Thames Valley University UK. An innovative and acclaimed account based on one-to-one interviews with staff and inmates - and 'living with' prisoners through their daily lives.




Tales Of Enchantment


Book Description

What can a therapist do when faced with the all-too-familiar client who seems stuck or resistant? With this volume, veteran therapists Carol and Steve Lankton offer clinicians an effective tool with which they can expand their ability to be successful in therapy through integrating the use of indirection into the more commonly used rational and direct approach. This is a book of predesigned stories that the Lanktons and their trainees have told in successful therapy in order to assist clients in their movement toward specific, preplanned goals. The stories are categorized according to the way they are structured to reach particular types of goals, such as changes in affect, attitudinal restructuring, changes in behavior, changes in family structure, changes in self-image and many others.




Family Healing


Book Description

The family, the source of our greatest hope for happiness, sometimes turns out to be the source of our greatest disappointment. Now, in the culmination of his lifework, world-renowned family therapist Salvador Minuchin reveals how his own personal experiences shaped his understanding of the family and his ability to cut through the knots of family dynamics. The grandson of Russian Jewish Emigrants to Argentina, Minuchin grew up secure in a closely knit extended family within a larger society of outspoken anti-Semitism and dictatorial politics. The impact of his formative experiences - anti-Peronist revolutionary activities which landed him in jail, service in the Israeli army in 1947-48, work with displaced children of the Holocaust and with poor black and Puerto Rican delinquents - helped forge his development as theorist and famed clinician. Where others saw only chaos and confusion, Minuchin found structure: members of families shadow dancing within invisible boundaries and systems. As he tells the dramatic stories of families who have sought his help, Minuchin reveals the hidden rules that trap family members in stifling roles. His confrontational yet compassionate style of therapy unlock the self-defeating patterns which foster marital conflict, difficulties with children, problems adjusting to old age and retirement, and other crises at each stage of the family life cycle. Each therapeutic encounter is a compelling dialogue between Minuchin's wisdom and a family struggling with pain but resistant to change. His creative and daring solutions to familiar family crises offer insight into the workings of all families. In this book of inspiration and hope, Minuchin shows us the hiddenstrengths to be found in the heart of the family itself.




Thrice Told Tales


Book Description

Researchers have studied marriage for decades, but how is the transition to married life actually experienced by the couples involved? From an insider's perspective, Thrice Told Tales examines married couples' own stories of their relationship. A representative sample of 199 African-American and 177 White married couples were asked to tell the story of their relationship. It provides accounts of courtships, weddings, honeymoons, their adjustment in the early years, and hopes for the future. These stories were first collected a few months after their weddings, and again in the third and seventh years of their marriages. What features of their relationship do the couples highlight as central in the early years? How do their stories change over time? What can we learn about couples' marital well-being by analyzing their stories? How do the stories of men and women, and of White and African-American couples differ? These questions were systematically addressed using extensive coding schemes and comprehensive quantitative analyses. Details of the coding system and procedures are included, making this volume a useful reference for any researcher contemplating analysis of narrative data. However, the key points are also explained in simple prose and illustrated with quotes from the couples' own stories, making the book accessible to anyone with an interest in how young couples experience married life today.




Reimagining Narrative Therapy Through Practice Stories and Autoethnography


Book Description

Reimagining Narrative Therapy Through Practice Stories and Autoethnography takes a new pedagogical approach to teaching and learning in contemporary narrative therapy, based in autoethnography and storytelling. The individual client stories aim to paint each therapeutic meeting in such detail that the reader will come to feel as though they actually know the two or more people in the room. This approach moves beyond the standard narrative practice of teaching by transcripts and steps into teaching narrative therapy through autoethnography. The intention of these 'teaching tales' is to offer the reader an opportunity to enter into the very 'heart and soul' of narrative therapy practice, much like reading a novel has you enter into the lives of the characters that inhabit it. This work has been used by the authors in MA and PhD level classrooms, workshops, week-long intensive courses, and conferences around the world, where it has received commendations from both newcomer and veteran narrative therapists. The aim of this book is to introduce narrative therapy and the value of integrating autoethnographic methods to students and new clinicians. It can also serve as a useful tool for advanced teachers of narrative practices. In addition, it will appeal to established clinicians who are curious about narrative therapy (who may be looking to add it to their practice), as well as students and scholars of autoethnography and qualitative inquiry and methods.




Handbook of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy


Book Description

An invaluable guide to the history, descriptions of practice strategies, and applications of SFBT! The Handbook of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy is a unique, comprehensive guide that assists clinicians, regardless of experience level, in learning and applying the concepts of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) to particular situations with clients. Noted experts discuss the therapy practices and various uses for the approach in detail, which focuses on encouraging clients to look at exceptions, times when the problem could have occurred and did not, and goals and future possibilities. A history of the practice model and its interventions is discussed, along with limitations, descriptions of practice strategies, applications to specific client populations, and clinical problems and concerns. This useful resource also includes an illustrative case study that uses the SFBT model. The Handbook of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy first lays a foundation of knowledge, providing chapters on the crucial assumptions and practices, history, and epistemology behind the approach. Further chapters use that basis to explain the application of the approach with several clinical issues and various populations, including couples, depression, domestic violence, schools, children, pastoral work, therapist burnout, and a few “outside therapy room” applications. Other chapters focus on the important issues in therapist training and supervision. Extensive references are provided at the end of each chapter. Topics discussed in the Handbook of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy include: assumptions within the SFBT tradition history of the SFBT approach epistemology SFBT with couples depression domestic violence offenders public schools children and young people SFBT in faith-based communities assessing and relieving burnout in mental health practice SFBT beyond the therapy room supervision of training possible limitations, misunderstandings, and misuses of SFBT a tribute to the late Steven de Shazer, co-founder of the SFBT approach The Handbook of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy is an invaluable reference for all types of therapists, including psychologists, counselors, social workers, and family therapists at any level of experience, including students, trainees, and experienced therapists.




The Therapeutic Use of Stories


Book Description

The potential for healing available in well-known myths and stories is increasingly recognized, but many practitioners are unsure how to tap into this rich and often culturally-specific source of insight. What sort of story is best for what sort of situation? How can it be introduced naturally into the session? What is the best way of using the story? These are some of the questions contributors to this book set out to answer. They explore the historical and cultural context of story-telling and provide examples of specific stories for specific situations. Covering emotional themes such as anger, anxiety, fear, shame, guilt, separation and bereavement, the authors show how they work through stories with many different kinds of client groups and individuals of all ages in educational, health and social science settings. The Therapeutic Use of Stories provides a sound theoretical framework for the use of stories, examples of stories with a high therapeutic value, and practical advice on how to use them to best effect.




The Therapist's Notebook for Integrating Spirituality in Counseling


Book Description

To purchase this book with volume 2 of the set (with a 2-volume set savings), The Therapist's Notebook for Integrating Spirituality in Counseling II: More Homework, Handouts, and Activities for Use in Psychotherapy, see http: //www.haworthpress.com/store/product.asp?sku=5821 A client's spiritual and religious beliefs can be an effective springboard for productive therapy. How can a therapist sensitively prepare for the task? The Therapist's Notebook for Integrating Spirituality in Counseling is the first volume of a comprehensive two-volume resource that provides practical interventions from a wide range of backgrounds and theoretical perspectives. This volume helps prepare clinicians to undertake and initiate the integration of spirituality in therapy with clients and provides easy-to-follow examples. The book provides a helpful starting point to address a broad range of topics and problems.