Working With Families: Guidelines and Techniques E-Book

John T. Edwards

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 407

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

A complete guide for helping professionals, with tried-and-true techniques for practicing family counseling therapy

Now in its second edition, Working With Families: Guidelines and Techniques is filled with up-to-date, systems-oriented techniques focused on field-tested results. Outlining the dos and don'ts of working with different types of families and the various complications, nuances, and complexities that can occur, this practical guide provides a broad and proven selection of interventions, processes, and guidelines for working interactively, systematically, and compassionately with families.

Working With Families, Second Edition covers a range of topics including:

• Family work in different settings

• Session-by-session guidelines

• Therapeutic themes by family type

• Managing adolescents in family sessions

• Dealing with fear of family work

• Family mapping

• Strategic child assessment

• Chemical dependence and its impact on families

Informed by the author's many years of experience in the field, both as a clinician and as a trainer, Working With Families, Second Edition offers an invaluable systems-oriented, goal-directed, problem-solving approach to family counseling therapy for all mental health professionals.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Preface

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: Foundation Ideas

Introduction

Part 1: Concepts

Learning Family Counseling

Why Family Work?

Assumptions of a Family Systems Model

The Systems Orientation in Theory

The Systems Orientation in Practice

The Systems Orientation in Concepts

Levels of Systems Interventions

Cause and Effect in Systems

The Systems-Oriented Program Assessment

Code of Ethics

Cultural Sensitivity

Uses of Family Counseling

Forms of Family Work

Family Work in Different Settings

Suggestions for Family Work in Different Settings

Rationales for This Approach

Bedrock Beliefs About Families

A Theory of Change

Children Raise Adults

Neglected Relationships in Family Counseling

Getting a Grip on the Obvious

Experience Is Primary

Too Many Variables

Too-Brief Family Counseling

Traveling Pairs of Concepts

Research on Marital and Family Therapy*

Part 2: Procedures and Processes

Recruiting Families for Counseling

Conducting the Initial Family Interview

Initial Interview Summary

Tips for the First Family Interview

Four Basic Tools for Family Counseling

General Guidelines

If the Presenting Problem Is a Child or Young Person

If the Presenting Problem Is a Marital or Couples Issue

General Clinical Suggestions

Session-by-Session Guidelines

Session Checklist for Family Counseling

Chapter 2: Special Situations

Introduction

Therapeutic Themes by Family Type (Child Identified Patient)

Blended and Single-Parent Families

Blended Families: Tips for Two Common Scenarios

The Powerless Parent

The Parental Mind-Set

Parent-Child Enmeshment

“Split” Parenting

Parental Denial

Difficult Parents

Child Diagnosis in Plain English

The Three Worlds of the Adolescent

Managing Adolescents in Family Sessions

Couples Work

Couples Counseling: Additional Tips

Closed Families

Friends as Family

Family Resistance

Chapter 3: Counselor Ideas

Introduction

Fear of Family Work

Inexperienced vs. Experienced Family Counselors

A Novice's First Family Interview

Counseling Style

Counselor Mistakes

Counselor Successes

Counselor Self-Disclosure

Induction Worksheet

Whose Family Stuff Is It?

Use of Self

Counselor Centrality

Colleague Consultation

Supervising Family Work

Review Lists for Family Counselors

Questions and Answers

Chapter 4: Techniques

Introduction

Alter Ego

Brief Network Intervention (BNI)

Chair Work

Circular Questions

Colleague Teamwork

Drawings

Family Mapping

Family Questions in Individual Counseling

Guardrail

The MIGS Sheet

New Talk

Paradox

Parent's Childhood

Reflecting Team

Reframing

Relabeling

Safe Rebellion

Sculpting and Movement

Sibling Talk

Strategic Child Assessment

Strategic Predictions

Toybox

Worried Child

Summary of Systemic Techniques

Chapter 5: Multiple Family Groups

Introduction

Suggested Procedures for Multiple Family Groups

Family Recruitment for Multiple Family Groups

Clinical Tips

Therapeutic Activities

Chapter 6: Working With Chemical Dependency in Families

Introduction

A Working Definition of Chemical Dependency

Drugs of Abuse

Chemical Dependency

The Disease Concept

Indirect Signs of Chemical Dependency

Identification of Chemical Dependency in a Family

Questions for Family Assessment of Chemical Dependency

Treatment of Chemical Dependency

Recovery

Stages of Recovery

Recovery Plan

Families in Early Recovery

Relapse

Common Patterns in Chemically Dependent Families

Two Parent–CD Parent

Two-Parent–CD Adolescent

“Good” Kid/“Bad” Kid

CD Single Parent

Single-Parent–CD Adolescent

The Golden Years Trap

Adolescent Substance Abuse

Adolescent Substance Use Checklist

Co-Dependency

Couples Work for Chemical Dependency

Working With Chemical Dependency in Families: 21 Guidelines

Family Counseling for Chemical Dependency: Summary

Appendix A: Research References

Appendix B: Problems and Page Numbers

Glossary for Family Counseling

Recommended Readings

About the Author

Index

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Copyright © 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Edwards, John T.

Working with families : guidelines and techniques / John Edwards. — 2nd ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-470-89047-9 (pbk. : acid-free paper)

ISBN 978-1-118-13880-9 (ebk)

ISBN 978-1-118-13881-6 (ebk)

ISBN 978-1-118-13879-3 (ebk)

1. Family psychotherapy. 2. Counseling. 3. Marital psychotherapy. I. Title.

RC488.5.E27 2012

616.89′1562—dc23

2011016590

To Vishvamitra (Sid Jordan, PhD)

I honor the life you've led and your many gifts to me and others. Most of all, I honor you.

Preface

This book is about applied family therapy. It is long on how-tos and short on theory and comes from my 30-plus years' experience as a practitioner and trainer in family therapy. I have field-tested virtually all the ideas and techniques in the book—many of which are original—and they rest on a systems-based foundation created by the Structural/Strategic schools of family therapy. All the ideas and techniques flow from the same theoretical foundation—a brief, systems-oriented, goal-directed, problem-solving approach to family counseling. I like this model because of its emphasis on results (rather than exploration) and practice (rather than theory) and because it has a time-proven track record in diverse settings with different problems and family types.

My intention is that both students and practicing therapists will find the book useful. Students should find a refreshing dose of practical knowledge in these pages to go with their voluminous dose of theory in their studies. Practicing therapists will find a wide assortment of interventions, ideas, procedures, and techniques to supplement their practice, something new to try when they are stalled in their therapeutic movement with a particular case. I have taught the contents of this book to many helping professionals in social work, mental health, substance abuse, education, child welfare, intensive in-home services, psychology, psychiatry, the ministry, hospitals, and private practice.

My suggestions to the reader for using the book, which grew from a series of handouts for my training workshops, are to browse through the book, reading here and there to get a feel for what it contains. Then use the contents as a guide for selecting topics that have relevance to the family work you are doing now or plan to do.

Brief and useful are the two criteria I used to include material in this book. Most of the content arose from experience in face-to-face encounters with families, so the book does not follow a neat beginning-middle-end format. In practice, experience and learning are not so easily organized in a linear fashion, nor are they readily categorized; they follow a more random path and have a variety of sources—family sessions, tapes of family sessions, discussions with colleagues, reading, workshop presentations (mine and others), and writing. Whatever their source, our experiences and learning must always, in my opinion, be grounded in actual encounters in the therapy room with families. It is only here that we can discover the value of what we know, or think we know.

The book is divided into six chapters:

Chapter 1—Foundation Ideas—discusses an assortment of useful ideas, procedures, and tips for any professional who does family work in any setting.

Chapter 2—Special Situations—addresses a variety of more specific conditions encountered by most counselors who work with families.

Chapter 3—Counselor Ideas—is an exploration in raising our awareness of ourselves as professionals and how the “use of self” is a critical—and easily overlooked—factor in therapeutic outcomes.

Chapter 4—Techniques—details some of the “tools of the trade,” including several old standbys that have been in use by family counselors for years. The major portion of this section consists of techniques that I created to manage particular problems that kept coming up in my family cases. (Note: Techniques are in boldfaced italic in the text of the book. If you want to read about the technique, please look it up in the index.)

Chapter 5—Multiple Family Groups—is an introduction to a powerful group format of several families together who, with a therapist facilitator, learn from and support each other in the uphill climb toward family change. This group format, which is often referred to simply as MFG, includes the identified patients with their families.

Chapter 6—Working With Chemical Dependency in Families—provides foundation knowledge for the single most frequently encountered dysfunction in a general caseload of families. Substance abuse is often a “hidden” problem in distressed families and may not be part of the presenting problems. All family workers need to be alert for, and familiar with, this all-too-common disorder and its devastating impact on family life.

Appendix A is for the research-minded student or professional; it provides a current and comprehensive list of references for the research on marital and family therapy in the text. Appendix B matches presenting family problems with ideas and techniques presented in the book. This section should help to narrow your search for something useful for particular cases. The glossary defines some of the terms used in systems-based family therapy. (Incidentally, the terms “family therapy,” “family counseling,” and “family work” are used interchangeably throughout the text.)

And finally, the index is more helpful than the table of contents in terms of finding a specific topic or technique if you know the name of the item you're looking for.

Some families are difficult to help. Even relatively well-functioning families lie in wait for anyone who sails in, flying the banners of change. I hope you will use this book to search for a specific technique to try with a particular family or to browse for general ideas to supplement your own approach to family work. Whatever your purpose, I wish you and the families you serve a productive and enriching voyage.

About the Second Edition

The original edition of this book was self-published from 1993 to 2010. About every three years during that period, I added new material from my experiences teaching and conducting family therapy. In this second edition, I have written an introduction to each chapter, added new material, removed dated or otherwise not useful topics, added a comprehensive and current research section, and made editorial changes throughout.

My active training practice in family therapy constantly teaches me that busy counselors value brief and useful chunks of field-tested ideas and interventions rather than long narratives on particular topics. They want a manual of practical ideas and techniques, something they can apply immediately to their caseloads or to a particular family. Hopefully, this second edition satisfies that need.

Acknowledgments

As in most enterprises, a completed project is a team effort. I am grateful to the hundreds of colleague trainees who over the years discovered with me how to approach the case in front of us and whose perceptions and insights always improved my own. A very partial list in this category would include Bev Kovach, Katherine Townsend, Larry Sharpe, Michael Budlong, Rob Young, Richard Martin, Michael McGuire, and Susan Mattox. I also want to acknowledge the invaluable guidance of Marquita Flemming, my Wiley editor, and Sherry Cormier, my developmental editor, who patiently guided me in the tedious process of making a book out of diverse ideas and experiences.

A special thanks also goes to Daphne S. Cain, PhD, LCSW, Chairperson, Department of Social Work, Louisiana State University, for her thorough work in assembling the latest research in family therapy. To Paul Nagy, Clinical Associate, Duke University Department of Psychiatry, a talented trainer and networker, I owe a debt of gratitude for putting the Wiley editors and myself in touch. And finally, my thanks go to my dear friend Mattie M. Decker, EdD, of Morehead State University, Morehead, Kentucky, who had the enthusiasm and patience to review parts of the manuscript and take the trouble to gently nudge me to consider certain ideas in another way.

It was never difficult to find someone who knew as much or more than I did about working with families. To the many unnamed sources in books, articles, workshop presentations, video sessions with families, and conversations about the topic, I offer my appreciation.

Chapter 1

Foundation Ideas

Introduction

This chapter presents some of the foundation ideas upon which the systems approach rests. It is divided into two parts: Part 1 is Concepts and Part 2 is Procedures and Processes. It is a potpourri of theory and guidelines, with a heavy sprinkling of practical tips and suggestions.

I like to think that theory develops as much from the feet up as it does from the head down. Theory and practice is a two-way exchange: theory provides a framework for thinking, a direction to go and what to look for, while face-to-face experience with families builds up our own personal knowledge about what works and what doesn't. Theoretical constructs are the most helpful in the early stages of learning family work, a period when we need guidance. Over time, however, our practice experience becomes primary and is likely to guide our actions more than textbook theory.

I've always believed that it is the application of our ideas that determines our effectiveness in helping families through their difficult periods. What we know—our body of knowledge, theoretical and otherwise—does not help families. The most knowledgeable person on the methods and theory of all the schools of family therapy will not necessarily be an effective family therapist. How the knowledge is applied in face-to-face interactions with families is the critical test.

The content described in this section gives us a place to start—how to convene a family for counseling and have an organized first session, the systems orientation, the assumptions and rationales behind the systems approach, various uses of family work, and a few guiding suggestions and tips about how to apply these ideas in interactions with families. Other ideas and issues in this section are included because they need a prominent place in our thinking about family counseling. Included in this category are ethics and cultural sensitivity, both of which can be overlooked in the myriad details of managing a particular case. Recent research on family therapy is presented for students and professionals who want to dig deeper into the empirical and evidenced-based underpinnings of the family approach to helping.