Inside the Family: Toward a Theory of Family Process PDF Download

Author: David Kantor
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
ISBN:
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Describes the processes of daily living and interaction common to all families within the context of modern systems theory and reveals the means by which behavior of individual members is regulated.

Author: Paul C. Rosenblatt
Publisher: Guilford Press
ISBN:
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
If family therapy is like a camera through which clients are able to view their lives, then the treatment method used by clinicians could be considered the lens, offering different ways of seeing. In Metaphors of Family Systems Theory, Paul C. Rosenblatt explores the metaphors of family systems theory that form the conceptual foundation - the lens - of a great deal of therapy, research, theory, education, and policy making in the family field. He demonstrates the value of testing out theoretical or alternative metaphors - other lenses - to provide new perspectives and a fresh means of gaining clarity. The literature that informs family therapy is rich with striking accounts of how therapeutic metaphors have helped to move families into healthier, energizing, freeing, and more satisfying relationships, yet little attention has been devoted to the development of alternative theoretical metaphors. This innovative new work investigates the uses and limitations of the standard metaphors of family systems theory. Perhaps more important, it also provides the means to generate alternative theoretical metaphors to stimulate new thinking about family systems. Rosenblatt asserts that the capacity to recognize metaphors will enable clinicians and clients to identify biases, hidden implications, and reification, as well as what may have been overlooked. He shows the way this ability also helps us to organize and remember information, and to better appreciate the multilayeredness of "reality". Initial chapters define metaphor and discuss family systems theory, as well as the uses and limitations of standard therapeutic metaphors. The chapters examine the notion of the family as an entity, themetaphor of "system", and the major systemic metaphors. Rosenblatt extends his analysis to the idea of family boundary and to the closely related metaphors of family subsystem, family boundary permeability, and family boundary ambiguity. He also analyzes the metaphors of family structure, systems control, family rules, and negative and positive feedback. Later chapters apply these ideas to the metaphors of communication, therapeutic goals, the therapist in the system, and family response to intervention. Rosenblatt Illustrates new insights with a variety of experience-based metaphors and presents strategies for the evaluation and development of new theoretical metaphors for family systems. Unique and innovative, this book offers a fresh perspective for anyone working with metaphors of family systems theory. Of special interest to family therapists, family researchers, social workers, and other mental health professionals working in the family field, it is especially useful as a text for courses in family systems theory, theories of family therapy, and theory construction.

Author: Jay Lebow
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9783319494234
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This authoritative reference assembles prominent international experts from psychology, social work, and counseling to summarize the current state of couple and family therapy knowledge in a clear A-Z format. Its sweeping range of entries covers major concepts, theories, models, approaches, intervention strategies, and prominent contributors associated with couple and family therapy. The Encyclopedia provides family and couple context for treating varied problems and disorders, understanding special client populations, and approaching emerging issues in the field, consolidating this wide array of knowledge into a useful resource for clinicians and therapists across clinical settings, theoretical orientations, and specialties. A sampling of topics included in the Encyclopedia: Acceptance versus behavior change in couple and family therapy Collaborative and dialogic therapy with couples and families Integrative treatment for infidelity Live supervision in couple and family therapy Postmodern approaches in the use of genograms Split alliance in couple and family therapy Transgender couples and families The first comprehensive reference work of its kind, the Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy incorporates seven decades of innovative developments in the fields of couple and family therapy into one convenient resource. It is a definitive reference for therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and counselors, whether couple and family therapy is their main field or one of many modalities used in practice.

Author: Jennifer A. Johnson-Hanks
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400719450
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
Fertility rates vary considerably across and within societies, and over time. Over the last three decades, social demographers have made remarkable progress in documenting these axes of variation, but theoretical models to explain family change and variation have lagged behind. At the same time, our sister disciplines—from cultural anthropology to social psychology to cognitive science and beyond—have made dramatic strides in understanding how social action works, and how bodies, brains, cultural contexts, and structural conditions are coordinated in that process. Understanding Family Change and Variation: Toward a Theory of Conjunctural Action argues that social demography must be reintegrated into the core of theory and research about the processes and mechanisms of social action, and proposes a framework through which that reintegration can occur. This framework posits that material and schematic structures profoundly shape the occurrence, frequency, and context of the vital events that constitute the object of social demography. Fertility and family behaviors are best understood as a function not just of individual traits, but of the structured contexts in which behavior occurs. This approach upends many assumptions in social demography, encouraging demographers to embrace the endogeneity of social life and to move beyond fruitless debates of structure versus culture, of agency versus structure, or of biology versus society.

Author: Dawn O. Braithwaite
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1452222215
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Engaging Theories in Family Communication: Multiple Perspectives covers uncharted territory in its field, as it is the first book on the market to deal exclusively with family communication theory. In this volume, editors Dawn O. Braithwaite and Leslie A. Baxter bring together a group of contributors that represent a veritable Who's Who in the family communication field. These scholars examine both classic and cutting-edge theories to guide family communication research in the coming years.

Author: Vern L. Bengtson
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1452210942
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 689

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Book Description
Sponsored by the National Council on Family Relations, the Sourcebook of Family Theory and Research is the reference work on theory and methods for family scholars and students around the world. This volume provides a diverse, eclectic, and paradoxically mature approach to theorizing and demonstrates how the development of theory is crucial to the future of family research. The Sourcebook reflects an interactive approach that focuses on the process of theory building and designing research, thereby engaging readers in "doing" theory rather than simply reading about it. An accompanying Web site, http://www.ncfr.org/sourcebook, offers additional participation and interaction in the process of doing theory and making science.

Author: Denise Ann Bodman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000576213
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
Introduction to Family Processes: Diverse Families, Common Ties serves to provide an explanation of the complex workings of inner family life. The text primarily focuses on family processes and dynamics (the "inside" of families) as opposed to sociological trends, political topics, or the individual psychological approach. The text further presents the research underlying these processes and effectively presents ways to increase the positive aspects of family life. This edition has been updated to include current research and contemporary topics. The text has been divided into four parts: Foundations, Building and Establishing Families, Maintaining Families, and Change/Turbulence/Gains/Losses. While the research methods chapter still provides an introductory examination of family science research, it now includes an expanded discussion on research design, methods, and advances in the area. A new chapter, titled "Forgiveness, Kindness, Hope, and Gratitude" has been incorporated to amplify positive family processes and highlight emerging research. This edition provides added emphasis on diverse families (e.g., race/ethnicity, family structure, LGBTQIA, ability, culture, and family formation), and each chapter includes a new "Discussions in Diversity" section related to that chapter. The authors have consciously included an epilogue as a way of reflecting on what they have learned, along with what they hope to learn in the future. Aimed at courses related to family studies and family dynamics, this text provides a comprehensive review of family processes. Whether it is used for undergraduate or graduate classes, professional growth, or personal enrichment, the text assists readers in enhancing the positive aspects of family life, avoiding undesirable aspects, and more effectively managing the challenges and obstacles families face that cannot be avoided. Thus, the text holds an appeal for people who live (or will live) in families, as well as those who want to work with families.

Author: Michael E. Kerr
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393713628
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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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 closest 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.

Author: Peter Titelman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136862269
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 607

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Book Description
Move through emotional triangles toward a natural systems view of the individual in the context of the family and society Triangles: Bowen Family Systems Theory Perspectives presents clear applications of Murray Bowen’s concept of the emotional triangle in the family, the organization, and society. This comprehensive book discusses in detail the theory, the theory’s application to the therapist’s own family, clinical applications, organizational applications, and societal applications. This unique resource examines the value of the triangle concept for understanding the emotional process of the family, the organization, and society. Triangles: Bowen Family Systems Theory Perspectives provides a theoretical context for understanding the triangle concept and its application, then progresses to exploring and applying the concept of the triangle and interlocking triangles to self, family, and other contexts. This book is devoted to explicating Bowen’s seminal concept of the triangle, and providing a clear description of the process of detriangling in clinical practice. The text includes several case studies and vignettes to illustrate concepts. Topics in Triangles: Bowen Family Systems Theory Perspectives include: a historical and conceptual overview the triangle’s function in the effort to increase differentiation of self the presence of triangles in non-human primates Bowen’s differentiation of self effort in his own family and business the functioning of triangles at the time of chronic illness and death emotional triangles involving pets and humans the application of the concept of triangles and interlocking triangles to clinical issues in marriage the presence of triangles in the child-focused family triangles in stepfamilies the triangle’s presence and function in families with substance abusing teens triangles involving extramarital relationships triangles in organizations and businesses the triangle’s function in the context in societal emotional process and much more! Triangles: Bowen Family Systems Theory Perspectives is a stimulating, enlightening resource for family therapists, social workers, psychologists, pastoral counselors, and counselors.

Author: Pauline Boss
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0387857648
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 747

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Book Description
Origins We call this book on theoretical orientations and methodological strategies in family studies a sourcebook because it details the social and personal roots (i.e., sources) from which these orientations and strategies flow. Thus, an appropriate way to preface this book is to talk first of its roots, its beginnings. In the mid 1980s there emerged in some quarters the sense that it was time for family studies to take stock of itself. A goal was thus set to write a book that, like Janus, would face both backward and forward a book that would give readers both a perspec tive on the past and a map for the future. There were precedents for such a project: The Handbook of Marriage and the Family edited by Harold Christensen and published in 1964; the two Contemporary Theories about theFamily volumes edited by Wesley Burr, Reuben Hill, F. Ivan Nye, and Ira Reiss, published in 1979; and the Handbook of Marriage and the Family edited by Marvin Sussman and Suzanne Steinmetz, then in production.