The second section focuses on evaluation and treatment. In-depth chapters demonstrate how to apply the approach during the various stages of the family's developmental life cycle, covering everything from planning therapy and defining goals to performing effective diagnosis and assessment and giving feedback to clients. The book also provides a wealth of useful advice for treating problems that arise with divorce and remarriage. Throughout, special attention is given to ethical considerations in therapy, the responsibilities of both the therapist and clients, and issues of gender and ethnicity

Integrating systemic, psychodynamic, and cognitive-behavioral perspectives, this acclaimed book presents an innovative framework for therapeutic work. Ellen Wachtel shows how parents and children all too often get entangled in patterns that cause grief to both generations, and demonstrates how to help bring about change with a combination of family-focused and child-focused interventions. Vivid case examples illustrate creative ways to engage young children in family sessions and conduct complementary sessions with children and parents alone, using a variety of strengths-based, developmentally informed strategies. The paperback edition features a new preface in which the author reflects on the continuing evolution of her approach.

"Linking research with clinical practice, this text shows therapists how to do evidence-based practice when treating contemporary families. Today's families are diverse and complex, and their problems do not always improve when treatment focuses on addressing a diagnosis. To achieve successful, lasting change, therapists must help families change their patterns of interaction. This book examines several common interactional challenges that contemporary families face, such as co-parenting, divorce, intimate partner violence, blending families, and loss and bereavement. For each challenge, contributors examine research regarding the concern as well as research on multiple diverse family types, and then provide clinical examples showing how to develop interventions for these family types. With its combined focus on inclusion, social justice, and evidence-based practice, this book will help clinicians work with today's diverse families in effective, culturally responsive ways"--

Treating Chemically Dependent Families

Yes, you can learn to say what you mean and mean what you say. This bestselling guide has already transformed thousands of lives—and can change your as well. The authors’ pioneering Assertiveness Training Technique can help you gain recognition and promotion on the job, renew your marriage, put more zing in your sex life, deal with your children more effectively, and make new friends. Change your life as you learn how to: • Target your own assertiveness difficulties and set your own goals. • Follow your progress with a workshop that gives you step-by-step reinforcement. • Visualize and actualize through exercises designed to perfect new behavior patterns. • Develop self-control that comes from within. • Change habits that keep you from getting what you want in every area of your life.

This groundbreaking volume shows how the clarity and discipline of cognitive therapy can be applied to the treatment of family of origin issues, such as alcoholism and incest, without compromising depth and clinical sophistication. Treating Family Of Origin Problems begins with a discussion of the characteristics of dysfunctional families and an overview of the cognitive model. Subsequent chapters explore coping strategies, goals of recovery and treatment, diagnostic considerations, and assessment of family of origin issues. Ways in which the therapist's own family of origin issues and the therapist's posture can influence the treatment process are addressed in a discussion of various metacommunicative elements that can affect the client's ability to use treatment constructively. Throughout, illustrative clinical material shows how clinicians can utilize embedded messages and other techniques to circumvent resistance; confront various types of acting-out behavior while remaining in a supportive, collaborative posture; and provide a consistent focus in treatment, highlighting the underlying mechanisms that cause distress without becoming mired in unproductive attention to the presenting symptoms. The volume concludes with discussions of building coping strategies, utilizing relationship material, and variations in the recovery process.