How do experiences of hope and despair impact upon our capacity to meet life's challenges in narrative and family therapy? Clients' experiences of hope and despair can be complex, reflecting individual and family histories, current patterns and dynamics, the stresses of everyday life, and the social contexts of families' lives. This book analyses how therapists meet and engage with these dichotomous aspects of human experience. The editors place the themes of hope and despair at the centre of a series of reflections on practice and theory. Contributors from all over the world are brought together, incorporating a range of perspectives from narrative, systemic and social constructionist frameworks. The book is divided into three sections, covering: reflections on hope and despair facing adversity: practices of hope reflections on reconciliation and forgiveness. Hope and Despair in Narrative and Family Therapy looks at the importance of hope in bringing about positive therapeutic change. This book will be of great use to family therapists, psychotherapists, counsellors, and students on therapeutic training courses.

How do experiences of hope and despair impact upon our capacity to meet life's challenges in narrative and family therapy?

Clients' experiences of hope and despair can be complex, reflecting individual and family histories, current patterns and dynamics, the stresses of everyday life, and the social contexts of families' lives. This book analyses how therapists meet and engage with these dichotomous aspects of human experience.

The editors place the themes of hope and despair at the centre of a series of reflections on practice and theory. Contributors from all over the world are brought together, incorporating a range of perspectives from narrative, systemic and social constructionist frameworks. The book is divided into three sections, covering:

• Reflections on Hope and Despair
• Facing Adversity: Practices of Hope
• Reflections on Reconciliation and Forgiveness

Hope and Despair in Narrative and Family Therapy looks at the importance of hope in bringing about positive therapeutic change. This book will be of great use to family therapists, psychotherapists, counsellors, and students on therapeutic training courses.

This much-needed volume examines the process and practice of supervision in family therapy, with special emphasis on systemic practice. Expert trainers and supervisors from diverse disciplines take a systemic tour of the relationships between supervisor, therapist, and client, analyzing the core skills of effective, meaningful supervision-including questioning, listening, and reflecting-and their impact on therapy. These skills and others are applied to supervising therapy with individuals, couples, and families in areas including substance abuse, domestic violence, and research settings. Throughout the book, contributors share self-care strategies, so supervisors can stay engaged and creative, meet the many challenges entailed in their work, and avoid burnout. Among the topics covered: The resonance from personal life in family therapy supervision. Creating a dialogical culture for supervision. The supervisor's power and moments of learning. Supervision and domestic violence: therapy with individuals, couples, and families. Systemic supervision with groups in child protection contexts. When the supervision process falters and breaks down: pathways to repair. The highly practical information in Supervision of Family Therapy and Systemic Practice is adaptable by readers to their particular supervisory or training needs. Novice and veteran mental health, social care, and social work practitioners and psychotherapists, will find it a substantial resource.

Systemic psychotherapy has long been conceptualised and practiced as brief psychotherapy, in both the public sector and in independent practice, but it is now increasingly becoming a longer term practice. This ground-breaking book examines the ways in which systemic theory can accommodate and formulate long term practice, and locates the boundaries of the systemic theories that both help to explain and give direction to such work. In doing so, it asks important questions such as: at what point might a practitioner need to incorporate and integrate other explanatory models into their systemic thinking? What does this mean for systemic practice? How does the relative longevity of the work impact the way practitioners build and maintain therapeutic relationships with the relational systems they assist? And what implications does such longevity have on, and for, the supervisory needs of systemic psychotherapists at the heart of the work? Given the absence of a rigorous evidence base for long term systemic therapy and practice, this book explores how practitioners can hold themselves ethically accountable for what they do and think. Written by some of the leading names in systemic thinking, this book provides an important new resource for both students and experienced professionals in family therapy seeking to enhance their practice and research.