This special edition of the classic text includes a new introduction from Professor Arlene Vetere exploring its continuing influence on contemporary practice. One of family therapy's foundational texts, Families and Family Therapy is as relevant today as it has ever been. Examining the therapist's role, Dr. Minuchin presents the views and strategies of a master clinician in a clear and practical form. Transcripts of actual family sessions-both with families meeting their problems fairly successfully and those seeking help-are accompanied by a running interpretation of what is taking place. The book constructs a model of an effectively functioning family and defining the boundaries around its different subsystems, whether parental, spouse, or sibling. It then explores the ways in which families adapt to stress from within and without, as they seek to survive and grow. Combining vivid clinical examples, specific details of technique, and mature perspectives on both effectively functioning families and those seeking therapy, this is an important text for all those interesting in the theory and practice of family therapy. This book can be used on courses such as Family Therapy, Family Interventions, Systemic Practice, and Systemic Counselling within departments of Psychology, Mental Health, and Counselling; and by undergraduate students on Social Work qualifying courses.

This cutting-edge second edition of The Craft of Family Therapy revisits some of Salvador Minuchin's most famous cases, guiding trainee therapists through basic techniques and ideas while illuminating the unique voice of Minuchin as the founder of Structural Family Therapy. The book begins by teaching readers the fundamentals of family therapy through the lens of rich commentary from Salvador Minuchin on some of his most interesting cases. It then moves on to three detailed supervision transcripts from Minuchin's former students, illustrating the struggles, fears, and insecurities that new family therapists face and how they can overcome them. In a new, ground-breaking third section, Reiter and Borda share their own lessons from Minuchin as well as expand his influential ideas, emphasizing a strength-based family therapy approach. Written in an accessible, practical style, The Craft of Family Therapy, 2nd edition draws on a wealth of fascinating case examples to bring Minuchin's theory and experience to today's family therapists and psychotherapists in practice and training.

This cutting-edge second edition of The Craft of Family Therapy revisits some of Salvador Minuchin's most famous cases, guiding trainee therapists through basic techniques and ideas while illuminating the unique voice of Minuchin as the founder of Structural Family Therapy. The book begins by teaching readers the fundamentals of family therapy through the lens of rich commentary from Salvador Minuchin on some of his most interesting cases. It then moves on to three detailed supervision transcripts from Minuchin's former students, illustrating the struggles, fears, and insecurities that new family therapists face and how they can overcome them. In a new, ground-breaking third section, Reiter and Borda share their own lessons from Minuchin as well as expand his influential ideas, emphasizing a strength-based family therapy approach. Written in an accessible, practical style, The Craft of Family Therapy, 2nd edition draws on a wealth of fascinating case examples to bring Minuchin's theory and experience to today's family therapists and psychotherapists in practice and training.

This special edition of the classic text includes a new introduction from Professor Arlene Vetere exploring its continuing influence on contemporary practice. One of family therapy's foundational texts, Families and Family Therapy is as relevant today as it has ever been. Examining the therapist's role, Dr. Minuchin presents the views and strategies of a master clinician in a clear and practical form. Transcripts of actual family sessions-both with families meeting their problems fairly successfully and those seeking help-are accompanied by a running interpretation of what is taking place. The book constructs a model of an effectively functioning family and defining the boundaries around its different subsystems, whether parental, spouse, or sibling. It then explores the ways in which families adapt to stress from within and without, as they seek to survive and grow. Combining vivid clinical examples, specific details of technique, and mature perspectives on both effectively functioning families and those seeking therapy, this is an important text for all those interesting in the theory and practice of family therapy. This book can be used on courses such as Family Therapy, Family Interventions, Systemic Practice, and Systemic Counselling within departments of Psychology, Mental Health, and Counselling; and by undergraduate students on Social Work qualifying courses.

At the center of people's lives is the family, which can be and should be a haven from the harshness of the outside world. Unfortunately, the source of people's greatest hope for happiness often turns out to be the source of their worst disappointments. Now, the family therapist, Salvador Minuchin unravels the knots of family dynamics against the background of his own odyssey from an extended Argentinian Jewish family to his innovative treatment of troubled families. Through the stories of families who have sought his help, the reader is taken inside the consulting room to see how families struggle with self-defeating patterns of behavior. Through his confrontational style of therapy, Dr Minuchin demonstrates the strict but unseen rules that trap family members in stifling roles, and illuminates methods for helping families untangle systems of disharmony. In Dr Minuchin's therapy there are no villains and no victims, only people trying to deal with various problems at each stage of the family life cycle. Minuchin understands the family as a system of interconnected lives, not as a "dysfunctional" group. Each story of a therapeutic encounter brings a new understanding of familiar dilemmas and classic mistakes, and recounts Dr Minuchin's creative solutions.

Family therapy trainees are inundated with a multitude of family therapy theories. They also have difficulty shifting from an individualistic view to one of seeing interactions and systems. How do therapists hone their own methods with all of these choices? And how do they learn how to best treat families with all of the focus being taken away from their clients and redirected instead on processes? Perhaps most importantly, how can they learn through an inductive process of exploring what has occurred during the therapeutic session? Veteran therapist and founder of Structural Family Therapy, Salvador Minuchin, goes back to basics with his two co-authors Michael D. Reiter and Charmaine Borda in The Craft of Family Therapy. In this book they teach readers basic communication and family therapy skills using some of Dr. Minuchin's most interesting and illuminating cases. Not only do readers re-learn basic techniques, such as reframing and joining, but they are treated to an in-depth commentary on each case, with Dr. Minuchin emphasizing the techniques he uses that allow him to refocus attention from the Identified Patient to the family as a whole. The book ends with three supervision transcripts from Dr. Minuchin's students, whose commentary illuminates the struggles, fears, and insecurities that new family therapists face and how they can overcome them. Each of these chapters ends with a consultation interview that Dr. Minuchin conducted with each supervisee's case family.

A master of family therapy, Salvador Minuchin, traces for the first time the minute operations of day-to-day practice. Dr. Minuchin has achieved renown for his theoretical breakthroughs and his success at treatment.Now he explains in close detail those precise and difficult maneuvers that constitute his art. The book thus codifies the method of one of the country's most successful practitioners.

No other book in the field so fully combines vivid clinical examples, specific details of technique, and mature perspectives on both effectively functioning families and those seeking therapy. The views and strategies of a master clinician are presented here in such clear and precise form that readers can proceed directly from the book with comparisons and modifications to suit their own styles and working situations. Salvador Minuchin presents six chapter-length transcripts of actual family sessions-two devoted to ordinary families who are meeting their problems with relative success; four concerned with families seeking help. Accompanying each transcript is the author's running interpretation of what is taking place, laying particular stress on the therapist's tactics and maneuvers. These lively sessions are interpreted in a brilliant theoretical analysis of why families develop problems and what it takes to set them right. The author constructs a model of an effectively functioning family and defines the boundaries around its different subsystems, whether parental, spouse, or sibling. He discusses ways in which families adapt to stress from within and without, as they seek to survive and grow. Dr. Minuchin describes methods of diagnosing or "mapping" problems of the troubled family and determining appropriate therapeutic goals and strategies. Different situations, such as the extended family, the family with a parental child, and the family in transition through death or divorce, are examined. Finally, the author explores the dynamics of change, examining the variety of restructuring operations that can be employed to challenge a family and to change its basic patterns.

This widely adopted text and practical guidebook presents the fundamentals of family-based intervention with clients struggling with chronic poverty-related crises and life stressors. Grounded in Salvador Minuchin's influential systemic model and the extensive experience of all three highly regarded authors, the book illustrates innovative ways for professionals within substance abuse, foster care, and mental health contexts to build collaboration with families and other helpers, and to elicit families' strengths.New to This Edition: *Many new case examples.*Discussions of exemplary programs.*Increased attention to key factors that make agencies effective and enable them to maintain a family focus over time.

With characteristic insight, compassion, and dry humor, the grand master of family therapy Salvador Minuchin challenges us to meditate on some of the most perplexing-and profound-questions of the day: Why is our image of the ideal family so far from the common reality? When we have such a rich literature of individual psychology, why is the family comparatively neglected? Why does our legal system promote confrontation rather than cooperation?