Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy最新文献

This paper explores the common parenting style tension around nurture versus limit-setting often evident when working with families with a symptomatic child. Firstly it will delve into the parenting ‘soft/hard split’ with an overview of the literature on parenting styles. Next, it summarises the appearance of this phenomenon in the family therapy literature during its formative days, noting how Bowen, Minuchin, Haley, MRI (Bateson), and the Milan associates respond to this parent presentation in their approaches. Next, the paper outlines recent iterations of these family therapy interventions. An expanded discussion follows on Bowen theory's understanding of the parenting tension triangle. The article then outlines elements of the author's qualitative research study of parents' experience of adolescents' mental health treatment where the ‘soft/hard split’ emerged as a repeating theme. Finally, a clinical intervention based on Bowen theory, the Parent Hope Project, is outlined for how it addresses the parenting ‘soft/hard split.’ The goal is to contribute to understanding this phenomenon and its implications for clinical practice.

Internationally, while the interdisciplinary field of family therapy and systemic practices is well established and evidence for therapeutic impact is advanced, evaluation of training and measurement of its impact lags behind. This paper addresses this gap, utilising a single case study at the Bouverie Centre, the largest family therapy and workforce development service in Australia. We describe (a) the scope of workforce training and implementation at the Centre, (b) the development of our training research and evaluation framework, and (c) standardised data collection methodology, including a pre-post training reflective survey. Collectively, this work comprises our current evaluation framework through which we will subsequently examine training impact. Future research and practice recommendations are offered to address challenges to workforce training evaluation and progress efficacy of family therapy training.

The ‘Milan Approach’ made an enormous contribution to psychotherapy and psychiatry and has been viewed as a bedrock in the family therapy field. Mara Selvini-Palazzoli made a revolutionary shift in the early 1970’s to abandon individual therapy and adopt family therapy to treat anorexia in young women. The goal of the three systemic principles; hypothesising, circularity and neutrality, proposed by the Milan Team is to elicit a useful method to interview families which encourages the production of meaningful information.

The Milan group took special care of language. Rather than overly focusing on the label and referring to schizophrenia as a diagnosis, for instance, they used the term ‘families in schizophrenic transaction’. This perspective more realistically explored the origin of problems while looking at ways how to effectively generate change. In the early stages of its development, heavily influenced by the work of the MRI, the team adopted a pragmatic and strategic approach, however the focus gradually shifted towards semantics and the story of the system. While the ‘systemic identity’ was the principal guiding principle, the model was also influenced by social constructionism.

This paper is a distillation of a conversation held with Matteo Selvini, son of Mara Selvini Palazzoli. We discussed the four key influential figures who developed the ‘Milan approach’, Selvini Palazzoli, Boscolo, Cecchin and Prata. The focus of the conversation is on Mara and on her influence shaping the approach, its evolution through the years leading to the creation of the Scuola di Psicoterapia Mara Selvini Palazzoli.

Matteo also shares his own influence in the evolution of the school through the intervening years. He explains the adapted version of the Milan approach and the amalgam of the original and emerging therapeutic concepts. His key messages to therapists are the importance of working in teams and client follow-ups.

Trauma affecting youth and families takes a variety of forms, from random one-time events such as accidents and natural disasters to chronic and highly personal trauma from child abuse or intimate partner violence. Though trauma has received increasing attention in theory and intervention research over the last several decades, the prevailing theories and treatments have limitations due to a linear perspective focused on the trauma problems of the individual. This is particularly concerning given the high dropout rates for trauma-focused treatments and the complexities of intergenerational trauma that cannot be adequately conceptualised at the level of the individual. To inform and improve family-based treatment of youth and family trauma, this paper proposes a theoretical framework informed by social constructivism and systems theory. Social constructivism upholds that reality is constructed through communication as an adaptive process for survival, with multiple potential realities possible. Systems theory promotes a non-linear view of causality within a system, such that the structure and properties of a system determine outcomes more than the inputs that go into the system. Together, the principles of these meta-theories contradict the orthodox focus on traumatic events causing trauma symptoms, and instead imply that family-based treatment should focus on helping families shift assumptions and dynamics that sustain the problem in the present. The joint application of a social constructivism–systems theory framework for trauma introduces several new principles to inform family-based treatment: (a) post-trauma realities; (b) mutual survival; (c) power–justice balance; and (d) adaptive reorganisation. The implications of these principles for youth and family trauma treatment will be discussed. Future intervention development and research should consider these principles in the ongoing effort to improve family therapy for youth and family trauma.

This article presents a historical journey through the concepts developed (i.e., worked, modified, and made more complex) over four decades in the existence of one of the first family therapy institutions in Argentina: the CEFYP. This journey travels from its beginnings, in the midst of the military dictatorship, to the present. The concepts will be introduced and discussed taking into account those concepts that emerged and stood out as we worked therapeutically, enriching our clinic in each new paradigm. We will start from the CEFYP's emergence within the socio-political framework of Argentina in the 1970s, its constitution as differentiated from the prevailing psychoanalytic context within the field of psychotherapies, and its evolution, an evolution that was always attentive to the particular questions that accompanied its relational approach. These questions, which intersected philosophy, anthropology, art, and critical history, will express the position of the CEFYP in relation to change, history, power, dialogue, and the therapist and their place in the process of change. Finally, it will also discuss the CEFYP's way of thinking and developing the teaching and training of relational systemic therapists. This article will also present the most outstanding clinical themes, exemplified with the use of vignettes. Among others, these include our trajectories in the clinic of violence and partner violence, the clinic in destructive divorces, and the clinic with seriously disturbed families.

Our work with children whose rights have been violated, with their families devastated by family violence and where the majority have been left out of the sociocultural systems and experiencing serious economic and educational difficulties, has taken us to our professional limit. The solitary and individual work, in the dim light of the office, left us without tools. As therapists, we can say that it has been necessary to break with our own mental schemes and to take a leap into the territory, the terrain itself. The learned university theories were questioned, forcing us to include a more humanising and less judgmental look at the work. A psychology of the trench was born for us. This paper articulates a work process that required something more than specific training in our subject matter. It summoned us as human beings capable of hosting suffering. From this starting point, and with an open mind and heart to go through its stages, this process is presented as a journey with advances and setbacks in its intervention modalities, systematising programs in permanent construction. Systematising practices is not an easy task. Familias Cuidando (Caring Families) and Adoptar es Posible (To Adopt is Possible) are the developmental spaces of our trench practices, practices that aim to accompany children, adolescents, and their families through the system of promotion and comprehensive protection of their rights. From Vicente López, a district in the province of Buenos Aires, our psycho-socio-educational and legal approach tries to be a link within collaborative and supportive practices; establishing ties, networks, and dialogues to strengthen the new paradigm aiming to support listening to the voice of children and adolescents; rescuing their childhoods, resignifying the different family models, and accompanying the construction of a life project for each one, in which we all fit.

The generative perspective in therapy understands relations and dialogue as a generative social space where participants can promote innovative resources and possibilities for themselves, and their relations and circumstances, along with new social ecologies. It focuses on the creative dimensions of human relationality. This epistemological and clinical perspective has a heuristic value that allows us to discern and work with micro dialogues—micro processes of creative, generative dialogues—in the ongoing dialogue, mindful of the opportunities for creativity and innovation they provide. The generative perspective promotes creative processes and transformations to help clients build possible and viable futures when faced with problems, conflicts and challenges. It involves the dialogical and relational co-creation of resources and possibilities, and actions for implementation. The perspective is illustrated with a therapy process involving a 3-year follow-up. The paper includes a section where differences and similarities between dialogical perspectives are presented.

This paper explores a collaborative generative approach to psychological assessment employed in Puerto Rico, with children, adolescents, and adults. It begins with a critical reflection on how the dominant discourse of mental health, founded in the suppositions and practices of Euro-American-centred psychological knowledge, has been disseminated to the globalise south under the claim that its assertions are unaffected by social, ideological, or historical forces. It discusses how its claims of expert scientific knowledge have contributed, through classificatory instruments such as the DSM and the ICD, to the production and re-production of deficit narratives in our day-to-day life. It also examines how these practices have been applied in the use of assessment instruments in Puerto Rico. It then describes, how, through a collaborative approach and narrative theory, the established colonising practices and narratives of traditional forms of psychological assessment can be questioned, deconstructed, and transformed. This approach promotes the co-creation of dialogic and generative spaces that allow for the emergence of multiple stories and performances that give meaning to a person's identity and relational being. A brief clinical case exposition is used to illustrate how this collaborative, dialogic, and culturally sensitive approach to psychological assessment can help to undermine and disrupt deficit-based narratives and provide families with new generative possibilities for re-storying and re-performing their lives and particularly, the lives of their children.