Integrative Family Therapy
Overview
Pastoral counselors, therapists-in-training and clergy are usually introduced to one method of family assessment and treatment, which works better in some situations than in others.
Integrative Family Therapy introduces the major schools of family therapy, proposes a tested model that integrates the various approaches, and illustrates how this model functions both for assessing and treating family problems.
Seven central concepts are discerned as a way of understanding the various family therapies as a group. Then the major family therapy theories are discussed, including cognitive, family life cycle-developmental, interactional-communication, multigenerational, object relations, problem solving and structural family. After examine their deep structures, an integrated model of six discrete moments is presented and illustrated.
Top Highlights
“He and his colleagues reasoned that a family achieves stability by feedback from its members. When the family stability is threatened, either internally or externally, the family finds a way to return to homeostasis.” (Page 16)
“at least three subsystems: parental, marital, and sibling” (Page 22)
“Primary techniques include tracking cognitive distortions by attempting to understand the beliefs behind communication, challenging those distortions, and making behavioral changes that interrupt those distortions.” (Page 29)
“A third concept is that a family maintains homeostasis by feedback loops that at times involve a child acting out.” (Page 18)
“ distortions refer to beliefs people hold about the meaning of events or communication” (Page 27)
- Title: Integrative Family Therapy
- Author: David C. Olsen
- Publisher: Fortress Press
- Publication Date: 1993
- Pages: 96