Working With Families: Guidelines and Techniques

John T. Edwards

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780470890479
• eBook ISBN: 9781118138816
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy
• Index: Psychology

A complete guide for helping professionals, with tried-and-true techniques for practicing family counseling therapy

Now in its second edition, Working With Families: Guidelines and Techniques is filled with up-to-date, systems-oriented techniques focused on field-tested results. Outlining the dos and don'ts of working with different types of families and the various complications, nuances, and complexities that can occur, this practical guide provides a broad and proven selection of interventions, processes, and guidelines for working interactively, systematically, and compassionately with families.

Working With Families, Second Edition covers a range of topics including:

• Family work in different settings

• Session-by-session guidelines

• Therapeutic themes by family type

• Managing adolescents in family sessions

• Dealing with fear of family work

• Family mapping

• Strategic child assessment

• Chemical dependence and its impact on families

Informed by the author's many years of experience in the field, both as a clinician and as a trainer, Working With Families, Second Edition offers an invaluable systems-oriented, goal-directed, problem-solving approach to family counseling therapy for all mental health professionals.

Chapter 1

Foundation Ideas

Introduction

This chapter presents some of the foundation ideas upon which the systems approach rests. It is divided into two parts: Part 1 is Concepts and Part 2 is Procedures and Processes. It is a potpourri of theory and guidelines, with a heavy sprinkling of practical tips and suggestions.

I like to think that theory develops as much from the feet up as it does from the head down. Theory and practice is a two-way exchange: theory provides a framework for thinking, a direction to go and what to look for, while face-to-face experience with families builds up our own personal knowledge about what works and what doesn't. Theoretical constructs are the most helpful in the early stages of learning family work, a period when we need guidance. Over time, however, our practice experience becomes primary and is likely to guide our actions more than textbook theory.

I've always believed that it is the application of our ideas that determines our effectiveness in helping families through their difficult periods. What we know—our body of knowledge, theoretical and otherwise—does not help families. The most knowledgeable person on the methods and theory of all the schools of family therapy will not necessarily be an effective family therapist. How the knowledge is applied in face-to-face interactions with families is the critical test.

The content described in this section gives us a place to start—how to convene a family for counseling and have an organized first session, the systems orientation, the assumptions and rationales behind the systems approach, various uses of family work, and a few guiding suggestions and tips about how to apply these ideas in interactions with families. Other ideas and issues in this section are included because they need a prominent place in our thinking about family counseling. Included in this category are ethics and cultural sensitivity, both of which can be overlooked in the myriad details of managing a particular case. Recent research on family therapy is presented for students and professionals who want to dig deeper into the empirical and evidenced-based underpinnings of the family approach to helping.

My suggestion to the reader is to peruse these foundation ideas to see which of them might appeal to you. Then read these topics more thoroughly. The next step is to try them out in family sessions. Some ideas may be selected and become part of your ongoing work while others will simply fade out. Applying them in your practice makes this selection possible.

Part 1: Concepts

Learning Family Counseling

In my training and supervision with colleagues, the most frequent question I am asked is, “What do I do with this family?” It's a good and important question, and I try to give my best suggestions. It conceals, however, an even more important question: “How do I acquire the knowledge and skills to do counseling with any family? I wish my colleagues would ask this second question more often.

Source: DeskGallery Mega-Bundle, Copyright 1995 by Dover Publications, Inc. Used with permission.

1. Why should I learn to do counseling with families?

Because significant human relationships are a central part of most people's problems. Our longing for love, our hopes, frustrations, sense of security, fears, and happiness are closely linked to our relationships with our families and significant others.

2. What should I do to learn family counseling?

Get supervision from a colleague who is more experienced in family work, use video- or audiotaped sessions of yourself, watch other counselors do it, go to workshops, get lots of experience working with families, and find a colleague with whom you can process your sessions. At appropriate times, share with your colleagues what you are learning.

3. How long does it take to learn?

The learning never stops. To start, you need a setting in which you can acquire experience. You can expect one to two years of practice before you begin to feel competent doing this type of counseling. As a foundation, you need 50–100 hours of supervised experience with families, 20–30 hours of watching a more experienced counselor do his or her thing with families, and 4–6 days of workshop training. Read at least three books on the subject.

4. What do I read?

That depends on what model of family counseling you want to learn. I started with the Structural-Strategic model, which gave me the foundation concepts and skills to learn on my own. I read Family Therapy Techniques by Minuchin and Fishman and Foundations of Family Therapy by Lynn Hoffman and studied Problem Solving Therapy and Leaving Home by Jay Haley (see Recommended Readings at the end of this book) plus many articles and handouts.

5. What is some basic information I need to know before starting?

How to view a family as a system, how to get the family members to come for a meeting, how to conduct a first interview with them, and how to initiate family change while resolving the presenting problem. You can get the foundation knowledge from this book.

6. Should I choose parts from various approaches and put them together?

Trying to integrate different approaches too early in your learning can create confusion and result in mishmash, scattered therapy. It's like a mechanic taking parts from different automobile models and putting them together to make one car. The thing will run poorly, if at all. Each model has components designed to function together. If you become eclectic too early, taking a little from each “school” of family therapy, you will not learn one model well enough to understand it. Stick with one model until you know how its rationale, procedures, and techniques form a unified whole, until you learn its integrity. Then you can select pieces from other approaches and make informed decisions about how they fit into the one you have learned. With experience, you can determine an approach that works well for you. Develop your own model.

Why Family Work?

I suspect that most professionals who work conjointly with families have their list of reasons for choosing this therapeutic mode. Here is my list.

1. With a symptomatic member (the “identified patient”), everyone in the family is affected. All must accommodate to the problem of one member, whether that member is a child or adult. If the problem is long-standing, the members can develop habitual and unhealthy ways of responding to the problem, causing the problem to intensify, leading to more family dysfunction.*

2. By the time a family reaches the treatment stage, the whole family has been emotionally damaged by the ordeal. All members need...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: Foundation Ideas
• Chapter 2: Special Situations
• Chapter 3: Counselor Ideas
• Chapter 4: Techniques
• Chapter 5: Multiple Family Groups
• Chapter 6: Working With Chemical Dependency in Families
• Appendix A: Research References
• Appendix B: Problems and Page Numbers
• Glossary for Family Counseling
• Recommended Readings
• About the Author
• Index