Jim Sheehan

Carmel Flaskas

Imelda McCarthy

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.

Adversity, Forgiveness and Reconciliation

Hope and Despair in Narrative and Family Therapy

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.

Brings the issue of the therapeutic relationship in family systems therapy into focus, by examing the relationships between the client family as a system, and the use of self in therapy.

The Therapeutic Relationship in Systemic Therapy

Postmodernist ideas are widely used in family therapy. However, it is argued that these ideas have their limits in meeting the richness and complexity of human experience and therapy practice. Family Therapy Beyond Postmodernism examines postmodernism and its expressions in family therapy, raising questions about: * reality and realness * the subjective process of truth * the experience of self. Alongside identifying the difficulties in any sole reliance on narrative and constructionist ideas, this book advocates the value of selected psychoanalytic ideas for family therapy practice, in particular: * attachment and the unconscious * transference, projective identification and understandings of time * psychoanalytic ideas about thinking and containment in the therapeutic relationship. Family Therapy Beyond Postmodernism offers a sustained critical discussion of the possibilities and limits of contemporary family therapy knowledge, and develops a place for psychoanalytic ideas in systemic thinking and practice. It will be of great interest to family therapists, psychotherapists and other mental health professionals.

Practice Challenges Theory

Family Therapy Beyond Postmodernism

The papers in this book focus on many different aspects of the therapeutic relationship, including the self of the therapist, working cross-culturally and with language difference, impasse, risk taking, the place of research, and the influence of theory. Clinical examples illustrate successful as well as less succssful outcomes in therapy, and these clinical explorations make the book accessible to both systemic and non-systemic practitioners alike. Part of the Systemic Thinking and Practice Series.Contributors:Rhonda Brown; John Burnham; John Byng-Hall; Alan Carr; Carmel Flaskas; Jo Howard; Alfred Hurst; Ellie Kavner; Sebastian Kraemer; Inga-Britt Krause; Rabia Malik; Maeve Malley; Michael Maltby; Barry Mason; Sue McNab; Amaryll Perlesz; David Pocock; Hitesh Raval; Justin Schlicht; and Lennox K. Thomas.

Experience, Context, and Process in the Therapeutic Relationship

The Space Between

Postmodernist ideas are widely used in family therapy. However, it is argued that these ideas have their limits in meeting the richness and complexity of human experience and therapy practice. Family Therapy Beyond Postmodernism examines postmodernism and its expressions in family therapy, raising questions about: * reality and realness * the subjective process of truth * the experience of self. Alongside identifying the difficulties in any sole reliance on narrative and constructionist ideas, this book advocates the value of selected psychoanalytic ideas for family therapy practice, in particular: * attachment and the unconscious * transference, projective identification and understandings of time * psychoanalytic ideas about thinking and containment in the therapeutic relationship. Family Therapy Beyond Postmodernism offers a sustained critical discussion of the possibilities and limits of contemporary family therapy knowledge, and develops a place for psychoanalytic ideas in systemic thinking and practice. It will be of great interest to family therapists, psychotherapists and other mental health professional

Carmel Flaskas

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