Author Description

Integration in family therapy involves incorporating modalities, such as individual, couples, and family therapy, as well as integrating schools of interventions, such as here-and-now, transgenerational, and other systemic approaches. In this volume, family therapists present cases that illustrate such integration from an ecosystemic perspective that takes into account the multiple systems in which the family is embedded. Cases highlight integrative interventions in which a family's ethnicity, religion, health status, socioeconomic class, or sexual orientation are particularly important and include work with couples and families in transition and at various developmental stages, from early marriage through late life. After briefly anchoring each case in the theoretical model from which they work, the therapists describe not only how they intervened with each case, but also how they thought about the case at critical decision points throughout the therapy. They explain why they included some members in sessions but not others and why they focused on some issues to the exclusion of others. When impasses are reached, the therapists are candid in describing their struggles to find a "good enough" solution. This book is intended for both the experienced and novice therapist.