A Structural Approach to the Single-Parent Family

Although the single-parent family is becoming a predominant family structure, there is a surprising scarcity of articles discussing its typical problems or detailing specific therapeutic approaches. This paper attempts, first, to list some core problems encountered by all single parents and, second, to present a sequence of therapeutic approaches geared toward dealing with these problems.
Structural theory, with its emphasis on subsystems, generational boundaries, and organizational patterns, provides a framework for viewing the built-in vulnerabilities of the single-parent family unit. Minuchin's ( 3 ) emphasis on generational boundaries and the problem of enmeshment underlies the theoretical and therapeutic approach presented here. I have drawn heavily on Haley's ( 2 ) idea that the therapist must be an authority, a problem-solver, and a teacher. Finally, the emphasis on creating new organizational patterns is most thoroughly explored in Aponte's ( 1 ) discussions of "underorganized families" (many of whom are single-parent families).     

Virtue Ethics is Empirically Adequate: A Defense of the Caps Response to Situationism

According to situationists, the available empirical psychological data show that prevalent conceptions of virtue are ‘empirically inadequate.’ The charge is ambiguous. I begin by differentiating four families of empirical inadequacy charges, explaining the conceptual connections among the families, and showing how different situationists press different versions of the charges from each family. Then I explain how the empirical psychological model known as the ‘cognitive affective personality system,’ or ‘CAPS model,’ enables distinct responses to these varied charges. The CAPS response has come under fire, though, and I close by responding to the five main challenges raised against it.     

The ‘healthy’ family*

The importance of concepts and hypotheses about ‘healthy’ families for family therapists is stressed. A number of different approaches to defining ‘health’ is described. Concepts and hypotheses of family therapists from different schools are integrated into a more encompassing theory, thereby focusing on statements with respect to personality, cognition, behaviour, communication, relationship, role, family system and network. It is noted that family therapy literature lacks information about ‘healthy’ families. Moreover, nearly all statements are non-scientific and normative as they are not founded on empirical research.     

Search/ing for missing people: Families living with ambiguous absence

Families of missing people are often understood as inhabiting a particular space of ambiguity, captured in the phrase ‘living in limbo’ (Holmes, 2008). To explore this uncertain ground, we interviewed 25 family members to consider how human absence is acted upon and not just felt within this space ‘in between’ grief and loss (Wayland, 2007). In the paper, we represent families as active agents in spatial stories of ‘living in limbo’, and we provide insights into the diverse strategies of search/ing (technical, physical and emotional) in which they engage to locate either their missing member or news of them. Responses to absence are shown to be intimately bound up with unstable spatial knowledges of the missing person and emotional actions that are subject to change over time. We suggest that practices of search are not just locative actions, but act as transformative processes providing insights into how families inhabit emotional dynamism and transition in response to the on-going ‘missing situation’ and ambiguous loss (Boss, 1999, 2013).     

Trauma,cultural survival and identity politics in a post-9/11 era: Reflections by Sikh youth

This article presents findings from an ethnographic study of Sikh immigrant communities after 9/11. Notions of ‘belonging’ and ‘home’ are deeply fragmented for the Sikh families, especially the youth, and these complex social processes are explored. The post 9/11 backlash was pivotal in this community as it created more barriers for the youth in their schools as they became victims of racist slurs, threats and physical assault that were treated with apathy from teachers and administrators. Students stopped going to school, changed their physical appearances, displayed ‘patriotic’ American sentiment to promote an appearance of belonging, became depressed and were even suicidal as a result of the 9/11 backlash. The sense of persecution and of being labeled ‘suspect’ in the eyes of the public was detrimental to the families and the ensuing ‘fear’ for their safety in public spaces provoked many violent memories from India that these families experienced during the Hindu–Sikh riots from 1984 to the mid-1990s. The role of memory and the diasporic imaginary of Khalistan in the Sikh diaspora are understood throughout the article, as well. The findings of the study reveal immeasurable hardships for the Sikh youth in their schools and challenge assumptions about immigrant rigor and the resilience of immigrant youth in the face of hostile experiences and interactions. These hardships that stemmed from the trauma of migration and downward social mobility, the 9/11 backlash and their struggle to find a place led to challenges in identity formation and preservation.     

Bringing the self into family therapy training: personal and professional consultations with trainee families

The qualifying level of training in family therapy at Bristol University requires trainees to attend three ‘therapeutic consultations’ with their families with a recognized systemic practitioner, to consider issues pertinent to their development as therapists. This innovation is synchronic with the course philosophy which foregrounds the training in the development of ‘self’. Survey results on the consultations suggest that trainees report significant ‘news of difference’ and all recommend it as a mechanism for other trainees. The consultants also affirmed the value of the sessions they have facilitated. The paper describes the practicalities of how the consultations are organized.     

Overcoming blocks to creativity in family treatment*

This paper arises from a didactic and experiential workshop where the participants examined their ‘problem’ families and the characteristics the families possessed which the therapists did not like. These characteristics were explored and the participants came to an understanding of these ‘problem’ families. Blocks to creativity were discussed and the participants claimed their own ‘blocks’. Style and presence of the therapist as a creative change agent was explored.     

A slow unfolding – at double speed: reflections on ways of working with parents and their young children within the Tavistock clinic's under fives service

This paper describes clinical work carried out as part of the Tavistock Clinic Under Fives Service, which offers brief focused psychoanalytically based interventions to families with young children, as well as longer-term work. It elaborates psychoanalyst Annette Watillon's idea that it is the dramatic way in which children enact their (and their family's) predicament in the consulting room which speeds up the process of change. The author clusters clinical cases into three categories, each cluster representing a different kind of ‘dramatic’ enactment and leading to a different kind of intervention relating to the therapist's role, the structure of the interventions and the ‘ports of entry’ for the work. The categories are defined as: ‘child-led drama’ with the therapist in the role of ‘therapeutic observer’; ‘internal parental drama’ with the therapist in the role of ‘therapeutic consultant’; and ‘external parental drama’ with the therapist in the role of ‘therapeutic modulator’. The author defines these categories, illustrating each category with clinical examples.     

“There is Something not Quite Right with Brad…”: The Ways in Which Families Construct ADHD Before Receiving a Diagnosis

This study explored how four families who were in the midst of the process of a potential diagnosis of ‘Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder’ (ADHD) for their child negotiated competing explanations of the problems. The research drew on a social constructionist, systemic and attachment lens to understand; (a) the constellations of meanings that are constructed by the families to explain the difficulties and (b) how families use strategies in their talk to account for or contest these constellations of meaning. A discursive analysis revealed that the families in this study, following initial explorations, adopted a sequential and cumulative dismissal of psychosocial explanations. Hence, the thrust of the conversation implicitly added up to the only possibility, the inevitable conclusion that it was ADHD. The malleability and flexibility in which the families explored these explanations varied and for some families the process of closure towards ‘illness’ as a dominant explanation sealed alternative conversations more than in others. The findings also revealed a complexity for the parents in balancing the need to offer discipline versus another response and this has clinical implications and highlights the need for further research in this area.     

A characterization of ‘min’ as a procedure for exploiting valued preference relations and related results

This paper is concerned with procedures which transform valued preference relations on a set of alternatives into crisp relations. We present a simple characterization of a procedure that ranks alternatives in decreasing order of their minimal performance. This is done by means of three axioms that are shown to be independent. Among other results, we characterize in a very similar manner a procedure called ‘leximin’ and investigate two families of procedures whose intersection is the ‘min’ procedure.     

Building bridges: home visits to multi‐stressed families where professional help reached a deadlock

Work with ‘multi‐stressed’ families is often overwhelming for therapists. This is partly due to the frustrating experiences these families have had which contributes to an attitude of distrust towards the outside world. The authors describe methods used in the Netherlands to engage these families in treatment. These methods include home visits, collaborative practice and respect for the resources that the families already have.     

Anorexia nervosa: the tyranny of appearances

This paper explores the possibility that many families of anorexics are overly preoccupied with appearances, valuing what other people think of them more than healthier families do, and that this influences the origin and maintenance of anorexia. This‘rule’is simple and should be open to testing more widely through research.     

Keeping company with hope and despair: family therapists' reflections and experience of working with childhood depression

The BIOMED international outcome study on childhood depression offered a unique opportunity for the systematic treatment of children and families with major depression using systemic psychotherapy. This paper describes the experiences of clinicians working with the families referred and the theoretical and clinical models that evolved during the treatment process. The concept of ‘keeping company with hope and despair’ emerged as an overarching framework for thinking about the quality of the therapeutic relationship in this developing area of clinical practice. We illustrate our systemically informed interventions with case examples and discuss the role played by therapists' ‘use of self’ in engaging and fostering change in families gripped by depression.     

Religion,Philosophy and Family Resemblances

Wittgenstein's concept of family resemblances has been adopted by some writers either to explain the use of the word ‘religion’ or to advocate a use in the context of a definition. The purpose of this definition is supposedly to avoid an essentialist definition of religion such as ‘belief in God or gods’ which is seen as too parochially tied to Judaeo-Christian theistic origins of the word, while at the same time guaranteeing a distinctive role for religion as a universally applicable analytical concept. However, if an essentialist definition is not smuggled in for the purpose of maintaining a distinction between the ‘religion’ family and other neighbouring families such as ideologies, worldviews, values or symbolic systems, then the family becomes so indefinite that the word ceases to pick out any distinctive aspect of human culture. And this definitional dilemma in fact reflects the actual use of the word ‘religion’ by the scholarly community. Analysis of ‘religion’ texts shows that the word is used in such a large range of contexts that it is devoid of analytical value. Consequently, there is an obligation on the community of scholars to reconceptualize the wide and valuable range of work which is being carried out in ‘religion’ departments.     

Culturally sensitive therapy? Examining the practice of cross‐cultural family therapy

This article is drawn from a research project that examines cross‐cultural family therapy sessions in order to consider what constitutes culturally sensitive practice. A discourse analytic approach was adopted in the analysis of three sessions from two families where the family and the therapists originated from different ethnic backgrounds. This article is based around part of the research findings connected to one of the families, and focuses upon the ways in which ‘culture’ is talked about in therapy (the term ‘culture’ will be referred to in inverted commas in order to acknowledge its complexity as is emphasized in this article). This allows for an examination of the cultural assumptions that we hold as therapists, which are enacted in therapy with effects on all participants and upon the course of the therapy. The value of qualitative research methods in examining the cultural assumptions we bring to therapy is highlighted as one way of improving culturally sensitive therapeutic practice, especially with regard to therapist reflexivity.     

Belonging without commitment: the Christocentric view and the traditionist perspective on modern religion

This essentially theoretical article suggests a novel way to conceptualise the middle spaces of people whose link to religion is perceived as partial and fragmentary – the vast majority of the population in the world of the twenty-first century, who belong to a religious tradition but are quite selective in their observances. We first argue that current conceptualisation of the middle spaces suffers from a predisposition we view as ‘Christocentric’. As the key to an alternative and non-Christocentric approach, we suggest the concept of ‘traditionism’, which permits a new theoretical discussion of the meanings of religion for contemporary individuals who belong to a religious tradition but are not fully committed to its current authorities or affiliated with recognised denominations. As a case study to clarify the new, non-Christocentric conceptualisation, we suggest the religious identity of contemporary ‘Arab Jews’ – Jews whose families originated in the Muslim Middle East – to highlight the potential contribution of a certain Jewish perspective to an understanding of modern religion as tradition and of modern practitioners of religion who belong to no denomination as ‘traditionists’.     

Juvenile deliquency in an Austrian sample of foster-children without a father substitute: review of the literature and some findings

‘SOS-Kinderdorf’ is a worldwide organization who offer new homes to children abandoned by their parents. Children live in family-like groups, headed by a ‘mother’, imitating natural family life as closely as possible. They lack ‘father’, however, which has been a frequent point of criticism with regard to empirical results on father absence. Some of these results are discussed and reviewed critically. Criminological studies have ascribed forms of juvenile delinquency to the childhood absence of a male model. It could be shown, however, that such results vary considerably depending mainly on the reason for father absence. It is doubted, therefore that generalizations may be made for SOS-Kinderdorf's type of one-parent family. Empirical results about juvenile delinquency in a sample of 163 male and female 14- to 18-yr-old former members of SOS-Kinderdorf families are reported, ‘observed’ over a 4-yr period and compared with data on juvenile delinquency for the same area and period of time. The former children from SOS-Kinderdorf are significantly less frequently delinquent than the controls as long as they stay in the institution but they show the reverse pattern after leaving.     

The Well- and Unwell-Being of a Child

The concept of the ‘well-being of the child’ (like the ‘child’s welfare’ and ‘best interests of the child’) has remained underdetermined in legal and ethical texts on the needs and rights of children. As a hypothetical construct that draws attention to the child’s long-term welfare, the well-being of the child is a broader concept than autonomy and happiness. This paper clarifies some conceptual issues of the well-being of the child from a philosophical point of view. The main question is how well-being could in practice acquire a concrete meaning and content for a particular issue or situation. A phenomenological-hermeneutic research perspective will be outlined that allows the child’s well-being to be elucidated and specified as an anthropological and ethical idea. It is based on a contextual understanding of generative relationships, a combination of the theory and practice of making sense, here described as ‘generative insight’, which could provide ethical guidance for decision making in families, legal practice, medicine or biomedical research.     

Working with refugee families in Greece: systemic considerations

When refugee families leave their country of origin, they may also leave behind their culture and support systems but not their abilities to overcome the emerging adversities. This article addresses issues concerning the process of refugee families' ‘acculturation’ and adaptation to their new setting in Greek society. It attempts to develop culture‐sensitive approaches to family therapy based on narrative perspectives and inspired by Pike's ‘‐emic and ‐etic’ distinction. It discusses the innovative methods developed by the therapeutic team of the Greek Council for Refugees which included the use of ‘cultural therapeutic mediators’ and others in an endeavour to access the overlapping systems of refugee families in more effective ways.