Family and Couples Therapy in a Time of War

SUMMARY

In this article the issue of professional responsibility of couples and family therapists is raised with regard to the war in the Persian Gulf. Implications are discussed for families and couples coping with the stress of war and its aftermath.     

Time Urgency and Coronary-Prone Behavior: The Effectiveness of a Behavior Pattern

Previous research has implicated time urgency as a component of coronary-prone behavior. Arguments of Type A persons often suggest that their time-urgent stylistics are necessary to guarantee success, particularly in complex and/or managerial tasks. Experimentally induced time urgency was utilized in a simulated complex managerial task with unselected subjects to test the validity of such an assumption. It was found that time urgency interacts with information load to produce performance outcome. Moderately complex planning and decision making was found to be optimal at intermediate load levels, but disintegrated when time urgency increased to high levels. Similar results were obtained for long-term complex planning. Retaliatory decision making increased with load. Higher levels of time urgency resulted in greater retaliatory activity. It is concluded that managerial activities that require complex decision making and long-term future planning are hindered rather than aided by time urgency.     

Family as a factor in delinquency

50 adjudicated delinquents were given academic and psychological tests and a self-report of delinquency according to the learning disability/delinquency study of the National Criminal Justice Service of 1980. 31 learning disabled delinquents were identified. The test of proportions compared learning disabilities in delinquent (n = 31) and nondelinquent (ns = 24 and 43) samples. The Mann-Whitney U test compared the reported number of categories of delinquent behavior in the three groups. A typical delinquent of this rural area tends to be a white male with average or above intelligence and a learning disability. His family is large; his parents are divorced. He comes from a poorer economic and cultural background. A dysfunctional family can be a center wherein delinquency grows; on the other hand, a strong family can nurture and protect when peers and school fail.     

Behavior Therapy in a Family Context: Treating Elective Mutism

This paper discusses the necessity of using both behavioral and family approaches in combination, while working with electively mute children. The symptom and its significance within the family system is presented along with a rationale for avoiding the pitfalls of individual approaches with such children. A case history outlining specific behavioral techniques is described in detail with an exploration of the use of reinforcement theory, counter-conditioning, and successive approximations in bringing about change in electively mute children. The need for bringing about changes within the family system so as to maintain the changes that have occurred through use of the behavior techniques is discussed and presented as crucial to the treatment process. The paper takes the position that either approach, by itself, will not be effective in helping electively mute children but that the treatment of choice is a combination of therapeutic techniques.     

The Community Residence as a Family:

No abstract available for this article.     

The Family in Us: Family History,Family Identity and Self-Reproductive Adaptive Behavior

This contribution is an essay about the notion of family identity reflecting shared significant experiences within a family system originating a set of signs used in social communication within and between families. Significant experiences are considered as experiences of events that have an immediate impact on the adaptation of the family in a given socio-ecological and cultural context at a given historical time. It is assumed that family history is stored in a shared “family memory” holding both implicit and explicit knowledge and exerting an influence on the behavior of each family member. This is described as transgenerational family memory being constituted of a system of meaningful signs. The crucial dimension underlying the logic of this essay are the ideas of adaptation as well as self-reproduction of systems.     

Family Awareness for Nonclinicians: Participation in a Simulated Family as a Teaching Technique

This paper describes a course in family theory geared to "well" family members that combines didactic and experiential teaching techniques. A key feature of the course is that students participate in a simulated family for twelve weeks. Family therapists are skilled at using techniques that powerfully dramatize family process; they can provide a needed and useful service to the community by teaching the dynamics of families functioning to people who have a personal or professional interest in learning more about families.