Family Secrecy in Family Therapy Practice: An Explorative Focus Group Study

The aim of this focus group study was to explore the experiences of family therapists working with family secrecy. Our study highlights that family secrets present important and compelling challenges for family therapists. Furthermore, our study reveals that there seem to be some basic strategies family therapists use in dealing with these challenges in therapy sessions. One basic strategy is that family therapists try to guard their position of being a trustworthy therapist for each family member by avoiding becoming stuck in family secrecy. Furthermore, therapists explore ways to guide the family toward the disclosure of the secret in order to alleviate the toxicity of the secrecy. This highlights the importance of the systemic model and how influential this perspective is in family therapy practice. Some participants, however, have in addition a second strategy they sometimes use: talking with the family about secrecy without aiming to disclose the secret. In the discussion section of the article we reflect on the possibility that in the strategic choices family therapists make conceptual issues might be involved. Furthermore, we stress the importance of further research.     

Group Processes in Family Therapy: a Psychoanalytic Approach

This paper describes a model of family therapy that draws on experiences and theories of psychoanalysis as applied to individuals and groups. It suggests concepts that help to understand and work with the family as a system. A brief example is given to illustrate the effort to engage with the patients' immediate feelings in the session in relation to each other and the therapist.     

Family Therapy Study Group: The Mumbai Experience

Family therapy training in India is not provided in a systematic manner. Only one institution, the National Institute of Mental Health and NeuroSciences at Bangalore, offers this training, in the form of a three-month program. Consequently, a workshop on basic skills in Family Therapy was conducted in February 2003, at Mumbai, by a trained family therapist from Bangalore. The workshop resulted in founding the Family Therapy Study Group (Mumbai), a non-registered body, in March 2003 so that learning could continue to occur. The group meets once a month for two hours and has had 18 such meetings at this writing. This paper describes the objectives, activities, significant achievements, and future plans of the study group.     

Practice and Training in Family Therapy: A Known Group Study

The present study reports on a comparative survey of the belief and action systems of graduates who had been intensively trained in one of three of the major models of family therapy: Bowenian, communications, and strategic. An analysis of the factor-analyzed assumptions (belief system) and style (action system) items showed consistently greater divergence among the three models than convergence, as well as a remarkable synchronicity between the respective literature on these three models and their implementation, as represented by family therapists intensively trained in each model. A comparison of the present study's findings with previous research strongly supports the potency of formal and intensive training for developing adherents of a particular model and suggests that the distinctiveness of each model needs to be more fully developed in preference to premature attempts to develop generic or inclusive models that may become internally inconsistent and therefore difficult to operationalize in practice.     

Multiple Family Group Therapy: A Review of the Literature

This review focuses upon multiple family group therapy, its origin in the intersection of family and group therapies, its use in a variety of settings, its specific techniques and group development in individual and ongoing meetings, its goals and dominant themes, its parallels in family and group work. Also discussed are evaluation of outcome of this therapy modality and those dynamics thought to contribute to family change. Areas for further investigation are outlined.     

IV. A Family Group Therapy Technique for a Stalemate in Individual Treatment

Abstract

This paper explores the trend away from offering process-oriented groups on inpatient units, given decreasing lengths of stay, increasing acuity levels, and current biases toward psychoeducational groups and cognitive-behavioral treatments. A model for doing process-oriented groups that provides a structure while allowing a theme to emerge and maximal interaction to take place is presented. A case is made for the benefits of process-oriented inpatient groups as compared to, and complementary with, psychoeducational, cognitive, and behavioral approaches. Clinical vignettes illustrate typical themes and dynamics emerging in process-oriented inpatient groups.     

Evaluating Training Needs for Home-Based Family Therapy: A Focus Group Approach

Therapists and supervisors engaged in the delivery of home-based services participated in two rounds of focus groups. Participants discussed the challenges they face doing home-based therapy, and how an accredited family therapy program could modify its curriculum to better prepare trainees to meet these demands. Eight topic areas considered necessary for home-based practice were identified and the implications for training reviewed. The focus group methodology is described in detail and is recommended as a useful tool to assess training needs and as a way of promoting improved collaboration among training sites.