Families with Physically Handicapped Children: Social Ecology and Family Systems

This paper reviews research on families with physically handicapped children, and integrates this work within a social ecological perspective. Methodological difficulties in past research that contribute to a lack of consensus in the area are discussed. Research on stresses experienced by various subsystems within families with handicapped children is presented, with recommendations for future family-oriented research and intervention. The interactions of families with handicapped children with their social support networks are reviewed, underscoring the importance of these processes for coping and adaptation.     

The Social Dynamics of Cigarette Smoking: A Family Systems Perspective

This paper uses family systems concepts and the Family FIRO model to show how cigarette smoking occurs in the context of the important relationships in a smoker's life. Specifically, smoking is viewed as a way a person is included in relationships, is in control in relationships, and perhaps is intimate in relationships. When smoking is well-established in the relationship, predictable interaction patterns surround it. When a person tries to quit or succeeds in quitting, these patterns change and may need to be replaced by nonsmoking alternatives. Partners may respond with support and willingness to create alternative patterns, or with undermining behavior stemming from a perceived threat to the established patterns. The model is offered for its heuristic value in guiding research and clinical experimentation. The paper also describes implications for family therapists as consultants to smoking-cessation programs.     

Circumplex Model VII: Validation Studies and FACES III

This paper reviews some of the recent empirical studies validating the Circumplex Model and describes the newly developed self-report measure, FACES III. Studies testing hypotheses derived from the Circumplex Model regarding the three dimensions of cohesion, change, and communication are reviewed. Case illustrations using FACES III and the Clinical Rating Scale are presented. These two assessment tools can be used for making a diagnosis of family functioning and for assessing changes over the course of treatment. This paper reflects the continuing attempt to develop further the Circumplex Model and to bridge more adequately research, theory, and practice.     

International Family Therapy: A View from Kyoto, Japan

"International family therapy" is an emergent field within (or overarching) the field of family therapy. At this stage, it can be described as the collecting and sharing of experiences by family therapists from different countries. Recent publications (7) gather information principally from Western cultures in which systemic family therapy has grown over the past thirty years. Japan is of particular interest to Western practitioners because it is a highly successful, post-industrial culture that differs markedly from the West. Familiar family therapy interventions often work for unfamiliar reasons, and different goals are often needed in order to respond to apparently similar family problems. An expanded sense of choice around strategies for family life and family therapy that such diversity implies is the primary contribution that this maturing, international family therapy movement can make to family therapy.     

The Cybernetic Metaphor: A Critical Examination of Ecosystemic Epistemology as a Foundation of Family Therapy

This article proposes that recent disputes between two groups of family therapists, represented by Watzlawick and Keeney, have a substantive base as yet unexplicated in current literature. However, guiding principles of the approach known as ecosystemic epistemology have received considerable attention by Wittgenstein, a colleague of Russell's, and Rorty, a contemporary philosopher. Both contend that the prospect of systematizing language and culture may be ill advised. The article suggests that discussion regarding the nature and practice of family therapy ought not be confined to epistemological thinking.     

Ecologically Oriented Family Intervention

An ecological approach to family therapy is relevant for all social classes, not only for the poor. Examples of this orientation are presented in this paper.     

Patterns of Interaction in Families with Low Adjusted, High Adjusted, and Mentally Retarded Members

Family interactions were compared in three groups: families with a low adjusted child prior to formal clinic contact (LA), with a high adjusted child (HA), and with a retarded child (RM). Nine measures were utilized, described as: adaptation, stability, productivity, specificity, overt power, conflict, cohesion, and emotionality. Data suggested a failure of cohesion in the LA group, but many clinic-family stereotypes were supported. HA families showed high cohesion, but also high conflict. RM families showed cohesion, but many "auxiliary" control features, such as assigning "youngest sib" role to the handicapped child.     

Two Families: The Origins of a Therapeutic Crisis

The treatment by individual and family therapy of a hospitalized young woman is presented as it reflects the historical and current family dynamics of the patient and her individual psychotherapist. The contribution of these factors to a therapeutic crisis is discussed.