Handbook of Family Therapy: The Science and Practice of Working with Families and Couples

by Thomas L. Sexton (Editor), Gerald R. Weeks (Editor), Michael S. Robbins

This new Handbook of Family Therapy is the culmination of a decade of achievements within the field of family and couples therapy, emerging from and celebrating the dynamic evolution of marriage and family theory, practice, and research. The editors have unified the efforts of the profession's major players in bringing the most up-to-date and innovative information to the forefront of both educational and practice settings. They review the major theoretical approaches and break new ground by identifying and describing the current era of evidence-based models and contemporary areas of application. The Handbook of Family Therapy is a comprehensive, progressive, and skillful presentation of the science and practice of family and couples therapy, and a valuable resource for practitioners and students alike.

520 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2003

Reviews

[Ben Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book at working with families and groups when counseling. Counseling a couple of people at the same time can be, or at least feel, overwhelming. You are not only dealing with one set of emotions, backgrounds, worldviews, or other impacting influences on another's life. You deal with multiple at the same time. This book helps take the fear and mystery out of how to help those meeting together. I love how this book also keeps the importance of individual counseling sessions, but pushes on the importance of including others in the sessions for which the problems arise with. It doesn't separate the individual from the community of who the problem arises. This is a great resource.

However, there is not much on spiritual integration within this text. I know every book can't discuss every topic, but this could have been developed a bit more, especially when dealing with those of faith and those who believe differently within the same session.

[Morgan Blackledge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the chapters are great. Clear and economical. Some of the chapters took me back to the nightmare that was art school in the 90's, reading pretentious French literary criticism, verbose queer theory (not that there's anything wrong with that) and prolix (yes prolix) pomo critical theory.

As the field of psychotherapy progresses, texts are becoming more clear and more functional. To me this is a good thing.

Some of the models represented in this compilation haven't gotten a contemporary reworking (i.e. simplification/clarification). The contrast between older and contemporary presentations of psychotherapy modalities is strikingly clear in this text.

I'd say 75% of this handbook is worth reading. The rest is a matter of preference.