Systemic Treatment Of Incest

by Terry S. Trepper

Systemic Treatment of Incest is the first book to take as its primary focus the treatment of incest families. The authors, who have spent a total of 25 years working with incest families, believe that therapy can succeed in halting the abuse without dissolving the family unit. The volume’s three sections are based on the authors’ three stages of creating a context for change; challenging behaviors, expanding alternatives; and consolidation.
First published in 1990. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

300 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1989

About the author

Terry S. Trepper, Ph.D. is an internationally recognized scholar, educator, and researcher, winning numerous awards and honors in each of these domains. He has been a professor at Purdue University Northwest since 1981 and prior to that worked in community mental health as a family psychologist. Terry’s scholarly and training interests include the evidence-basis of solution-focused therapy, systemic and solution-focused approaches to treating substance abuse, and positive psychology.

Trepper is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Purdue University Northwest and for the past 26 years has been the Editor of the Journal of Family Psychotherapy. Terry is the co-editor of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy: A Handbook of Evidence-Based Practice (with Cynthia Franklin, Wallace Gingerich, and Eric McCollum) Oxford University Press; co-author of More than Miracles: The State of the Art in Solution-Focused Therapy (with Steve de Shazer, Yvonne Dolan, Harry Korman, Eric McCollum, and Insoo Berg); co-author (with Mary Jo Barrett) of Systemic Treatment of Incest: A Therapeutic Handbook, published by Brunner/Routledge; Treating Incest: A Multiple Systems Perspective, published by Haworth Press; 101 Interventions in Family Therapy (with Thorana Nelson), published by Haworth Press, 1993, 101 MoreInterventions in Family Therapy (1995); and Family Solutions for Substance Abuse (with Eric McCollum) published by Haworth Press, 2001.

Reviews

[jessi lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

i picked this book up because i'm so interested in mary jo barrett's work at the center for contextual change. even though it was written in the late 80s, it seems new & provocative for me.

the main point of this book is how to treat all of the systems that feed into (mainly father/daughter) incest, including the whole family dynamic. it's a tough topic to talk about context around, but i think they do it fairly well & are really careful to not feed into any denial or victim-blaming while also refusing to let the fathers be tossed aside as monsters & incapable of change. and they're smart about how comforting it is for other people outside of the situation to do that, because it distances them from the reality that it could happen in their family. and the danger of having the therapist do that.

probably a bit too shop-talky for anyone not already familiar with family therapy. but if you are, and are interested in alternative ways of responding to (and promoting healing around) really awful things, this might be interesting to you. they haven't talked very much about larger social systems & their role in promoting incest... mainly the system they're talking about is family (and with the other systems, like criminal justice, they only talk about tools to negotiate their problems, not solve them). and it only seems to be applicable to families where people can get to the other side of their denial--it doesn't deal with the question of how to respond when someone continues to deny sexually abusing their child, though it has great tips for confronting alot of different types of denial & engaging family members in confronting other's denial.

it feels like an important tool for my abolitionist toolkit, a really detailed & workable response to one of the more common "but what about people who..." questions.

also, i'm super interested in what people who are involved with generation 5 think about this book & this kind of family therapy work, in terms of the potential & what's missing from the analysis.