Annual Index
Volume 26 Issue Number 4. [PDF format - 65KB]It’s a Difference, but Is It Significant?
By Alistair Campbell. Volume 26 Issue Number 4. [PDF format - 126KB]The Dance of Violence [Letter from Britain]
By John Hills. Volume 26 Issue Number 4. [PDF format - 78KB]Conferring on Genograms
By Anne Macvean. Volume 26 Issue Number 4. [PDF format - 41KB]Reviews: Independant comment on audio-visual and print materials
Volume 26 Issue Number 4. [PDF format - 96KB]Family Therapy: A Prayer for Theoretical Impurity
By Brian Sullivan. Volume 26 Issue Number 4. [PDF format - 48KB]Announcement of the Eighteenth Annual Awards for Children's Literature (for books published in 2004)
Volume 26 Issue Number 4. [PDF format - 73KB]The Ethics of Paradox: Cybernetic and Postmodern Perspectives
By Joel Cullin. Volume 26 Issue Number 3. [PDF format - 167KB]The evolution of family therapy theory has led us to a point where non-direct interventions are considered ethically dubious, to say the least. This paper provides an overview of some of what the author considers to be the pertinent epistemological and practice issues arising from this evolutionary position. In the process, an effort is made to address confused thinking about cybernetics and postmodernism, and an argument is presented suggesting that the metaphors of first-order cybernetics have continued relevance for family therapy practice.
Psychoanalytic Ideas and Systemic Family Therapy: Revisiting the Question 'Why Bother?'
By Carmel Flaskas. Volume 26 Issue Number 3. [PDF format - 144KB]Despite a history of ambivalence, systemic family therapy has shown signs of a re-engagement with psychoanalytic ideas over the past fifteen years. This paper revisits the question: why bother with psychoanalytic ideas in family therapy? A brief description of work with a family is used to prompt the theory discussion, which identifies and discusses particular ideas from psychoanalysis that are potentially very useful for everyday family therapy practice. These ideas are: the unconscious and unconscious communication; the concepts of transference, countertransference and projective identification, used for understanding particular kinds of experiences in the therapeutic relationship; attachment theory, particularly if allied with the recent research on the transforming potential of coherent narratives; and ideas about emotional containment and the capacity to think. Reflection on the initial therapy example finds the value in practice of these psychoanalytic ideas. The paper concludes with a discussion of the current debate about how the use of psychoanalytic ideas in the systemic context of family therapy can, or should, be framed. Don Meadows replies in 'Worth the Bother: A Response to Carmel Flaskas'.
Sex Therapy: Historical Evolution, Current Practice. Part I [Education Update]
By Raie Goodwach. Volume 26 Issue Number 3. [PDF format - 174KB]This is the first of a two part series, and provides a contextual history of major trends in sex therapy, notably the psychoanalytic, behavioural and medical models, as well as detailing the family therapy contribution to the field. Part 2 will present the outline of a first interview, and use it to demonstrate a systemic model which explores the inter-relationship between the symptom, the presenting person(s), the 'sexual' as part of the relationship, the biological, the broader cultural view of sexuality - and the therapist's framework and thinking. Case studies are used as illustration.
