Description
Book SynopsisFamily, Self and Psychotherapy is a comprehensive person-centred look at the family as the essential element of society, and is valuable reading for professionals and volunteers working with families, children and individuals. Explores our human need to be inter-connected and its implications for both individual and family therapy. The volume is informally divided into three sections. The first section deals with the centrality of the family to our species as a whole and to us as individuals. The next addresses the optimistic philosophical foundations of the person-centred approach: the tapestry of the self and its core drive towards psychological well-being. The last section - the heart of the book - deals with the principles and pragmatics of the person-centred approach to working with individuals and families. Gaylin asserts that therapeutic relationships are more liely to thrive when viewed from this positive perspective especially when therapy operates within the individual's family context.
Trade ReviewHe writes about the very essence of the Person-Centred Approach with consummate ease and strolls up to what could have been a real problem with this book: can you have a Person-Centred Approach to the family? His step scarcely falters as he begins to outline one of the central themes of his book (and of all our work?) which is that our individuality is achieved/defined/made visible in our relationships and, to borrow a Natiello-ism in our 'connections'... This book is like an oyster. It contains many, many pearls. Nick Baker, St Martins College, Lancaster.
Table of ContentsMarriage: Safehouse of Love and Trust; Family: Its Development and Cultural Context; Development of the Self; Creativeness and a Psychology of Well-being; Moral Aspects of Psychotherapy; Person-centered Family Therapy; The Psychotherapy Relationship: The Heart of the Matter; The Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Psychotherapeutic Change in Individual and Family Therapy; Family Therapy Process; Reflections on the Self of the Therapist; Ipsative Measures: In Search of Paradigmatic Change and a Science of Subjectivity
