The Family Journal

The Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET) approach to family therapy holds that people largely disturb themselves emotionally when they take their socially learned goals, standards, values, and preferences and irrationally reconstruct them into absolutist, inflexible demands on themselves, on others, and on world conditions. Acquiring a philosophy of acceptance would significantly help people's personal, mamrage, andfamily relationships. This philosophy includes accepting human fallibility, demandingness, some degree of responsibility for one's own disturbance, unconditional self-acceptance, and unconditional acceptance of others. A number of cognitive, emotive, and behavioral methods of RET to help mamage and family therapy clients to achieve these kinds of acceptance are presented in this article.

This article urges mamrage andfamily counselors/therapists (MFC/Ts) to become familiar with the DSM-III-R and IV system as an important tool for effective diagnosis and tailored treatment. The DSM-III-R with two additional assessment perspectives allows the counselor to rapidly integrate the large data base of couple and family work.

Family preservation is a creative family-centered approach to providingfamily services that has emerged from thefields of child welfare and family services. The family preservation approach is intensive and time limited, with clinical as well as concrete services provided in thefamily 's home. This article describes a culturally competent approach to providingfamily preservation services for Hispanicfamilies who are experiencing child neglect and abuse in the international border community of El Paso, Texas. Thefamily preservation approach is briefly described and providing culturally competent services is explored in depth. Cultural competence is defined and demonstrated through a case example involving a first-generation Mexican American family.

Some of the underlying processes involved in teenage preg nancy are highlighted and purposiveness and goals of behavior as well as intervention strategies are discussed.

Saving face is described as an inherently relational concept that can often determine therapeutic outcome in family and couples therapy. The role of the therapist in fostering facesaving interventions is explored. Several clinical examples are presented. Finally, the limitations of saving face as an interpersonal and therapeutic strategy are discussed.

Literature concerning families in the postmodern era is reviewed from a theory perspective.

The dynamics of marriage and marital therapy are explored by means of outcome and process research.

Literature on the concept of emergenesis as it relates to a family psychoeducational framework for therapeutic efforts is reviewed.

Concerns regarding adoption and the adaptive and non-adaptive behaviors that result are discussed. A case study is presented and a systemic perspective is reviezved. Let us know your thoughts.

This column provides aforum within which you, the reader, may share with your colleagues some of the creative techniques that you have invented or adapted and find successful in counseling with couples andfamilies. If it works wellforyou, it may be that others can adapt it to work wellfor them too.

Submit manuscripts (4 to 6 double-spaced, typed pages in the format of the technique that follows) to: Robert Sherman, Queens College, Flushing, NY 11367-0904. We reserve the right to edit the manuscripts.

"Family Reconstruction" is excerpted from Nerin, W. (1993) You can't grow up 'till you go back home: A safe journey to see your parents as humans. New York: Crossroads/Continuum. (1993 William Nerin. Reprinted by permission of the Crossroad Publishing Company.

This column presents issues that affect families undergoing separation, divorce, and remarriage, including single parent and stepfamilies. If you have specific areas or questions that you would like discussed in this column, please write to: James H. Bray, Department of Family Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, 5510 Greenbriar, Houston, TX 77005, or call (713) 798-7751.

William Hudson O'Hanlon is a leadingfigure in the solution-oriented approach to therapy. In this interview he discusses experiences that influenced his movement to a solution orientation, factors and techniques involved in the change process, methods of sustaining change, and the future he envisions for therapy.