The Family Journal

This article illustrates how to treat children and their families from an integrative family systems approach. First, the authors provide a brief overview of family systems perspective and how various systems approaches have been found to be effective for children and adolescents with depression. The authors then stress the importance of applying systems perspective in a holistic sense whereby all of the various social domains that have an affect on the children and their depression are addressed. Such application includes consultation with the schools and broader social contexts.

This article examines aspects of physical attractiveness that influence African American families as a process of multigenerational transmission and internalized oppression. Specifically, it addresses how the cultural standards of aesthetic preference associated with facial features, skin color, hair texture and length, and body size are transmitted across generations through the process of internalized oppression. The negative correlates of physical attractiveness continue to serve as a function of internalized oppression in African American families. Based on findings, it can be concluded that with the exception of body size, Anglo facial features, lighter skin color, and fine straight hair continue to be factors in the oppression of African American families across generations. Another finding suggests that given the shame associated with internalized oppression within one’s own family or cultural group, this phenomenon often remains a family secret. These findings have particular relevance for training of culturally competent family counselors.

Research suggests family disturbance is highly correlated to adolescents running away from home. However, given methodological challenges, few studies assess parent report of the family situation and instead, rely primarily on adolescent self-report. This article reports the findings of parents’ and runaway adolescents’ reports on several behavioral dimensions. Substance-using runaway adolescents completed measures about their family environment and adolescent problem behaviors. Of 119 adolescents, 49 of their parents also completed measures at intake. Adolescents perceived a more negative family environment than did their parents, and parents rated their youth as having more externalizing problems than did the youth themselves. Findings are consonant with prior research showing a relationship between parental distress and child problems. Contrary to prior findings, this sample of parents did not report significant alcohol use, and there was no relationship between their use and their child’s use. Implications for future research and family therapy are discussed.

Emotionally focused therapy (EFT) has been described by one of its originators as an integration of structural family therapy and experiential psychotherapy. This article explores whether the integration that has been achieved in EFT is a theoretically eclectic integration, which preserves intact the theoretical bases of both of the approaches being integrated, or an assimilative integration, which privileges the theoretical base of one of the approaches and grafts ideas and techniques from the remaining approach onto this base. The conclusion is reached that EFT is an exercise in assimilative integration. It is demonstrated that EFT is rooted in the worldview and values of experiential therapy, and that elements of structural family therapy that have been incorporated into the model have been subjected to fundamental modification, so as to allow them to fit into an alien theoretical context.

This article reviews literature regarding nonresidential paternal involvement postdivorce. Attempts have been made to understand nonresidential fathers’ contact with their children from a variety of perspectives including level and quality, theoretical, sociocultural influences, legal, maternal, childhood, paternal, and paternal postdivorce grief. In most cases, the authors found elements of grief throughout the literature. However, current literature has not integrated these elements into a framework for understanding fathers’ postdivorce contact through a grief lens. Thus, this article explores the issue of familial and paternal grief and makes suggestions for future areas of research.

This article explores the professional counseling literature discussing clinical confrontation, especially with families, and presents a case study in which a child is the identified patient but in which the counselors seek to confront the hierarchy. An evaluation of that intervention is offered as well as suggestions for developing strengthfocused confrontations.

A rich variety of ideas and strategies are found in the literature that addresses how family therapy theories should be taught. Differences in teaching strategies and practices are influenced by differences in the theories of family therapy. However, even within specific theoretical schools, there is more agreement among educators about what skills should be taught than there is on how to teach such skills. This column addresses the multiplicity of ideas on how to teach family therapy theories.

Part one of this series of two articles deals with a case study in which the family counselor addressed gender issues of communication and power differential within the couple’s interactions. The couple’s values and the counselor’s values were congruent and therefore more easily addressed. This article, part 2, addresses a more complex case in which the clients’ gender issues and values differ with the counselor’s values and theoretical orientation. An awareness and knowledge of gender issues become more important for ethical counseling to occur when there is a clash of values between the clients and the counselor. Ethical decision making becomes essential, and in this case, a social constructivism model of ethical decision making is applied.

The authors describe multiple sclerosis (MS) and the emotional distress it induces in patients and their families. They present a framework for conceptualizing the impact of chronic illness on patients and their families and suggest approaches that could be used in counseling these clients. Several modalities for helping MS patients and their families find meaning in their chronic illness are then described. These include narrative therapy, restorying techniques, and cognitive restructuring.

The labyrinth is an ancient symbol that works well as a therapeutic tool to encourage mental focus through meditation or prayer, which can be instrumental in releasing mental and physical tension. Many recognize the labyrinth as a metaphor for the path we walk through life and as an appropriate symbol that creates sacred space for enhancing psychological and spiritual growth. As a therapeutic tool, the labyrinth provides willing clients an opportunity to examine problems, questions, or issues from various perspectives while also affording time and space for personal reflection before making a decision. The inward labyrinth journey becomes a time for examining a question, whereas the return journey allows time for examining a possible solution, any of which the client might explore further in therapy while working toward implementation of a satisfactory solution. Because it is both kinesthetic and introspective, the labyrinth walk functions as a complete mind-body integrative activity.

The guiding principle is a term Alfred Adler used to describe the way earlier formulative decisions move us toward our desired goals. The authors have devised a questionnaire to help identify some of the different ways we go about meeting our goals. Twelve reoccurring personality themes include such issues as early formulative experiences, the strengths of the priority, challenges of the preferences, and suggestions for better understanding your partner’s profile.

There is a well-established relationship between childhood sexual abuse and adult sexual functioning. Couples that include a partner who is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse are at increased risk for a wide variety of relationship problems that accompany or result in unsatisfying or dysfunctional sexual relationships. Couples’ therapists need an understanding of the long-term impact of such trauma as well as knowledge about specific interventions that might minimize the potentially damaging effects on significant intimate relationships.

Hürol Fisiloglu, is an associate professor of clinical psychology and currently teaching at Middle East Technical University, Department of Psychology, Ankara. He received his Ph.D. at State University of New York at Buffalo. His main fields of interest are family and marriage functioning, intergenerational relationships, family and marriage therapy,-divorce and remarriage processes, family and handicapped children, family cohesion, marital adjustment, single parents, remarried families, and consanguineous marriages. The views of Hürol Fisiloglu shared in the interview are based on his own experiences as a therapist. He noted that they should not be taken as a representation of the Turkish culture as a whole. This interview took place in August 2003.