Eschewing Certainties: The Creation of Family Therapists in the 21st Century

Abstract

I reflect here on Family Therapy's origins, our present dilemmas, and future possibilities. Using the lens of training new Family Therapists for current public sector domains, I examine our field's strengths, vulnerabilities, and contradictions. I critique the current vogue of model certainty and branding. Our responsibilities to trainees, young practitioners, and the families we serve are highlighted.

Navigating Critical Theory and Postmodernism: Social Justice and Therapist Power in Family Therapy

“…The findings offer a set of guidelines to help therapists actively account for their therapeutic power and consider their ethical approach to enacting activism. They fit Imber‐Black's () call for “careful integrative thinking and practice” through which practitioners working in multiple contexts draw from multiple models … while “anchored in disciplined thinking” (pp. 373–374).…”

Editorial: Family Resilience

“…It is remarkable, even within our own recent articles, how many emphasize the process of family resilience across diverse foci such as gender variance (Gray, Sweeney, Randazzo, & Levitt, ), Latino families (Killoren, Wheeler, Updegraff, Rodríguez de Jésus, & McHale, ; Updegraff & Umaña‐Taylor, ), having family members with schizophrenia (Olson, ), unmarried fathers (Marczak, Becher, Hardman, Galos, & Ruhland, ), living in nations at war (Charlés, ), preventing externalizing in teenagers (Holtrop, McNeil Smith, & Scott, ), and cardiac risk reduction (Sher et al., ). Most recent family treatment models typically also center on engaging family resilience (Dickerson, ; Imber‐Black, ; Liddle, ; Madsen, ; Roberts et al., ; Sexton & Datchi, ), in contrast to the earlier family deficit gestalt. The move from a deficit focus to one centered on resilience numbers (along with the development of evidence‐based practice and an increased emphasis on gender and culture) as one of the central advances in family studies and family therapy in the last quarter century.…”

Editorial: LGBTQ families in the 21st Century

“…Family Process ’ articles on LGBTQ families have ranged widely: exploring the evolution of LGBT over time (Gotta et al., ); the impact of family support (Elizur & Ziv, ; Rostosky et al., ); the positive impact of being a parent of an LGBT child (Gonzalez et al., ); LGBTQ headed families (Istar Lev, ); pathways with a gender variant child (Gray et al., ); patterns of closeness in LGBTQ families (Green & Werner, ; Krestan & Bepko, ); donor conception in LG couples (Goldberg & Allen, ; Van Parys et al., ); negotiated nonmonogamy in LG couples (Shernoff, ); transgender in families (Gray et al., ; Malpas, ); the evolving discourse about coming out (Green, ; LaSala, ); and considerations of these families in therapy (Green, ) and therapy supervision (Long, ). LGBTQ issues have also frequently been included as one thread of examining diversity in families, as an important focus of some of our most prominent mainstream models, and in broader considerations of couple and family therapy (Falicov, ; Imber‐Black, ; Papp, Scheinkman, & Malpas, ; Walsh, ).…”

“…LGBTQ issues have also frequently been included as one thread of examining diversity in families, as an important focus of some of our most prominent mainstream models, and in broader considerations of couple and family therapy (Falicov, 1995;Imber-Black, 2014;Papp, Scheinkman, & Malpas, 2013;Walsh, 2003).…”