Re-inventing the child in family therapy : an investigation of the relevance and applicability of theory and research in child development for family therapy involving children

Omtale

Why is family therapy not the first treatment of choice when we face troubled children? Research, in child psychiatry and child development, presents strong arguments for making family relationships the prime therapeutic target when children's mental health is at stake. This book discusses the discrepancy between family therapy's apparent relevance and strikingly marginal position as treatment in child and adolescent psychiatric services. It identifies two reasons which seem directly related to dominating discourses in family therapy, concerning individuality and knowledge. A main focus is a major controversy in family therapy during the last two decades, the relationship between academic knowledge and therapeutic practice. More specifically the book addresses the relationship between developmental psychology and family therapy. The focus is a dual one: which seeks to explore the family therapy literature from the point of view of a child psychologist, while approaching research literature in developmental psychology from a family therapist's perspective. This book is an effort at integration. It aims at putting together two fields of research that have evolved within highly different academic traditions, with different scopes, and with only minor notice of and influence on each other. A particular reason for integrating family therapy and developmental psychology is the joint interest between the two fields in how meaning is constructed through mutual interpretations, and in narratives. Thus, the relationship between methods developed in the family therapy field and knowledge about what stimulates narrative development and narrative production is explored.