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Steven Friedman's recent work, The New Language of Change, furthered the idea of therapy as a language-based process, one that is collaborative, hopeful, and competency based. Incorporating the innovative therapeutic principles and practices described in that work, this new volume focuses on the reflecting team approach to family therapy, offering in-depth guidelines for applying this unique approach in a variety of clinical contextsfrom outpatient clinics to managed-care organizations and hospit al and school settings. The methods of the reflecting team are based on a set of novel ideas for creating consulting networks that draw on the experience and expertise of clients - as well as audiences or witnesses - who are all treated as equal partners in the therapeutic process. Offering a treasure trove of innovative thinking, imaginative techniques, and useful guidelines, this volume will enrich the practice of family therapy. The book will enhance creativity in the work of psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, marriage and family therapists, psychiatric nurses, and mental health counselors. It also serves as an excellent graduate-level text.
List of contents
Foreword, Hoffman. Opening Reflections, Friedman.
I. The Reflecting Process: Opening Dialogues.
1. Reflecting Processes: Acts of Informing and Forming, Andersen.
2. Using the Reflecting Process with Families Stuck in Violence and Child Abuse, Kjellberg, Edwardsson, Niemelä, and Öberg.
3. Treating Psychosis by Means of Open Dialogue, Seikkula, Aaltonen, Alakare, Haarakangas, Keränen, and Sutela.
4. When Patients Somatize and Clinicians Stigmatize: Opening Dialogue between Clinicians and the Medically Marginalized, Griffith and Griffith.
5. Reflective and Collaborative Voices in the School, Swim.
6. A Spell in the Fifth Province: It's between Meself, Herself, Yerself, and Yer Two Imaginary Friends, McCarthy
and Byrne.
II. The Reflecting Team: Hosting Collaborative Conversations.
7. Offering Reflections: Some Theoretical and Practical Considerations, Lax. 8. Through Susan's Eyes: Reflections on a Reflecting Team Experience, Janowsky, Dickerson, and Zimmerman.
9. Widening the Lens, Sharpening the Focus: The Reflecting Process in Managed Care, Friedman, Brecher, and Mittelmeier.
10. Rap Music with Wisdom: Peer Reflecting Teams with Tough Adolescents, Selekman.
III. The Community as Audience: Reauthoring Stories
11. Consulting Your Consultants: A Means to the Coconstruction of Alternative Knowledges, Epston, White, and Ben.
12. From Spy-chiatric Gaze to Communities of Concern: From Professional Monologue to Dialogue, Madigan and Epston.
13. Public Practices: An Ethic of Circulation, Lobovits, Maisel, and Freeman. 14. Family Reunions: Communities Celebrate New Possibilities, Nichols
and Jacques.
15. A Journey of Change through Connection, Adams-Westcott and Isenbart. Closing Reflections: On Communities, Connections, and Conversations, Friedman.
Epilogue.
About the author
Steven Friedman, PhD, is a clinical psychologist at Atlantic Counseling & Consultation in Weymouth, Massachusetts, and a senior consultant at Beacon Health Strategies in Boston. An active presenter of workshops and seminars on time-effective therapy and family therapy, Dr. Friedman serves on the editorial board of the
Journal of Systemic Therapies. Widely published, his edited volumes include
The New Language of Change: Constructive Collaboration in Psychotherapy, and
The Reflecting Team in Action: Collaborative Practice in Family Therapy.
Summary
This volume offers the first in-depth and comprehensive view on the reflecting team process, a new and original set of ideas and practices that is transforming the field of family therapy. Bringing together an international group of pioneering contributors, this book advances a concept of therapy as a public and participatory forum in which many voices are heard and affirmed. Therapeutic teams and audiences provide a wealth of creative possibilities as client and therapist collaborate to find new meanings and options for action, opening space for family (and community) change. Through both theoretical presentations and detailed clinical transcripts, the contributors illustrate the benefits and utility of applying the reflecting team approach in a wide variety of clinical contexts.
