Families and family therapy

This book presents six chapter-length transcripts of actual family sessions, two of which involve ordinary families meeting their problems with relative success, and four involving families seeking help.

Each transcript is accompanied by the author's running interpretation, focusing on the therapist's tactics and maneuvers.

The book constructs a model of an effectively functioning family, defines the boundaries around its subsystems, and discusses how families adapt to stress.

It also explores methods of diagnosing and mapping problems in troubled families and examines various restructuring operations to change family patterns.