David Reiss presents a new model of family interaction grounded in the subtle and complex way in which a family constructs its inner life and deals with the outside world. Based upon fifteen years of research, the book offers a new understanding of the covert processes that hold a family together and, with distressing frequency, pull it apart.

A watershed event in the field of sociology, this text introduced “a major breakthrough in the sociology of knowledge and sociological theory generally” (George Simpson, American Sociological Review). In this seminal book, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann examine how knowledge forms and how it is preserved and altered within a society. Unlike earlier theorists and philosophers, Berger and Luckmann go beyond intellectual history and focus on commonsense, everyday knowledge—the proverbs, morals, values, and beliefs shared among ordinary people. When first published in 1966, this systematic, theoretical treatise introduced the term social construction,effectively creating a new thought and transforming Western philosophy.

How does a family function? How does a family make a distinctive life of its own while living according to the values of society? In what ways is a family a unit when all its members have personalities of their own? How can we understand diversity among families?Robert D. Hess and Gerald Handel sensitively explore the dynamics of family life in five narrative case studies. The Clarks, Lansons, Littletons, Newbolds, and Steeles are all "typical" families with representative social, cultural, and psychological problems. By simultaneously studying each family as a small group and as a set of individual personalities, the authors have captured the interplay between personality and family as each group works out its own special way of coping with its problems. Further, they have formulated several principles of family functioning that help focus comparison.Family Worlds was the first, and is still one of the few studies, to interview each member of the family, giving equal weight to children as well as to adults, so each family member's perspective is factored into Hess and Handel's family portraits. A new introduction to the Transaction edition illuminates just how significant this ground-breaking study still is today and highlights the new implications it has for today's families as well as emerging approaches.

This long-awaited fourth edition has the same goal as the preceding editions: to understand families in terms of the kinds of interaction through which family life is constructed. The changes in the family as an institution have influenced these processes, just as they have influenced the ways we understand and write about them. But even in these "postmodern" circumstances, an underlying premise of the volume is that two partners establish a family because they have selected each other as distinctively meaningful to one another. They will affirm, modify, elaborate, or retreat from various aspects of the relationship through interaction over time and in changing circumstances. This volume contains the best available interdisciplinary work on the social psychology of the family. More than half of the selections are new to this edition, which incorporates a variety of theoretical and research perspectives that provide the reader with a range of authoritative and up-to-date sources on the family and interpersonal relations. The newer forms of family organization that have emerged in the more recent literature - specifically, single-parent families, stepfamilies, and families of gay and lesbian domestic partners - are included. Authors have been drawn from a variety of disciplines, including sociology, communication, family studies, human development, psychology, anthropology, and social work.

Gender and Families uses images from popular culture and events from everyday lives to explore how families and gender are mutually produced and inseparably linked. Author Scott Coltrane teaches gender in an accessible and compelling manner to a wide array of students by weaving discussions of racial differences, ethnicity, and social class into every chapter. Coltrane also includes women and men as both topic and audience in the central chapters of the book. Ideal for use in a gender course, or as a supplement in family, introductory sociology, or social inequality classes.

As the field of the family has expanded, so has the need for an up-to-date volume that pulls together and defines major salient words, phrases, and concepts. This second edition of The Dictionary of Family Psychology and Family Therapy provides an expanded, handy reference for all family professionals--theoreticians, students, researchers, or clinicians. There is no other source like it. Each entry includes a definition of the term, an example relevant to its usage, the origin of the term, an early source using the term, and if pertinent, a recent source. "Borrowed" terms from other such fields as family law, sex therapy, clinical child psychology, and group psychology are also included. The Dictionary of Family Psychology and Family Therapy is an essential resource intended for use by students, faculty, family psychologists, family therapists, and others engaged in the family field. "The authors have succeeded in defining clearly and accessibly the major theoretical, and methodological concepts in the field of family studies, including operational definitions where appropriate." --Clinical Psychology Forum "This wonderful book actually is a dictionary, defining family psychology concepts and terms from A (′abortive runaway′) to Z (′zero-sum game′). . . . Anyone who reads professional material in this field would find this dictionary invaluable. . . . The concise format will allow the reader to stay informed. . . . The application of concepts in examples and the provision of references are invaluable. This book also does a good job of representing, in an unbiased way, different theories or schools of thought. I would recommend The Dictionary of Family Psychology and Family Therapy as a reference for any professional in the family field and see it as a great supplemental text for a graduate course or student." --Family Relations "This is a timely book, and it should be on the library shelves of professionals who deal with people in the areas of clinical practice, research, and education. It should stand alongside textbooks and other dictionaries. It should be read and used as reference and source material. It complements our understandings of human behavior and interactions, particularly the interpersonal and intergroup inevitabilities in families as representing core societies. Workers with families in terms of the psychology and the therapy of such fundamental organizations of genetically and other related people will find in this volume a most valuable asset in furthering their understandings and enhancing their effectiveness as therapists." --Jess V. Cohn, M.D., Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, University of Miami Medical School, in The American Journal of Family Therapy

Of all concepts used by family therapists, the family development framework is among the least studied, in spite of its relevance to understanding spontaneous family change and to facilitating therapeutic intervention. The notion that a "developmental difficulty" underlies the appearance of clinical symptoms has become a time-honored tradition in family therapy just as it has been in individual therapy. Yet, unlike the well-established and well-researched models of child and adult development, those in family development are rudimentary. Despite increasing interest in the family life cycle as a framework for family therapy, relatively little has been done to elucidate the specific dimensions and processes of spontaneous and therapeutically-induced change over the family life cycle. This volume gathers original contributions of some of the most prominent family theorists, researchers, and clinicians of our time to improve our understanding of these important and hitherto neglected domains. The book opens with a comprehensive overview by the editor that outlines contributions to the family life cycle framework from family sociology, and crisis theory. This is followed by a comparative analysis of developmental thinking, explicit or implicit, in the theory and interventions of the major family therapy approaches. Then divided into four parts, FAMILY TRANSITIONS introduces new conceptual models that integrate the temporality of the life cycle approach with systems theory.By their very nature, these models cut across therapeutic orientations and have important clinical applications. In Part II, family therapy's views of development are freed from the confines of the therapist's office, and placed in the context of other disciplines. Chapters provide analysis of changing--or static--sociocultural values that can affect conceptions of development; potential misuse of the concept of "cultural identity" in health, mental health, and education; how "family identity" operates as a vehicle for cultural transmission over generations; and family therapists assumptions about women's development. The role of expected and unexpected events in the family life cycle is the focus of Part III. Chapters on clinical approaches geared to dislocations of life cycle occurrences due to unexpected crises, chronic illnesses, loss, or drug abuse provide illustrations of interventions that utilize, enhance, or potentially detract from the family's developmental flow. Part IV explores the articulation of the life cycle framework within four major family therapy orientations: intergenerational, structural, systemic, and symbolic-experiential. Each of these chapters endeavors to elucidate: what is the place of family development in each orientation; concepts of continuity and change; use of the concept of stages, transitions, or developmental tasks; the specific dimensions that change in most families over time; and the links between family dysfunction and life cycle issues. Finally, each chapter illustrates through clinical example assessment strategies, formulation of treatment goals and interventions as these emerge from a particular life cycle model. FAMILY TRANSITIONS presents a significant advance in our understanding of functional and dysfunctional family development and offers a range of interventions to promote developmental change. It is an invaluable resource for clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and counselors that will also interest human development professionals, family sociologists, and family researchers. FAMILY TRANSITIONS can serve as a developmentally oriented textbook for teaching family therapy in academic and professional settings.

This international collection features the most influential scholarship published during the past few decades on the concept of the family and related issues. An invaluable resource for students and researchers alike, the four volumes cover the following themes: Vol. 1: Family Groups Vol. 2: Family and Gender Issues Vol. 3: Family Ties Vol. 4: Family and Society The scope offers an international range of material, and includes key work from the USA, Europe, Canada, Australia, and Asia.

This book builds on two current developments in psychology scholarship and practice. The first centers on broad discontent with the individualist tradition in which the rational agent, or autonomous self, is considered the fundamental atom of social life. Critique of individualism spring not only from psychologists working in the academy, but also from communities of therapy and counseling. The second, and related development from which this work builds, is the search for alternatives to individualist understanding. Thus, therapists such as Steve Mitchell, along with feminists at the Stone Center, expand the psychoanalytic tradition to include a relational orientation to therapy.The present volume will give voice to the critique of individualism, but its major thrust is to develop and illustrate a far more radical and potentially exciting landscape of relational thought and practice that now exists. Most existing attempts to build a relational foundation remain committed to a residual form of individualist psychology. The present work carves out a space of understanding in which relational process stands prior to the very concept of the individual. More broadly, the book attempts to develop a thoroughgoing relational account of human activity. In doing so, Gergen reconstitutes 'the mind' as a manifestation of relationships and bears out these ideas in a range of everyday professional practices, including family therapy, collaborative classrooms, and organizational psychology.

This volume reflects the achievements in developing new concepts and models of family therapy and new approaches to special clinical issues and problems during the 1980s. Chapters by experts such as Boszormenyi-Nagy, Everett, Guttman, Lankton, Liddle, McGoldrick, Madanes, and Walsh offer insight into a variety of areas including systems theory, cybernetics, and epistemology; contextual therapy; Ericksonian therapy; strategic family therapy; treating divorce in family therapy practice; ethnicity and family therapy; and training and supervision in family therapy.