In the ongoing drama of family life, children often assume--or are assigned--roles based on their parents' unspoken needs, fears, or desires. Now, for the family "Brain", Ne'er Do-Well, Wild Child, Responsible Daughter or Prodigal Son, here's a fascinating look at how childhood roles endure and distort perceptions as we become adults. Serial to Psychology Digest.

Therapists can broaden their point of view and expand their options for treating individuals, couples, and families by understanding family myths. Here is a thorough and unique compilation of current studies on the development, evolution, and clinical implications of family myths. An outstanding group of international experts offers a variety of formulations regarding both personal and family myths in an attempt to bridge the chasms between individual, couple, and family systems dynamics. They focus on the conscious and unconscious elements of families’shared perceptual experiences and their relationship to behavioral, interactional patterns of individuals, couples, and family systems. The detailed descriptions of various clinical approaches to re-editing clients’personal, conjugal, and family myths will be enormously helpful to clinicians, theorists, trainers, and educators.

A Vogue Best Book of the Year "What Ferrante did for female friends—exploring the tumult and complexity their relationships could hold—Spiegelman sets out to do for mothers and daughters. She’s essentially written My Brilliant Mom." —Slate A memoir of mothers and daughters—and mothers as daughters—traced through four generations, from Paris to New York and back again. For a long time, Nadja Spiegelman believed her mother was a fairy. More than her famous father, Maus creator Art Spiegelman, and even more than most mothers, hers—French-born New Yorker art director Françoise Mouly—exerted a force over reality that was both dazzling and daunting. As Nadja’s body changed and “began to whisper to the adults around me in a language I did not understand,” their relationship grew tense. Unwittingly, they were replaying a drama from her mother’s past, a drama Nadja sensed but had never been told. Then, after college, her mother suddenly opened up to her. Françoise recounted her turbulent adolescence caught between a volatile mother and a playboy father, one of the first plastic surgeons in France. The weight of the difficult stories she told her daughter shifted the balance between them. It had taken an ocean to allow Françoise the distance to become her own person. At about the same age, Nadja made the journey in reverse, moving to Paris determined to get to know the woman her mother had fled. Her grandmother’s memories contradicted her mother’s at nearly every turn, but beneath them lay a difficult history of her own. Nadja emerged with a deeper understanding of how each generation reshapes the past in order to forge ahead, their narratives both weapon and defense, eternally in conflict. Every reader will recognize herself and her family in I'm Supposed to Protect You From All This, a gorgeous and heartbreaking memoir that helps us to see why sometimes those who love us best hurt us most.

Therapists can broaden their point of view and expand their options for treating individuals, couples, and families by understanding family myths. Here is a thorough and unique compilation of current studies on the development, evolution, and clinical implications of family myths. An outstanding group of international experts offers a variety of formulations regarding both personal and family myths in an attempt to bridge the chasms between individual, couple, and family systems dynamics. They focus on the conscious and unconscious elements of families’shared perceptual experiences and their relationship to behavioral, interactional patterns of individuals, couples, and family systems. The detailed descriptions of various clinical approaches to re-editing clients’personal, conjugal, and family myths will be enormously helpful to clinicians, theorists, trainers, and educators.

Establish credibility as the new family business leader Myths & Mortals, Family Business Leadership and Succession Planning provides insights and strategies for successors of family businesses. Successors often find themselves in the shadow of their parents making it difficult to establish credibility in the family business and tap into their own strengths. The stress of emulating a parent begins to clash with who they are and who they want to be as a leader. Written by internationally known business strategist and succession planning expert Andrew Keyt, this guide shows you how to establish credibility, take your place at the head of the table, and run your business your way. In groundbreaking research, Keyt interviewed more than 25 successors of family business legends including Massimo Ferragamo, Bill Wrigley Jr., Christie Hefner, and John Tyson to find out how they overcame the challenges successors commonly face.The analysis from that study formed the basis for the strategies presented here—to help you win the loyalty of those stuck in the old way of doing business, and still focused on their former leader's vision. You'll learn how to take charge without sacrificing your own leadership style, and how to get everyone on board with your vision for the business. Growing up in the shadow of legendary family business leaders creates a unique challenge for successors to the leadership position. You cannot remove the emotional power of family dynamics from the business, but you can change how you choose to react to it. To be successful, you need to create a sense of identity and credibility, and step out of the shadows of your forbears. This guide provides strategies for doing just that, so you can take the reins and be the effective leader your business needs. Overcome the obstacles successors commonly face Win over those still loyal to their former leader Build your own credibility, separate from your parents Develop your own leadership style and do business your way Credibility is elemental to business leadership, but establishing that credibility is the successor's biggest challenge. Myths & Mortals, Family Business Leadership and Succession Planning helps you plan around the obstacles and avoid common missteps so you can lead more effectively right out of the gate.

Bridging individual and family approaches, the Wachtels demonstrate in rich clinical detail just how the incorporation of new ideas and methods derived from family therapy can enrich the work of most therapists.

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Marriage, Family and Couples Counseling is a new, all-encompassing, landmark work for researchers seeking to broaden their knowledge of this vast and diffuse field. Marriage and family counseling programs are established at institutions worldwide, yet there is no current work focused specifically on family therapy. While other works have discussed various methodologies, cases, niche aspects of the field and some broader views of counseling in general, this authoritative Encyclopedia provides readers with a fully comprehensive and accessible reference to aid in understanding the full scope and diversity of theories, approaches, and techniques and how they address various life events within the unique dynamics of families, couples, and related interpersonal relationships. Key topics include: Assessment Communication Coping Diversity Interventions and Techniques Life Events/Transitions Sexuality Work/Life Issues, and more Key features include: More than 500 signed articles written by key figures in the field span four comprehensive volumes Front matter includes a Reader’s Guide that groups related entries thematically Back matter includes a history of the development of the field, a Resource Guide to key associations, websites, and journals, a selected Bibliography of classic publications, and a detailed Index All entries conclude with Further Readings and Cross References to related entries to aid the reader in their research journey

Discusses ritual events we regard as family traditions and how they must be open to perpetual revision so we can satisfy our human needs and changing circumstances.

The concepts of Murray Bowen, one of the founders of family therapy and the originator of family systems theory, are brought together here in an integrative fashion. Michael Kerr (who worked with Bowen for many years) and Bowen propose that the enormously complex task of evaluating a clinical family can be orderly when it is grounded in family systems theory. Using family diagrams and case studies, the book is devoted to an elegant explication of Bowen theory, which analyzes multigenerational family relationships and conceptualizes the family as an emotional unit or as a network of interlocking relationships, not only among the family members, but also among biological, psychological, and sociological processes. Bowen’s persistent inquiry and devotion to family observation, in spite of obstacles and frustrations, have resulted in a theory that has radically changed our ways of looking at all behavior.

Joan idly considers ways of murdering her odious mother, Lily, with whom she is trapped in co-dependence, while her sisters Cissie and Jessie have escaped into marriages and now have grown up children of their own to compete over. Then Lily is taken into hospital and the family rallies round to do up the old house she and Joan have lived in for over forty years. Like most families they have their own often apocryphal myths and legends, but one shocking discovery is set to destabilise the hierarchy of family lives for ever.