Child-Centered Family Therapy Hardback - 1996

HANDBOOK of Relational Diagnosis and Dysfunctional Family Patterns

Florence W. Kaslow, Editor

Traditional psychiatric classification schemes such as the DSM and ICD have long neglected the relational component of mental health, making it difficult for patients to receive the care they deserve. This book is the first to offer a comprehensive clinically based typology of couples-centered, parent-child, and family relational dysfunctions. It is an indispensable resource for all mental health professionals, especially couples and family therapists, sex therapists, clinical psychologists, social workers, and psychiatrists.

1996 (0-471-08078-0) 592 pp.

"With skillful, experienced understanding of the psychological and behavioral world of children and the patterned, interactional life of families, Lucille Andreozzi guides us through the resolution of developmental crises and the process of family systems change. She successfully integrates child and family developmental theory into a practical, innovative, growth-oriented family model and provides many effective methods and creative techniques for facilitating optimal child development and therapeutically induced systems change. In this book, she integrates child and family development and incorporates children, the family system, the role of the therapist, the therapy process, and family research into a full cycle of influence and interaction that positively affect outcomes."--from the Foreword by David Kantor

The past decade has witnessed a dramatic rise in the prevalence and severity of behavioral and affective disorders among children. At the same time, the tightening of federal purse strings combined with the exigencies of managed care have begun to severely curtail the availability of adequate counseling and professional intervention for families. Clearly the need has never been greater for a short-term therapeutic model such as the one described in this groundbreaking book.

Child-Centered Family Therapy is the first complete, practical introduction to Child-Centered Structural Dynamic Therapy, a revolutionary short-term treatment model that has yielded nothing less than astonishing results in case after documented case.

Growing out of Dr. Andreozzi's pioneering work with more than 500 families, Child-Centered Structural Dynamic Therapy is a developmentally focused approach to family therapy that integrates child and family system development into a comprehensive framework for self-guided, family-initiated, and therapeutically induced change. While family disturbance is clearly addressed, this model works with competence and strengths to address all three levels of family change: prevention, early intervention, and therapy. Unlike family training programs that attempt to teach abstract parenting skills, Child-Centered Structural Dynamic Therapy works to build knowledge from within the family by engaging family members in structured activities that help them to translate family system principles into practical, everyday reality.

In Child-Centered Family Therapy, Dr. Andreozzi describes the theoretical and empirical underpinnings of the Child-Centered Structural Dynamic Therapy Model. She supplies practical treatment and assessment guidelines that help therapists readily adapt her tools and techniques to their clinical practices. And she provides many vivid case illustrations that clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of her methods when applied to a variety of settings, including Head Start, family psychotherapy, and community/social service agencies.

Introducing a dynamic new short-term, child-centered family therapy model, Child-Centered Family Therapy is an important resource for couples and family therapists, child psychologists, counselors, and social workers.