Expanding the Limits of Individual and Family Therapies

This book invites individual therapists to think systemically (including issues of social justice) and family therapists to explore a deeper understanding of the individual in contexts, including the domain of the unconscious. Using a critical realist framework, it promotes multiple perspectivesoften novel combinations from dissimilar psychotherapy traditionsto expand holistic understanding and provide a richer variety of resources to bring to co-constructed therapeutic encounters. It uses a critical examination of the often-unspoken philosophical underpinnings of psychotherapy practices to re-vision a range of theory and practice considerationstheory choice, the role of science, knowing and not-knowing, emotion in the system, power and autonomy, collaboration and change, and sameness and otherness. All the preceding elements of the book are then brought together in the clinical topics of triangulation, aggressive out-of-control behaviour, and self-harm. Numerous brief case vignettes and longer case examples ensure that theory is always grounded in practice.

Provides an accessible approach to expanding the limits of psychoanalytic, humanistic, and systemic psychotherapy Utilises critical realism, combining moderate realism with moderate social constructionism Includes brief case vignettes and longer case examples drawn from the author's long practice as a psychotherapist

Autorentext

David Pocock is a systemic family therapist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist in independent practice in Wiltshire, UK. He is the co-editor, with Carmel Flaskas, of Systems and Psychoanalysis: Contemporary Integrations in Family Therapy , (Karnac, 2009), and a series editor of the Palgrave Texts in Counselling and Psychotherapy series.

Inhalt

1. Introduction.- 2. What Is Real? What Is Knowledge?.- 3. Pluralism.- 4. Knowing and Not-Knowing.- 5. Theory Choice.- 6. Emotion in the System.- 7. Collaboration and Change.- 8. Sameness and Otherness.- 9. Who to See, and Other Choices.- 10. Triangles.- 11. Aggressive, Out-of-Control Behaviour.- 12. Self-Harm and Suicidality.- 13. Critical Realism: Why Bother?.