This classic text helps professionals and students understand and address cultural and racial issues in therapy with African American clients. Leading family therapist Nancy Boyd-Franklin explores the problems and challenges facing African American communities at different socioeconomic levels, expands major therapeutic concepts and models to be more relevant to the experiences of African American families and individuals, and outlines an empowerment-based, multisystemic approach to helping clients mobilize cultural and personal resources for change.

This pioneering work is the most comprehensive book on Black families in therapy to appear in the clinical literature. It is unprecedented in its attention to the cultural diversity among Black families, its emphasis on the utilization of cultural strengths in therapy, and on its application of the concept of clinical empowerment. Dr. Boyd-Franklin also gives thoughtful attention to the therapist's use of self and the subtleties which are often involved in the treatment process. Highlighting the diversity among Black Afro-American families, the author's first five chapters explore a number of cultural issues including racism, racial identification, and skin color; extended family patterns and informal adoptions; role flexibility and boundary confusion; religion and spirituality. Numerous case examples provide rich illustrations of these topics. The latter part of the book further explores socioeconomic differences with specific chapters on poor inner-city, single-parent, and middle-class Black families. An important contribution of this work is its elaboration of the Multisystems Model which allows family therapists to intervene with Black families at multiple levels including the individual, the family, the extended family, church and community networks, and the social service system. Dr. Boyd-Franklin's clear straightforward presentation of this model will allow the practicing therapist to apply it to even the most complex treatment realities. In addition, this Multisystems Model has applicability to many other ethnic groups and treatment situations. For training programs that include ethnicity, culture, and the treatment of Black families in their curriculum, this book provides a comprehensive syllabus. It is essential reading for family therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, medical practitioners, pastoral counselors, educators, and public agency administrators. For students and practitioners in these fields it provides a scholarly, incisive analysis that sets a standard for ethnicity studies in the therapeutic arena.

This classic text helps professionals and students understand and address cultural and racial issues in therapy with African American clients. Leading family therapist Nancy Boyd-Franklin explores the problems and challenges facing African American communities at different socioeconomic levels, expands major therapeutic concepts and models to be more relevant to the experiences of African American families and individuals, and outlines an empowerment-based, multisystemic approach to helping clients mobilize cultural and personal resources for change.

Important questions face any pastoral counselor when working with African American couples and families. Edward Wimberly focuses on the religious worldview that African Americans bring to their understanding of marriage and family, so that the counselor can learn the assumptions behind the presenting problems. Wimberly's treatment examines the social context of African American families, the separate issues for men and women, intergenerational factors, the impact of the life cycle, sexuality, affairs, and abuse. This wide-ranging book is exceptionally practical for all pastoral caregivers. The purpose of the Counseling and Pastoral Theology series is to address clinical issues that arise among particular populations currently neglected in the literature on pastoral care and counseling. This series is committed to enhancing both the theoretical base and the clinical expertise of pastoral caregivers by providing a pastoral theological paradigm that will inform both assessment and intervention with persons in these specific populations.

Publisher Description

The condition and characteristics of the black family have been subjects of intense debate since at least the 1960s, when the Moynihan Report and the culture of poverty theses held sway. Since then a consistent theme has been that black families are pathological. Despite the fact that research has been inconclusive and contradictory, political debate and policy have been strongly influenced by the pathology theme. This volume presents alternative approaches toward understanding the special characteristics of black families. Extending a special issue of The Review of Black Political Economy, the book focuses on the economic circumstances and decision making of these families, employing Interdisciplinary and cross-cultural perspectives. It examines the general responses of black families to various external factors such as economic systems, and to Internal factors such as interpersonal relationships. This compendium of current thinking and research will be of interest to professionals in a number of fields, Including family studies, counseling, social work, psychology, and sociology. It will be of practical use in training programs for service delivery systems Interested In Incorporating multicultural perspectives, as well as those specifically interested in black families today.

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