Integrating systemic, psychodynamic, and cognitive-behavioral perspectives, this acclaimed book presents an innovative framework for therapeutic work. Ellen Wachtel shows how parents and children all too often get entangled in patterns that cause grief to both generations, and demonstrates how to help bring about change with a combination of family-focused and child-focused interventions. Vivid case examples illustrate creative ways to engage young children in family sessions and conduct complementary sessions with children and parents alone, using a variety of strengths-based, developmentally informed strategies. The paperback edition features a new preface in which the author reflects on the continuing evolution of her approach.

In Transforming Troubled Children, Teens, and Their Families: An Internal Family Systems Model for Healing, Dr. Mones presents the first comprehensive application of the Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy model for work with youngsters and their families. This model centers diagnosis and treatment around the concept of the Functional Hypothesis, which views symptoms as adaptive and survival­based when viewed in multiple contexts. The book provides a map to help clinicians understand a child’s problems amidst the reactivity of parents and siblings, and to formulate effective treatment strategies that flow directly from this understanding. This is a nonpathologizing systems and contextual approach that brings forward the natural healing capacity within clients. Dr. Mones also shows how a therapist can open the emotional system of a family so that parents can let go of their agendas with their children and interact in a loving, healthy, Self-led way. This integrative MetaModel combines wisdom from Psychodynamic, Structural, Bowenian, Strategic, Sensorimotor, and Solution-Focused models interwoven with IFS Therapy. A glossary of terms is provided to help readers with concepts unique to IFS. Unique to this approach is the emphasis on shifting back and forth between intrapsychic and relational levels of experience. Therapy vignettes are explored to help therapists address issues such as trauma, anxiety, depression, somatization, oppositional and self-destructive behavior in children, along with undercurrents of attachment injury. Two detailed cases are followed over a full course of treatment. A section on Frequently Asked Questions explores work with families of separation and divorce, resistance, the trajectory of treatment, dealing with anger, linking to twelve-step programs, and much more. This is an ideal book for any therapist in quest of understanding the essence of healing and seeking therapeutic strategies applied within a compassionate framework.

With the narrative force of an epic novel and the urgency of first-rate investigative journalism, this important book delves into the daily workings and life-or-death decisions of a typical American family court system. It provides an intimate look at the lives of the parents and children whose fate it decides. A must for social workers and social work students, attorneys, judges, foster parents, law students, child advocates, teachers, journalists and anyone who cares about our nation's children.

An informative and inspiring guide to rebounding from childhood hardships to find uncommon strength and courage “The Resilient Self reminds us all of the importance of being aware of and building on the strengths of our young people, whatever their early life experiences. We must work to give them hope and to craft services and programs that are respectful of the resiliencies so thoughtfully characterized by the Wolins. This guide, although based on the experiences of adults, offers extremely useful insights too for those working on behalf of children and adolescents.”—Marian Wright Edelman, president, Children’s Defense Fund “This book offers a strong sense of hope for everyone who has grown up in a troubled family. I salute the authors for their masterful synthesis of research, clinical experiences, and insights gleaned from the voices of poetry. The Wolins’ book cautions the reader that no one emerges from troubled childhood without some scars, but it challenges us to finds ways in which we can transforms pain into joy in our lives.”—Emmy E. Werner, Ph.D., author of Vulnerable But Invincible and Overcoming the Odds “This marvelous book can turn the tide for people injured during their childhoods, not by ignoring the ashes of the past, but by winnowing out the precious elements from which the phoenix can triumphantly rise. It is a book that has been badly needed, and for which many will long be grateful.”—Timmen L. Cermak, M.D., former chairman, National Association for Children of Alcoholics “At last, a compassionate and realistic challenge to abandon the idea that one is a passive object of an unhappy childhood. The Resilient Self encourages readers to recognize and appreciate their strong, insightful, and creative survival.”—Barbara Mathis, author of Between Sisters: Secret Rivals, Intimate Friends “The Resilient Self shows adult children of dysfunctional families that they can escape a painful past and become resilient survivors. It describes the strategies which have been used successfully by those who grew up in troubled homes but who managed to work well, play well, and love well as adults. I recognized myself in this book with a survivor’s pride.”—Anonymous survivor

The turbulent decade of the 1980s began with financial calamity in several sectors of the United States economy, from automaking to agriculture. The rural Midwest experienced its worst economic decline since the Depression years. Thousands of farmers lost their operations, and the small rural communities that serve agriculture often changed from prosperous business centers to struggling villages with many empty buildings and boarded-up storefronts along their main streets. Families in Troubled Times examines the plight of several hundred rural families who have lived through these difficult years. The participants in the Iowa Youth and Families Project, the subjects of the present study, include farmers, people from small towns, and those who lost farms and other businesses as a result of the "farm crisis." The book traces the influence of economic hardship on the emotions, behavior, and relationships of parents, children, siblings, husbands, and wives. The results of the study show that although economic stress has a powerful adverse effect on individuals and families, countervailing social influence can help to blunt these negative processes and to assist in the repair of the personal and interpersonal damage they produce.

It is estimated that as many as 34 million people grew up in alcoholic homes. But what about the rest of us? What about families that had no alcoholism, but did have perfectionism, workaholism, compulsive overeating, intimacy problems, depression, problems in expressing feelings, plus all the other personality traits that can produce a family system much like an alcoholic one? Countless millions of us struggle with these kinds of dysfunctions every day, and until very recently we struggled alone. Pulling together both theory and clinical practice, John and Linda Friel provide a readable explanation of what happened to us and how we can rectify it.