Culturally Competent Family Therapy: A General Model / Edition 1

by Shlomo Ariel

Overview

The problems of a family are often conditioned by the cultural issues its members face, regardless of their socioeconomic background. However, most therapeutic models ignore this important factor. Ariel's book offers a model for diagnosis and therapy that incorporates cultural issues. It provides clinicians and trainees with readily applicable concepts, methods, and techniques for helping families and their members overcome difficulties related to intermarriage, immigration, acculturation, socioeconomic inequality, prejudice, and ecological or demographic change. This approach enables therapists to analyze and describe a family as a cultural system, explain its culture-related difficulties, and design and carry out culturally sensitive strategies for solving these difficulties.

The model introduced in this book integrates theories in family therapy in general and culturally oriented family therapy in particular with ideas drawn from many other fields, such as cross-cultural psychology, psychiatry, anthropology and linguistics. The form of therapy presented in this book is integrative, drawing from traditional curing and healing techniques employed in folk psychotherapy and medicine, in addition to more conventional therapeutic models. Every technique is modified to be adapted to the cultural character of the family in question. This book is designed to be a handbook for clinicians and a textbook for students, trainees and researchers. It can be used as a guide for a complete independent method of family therapy and also as a source of ideas and techniques that can be incorporated selectively into other forms of therapy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780275966553
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	10/30/1999
Series:	Contributions in Psychology Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.57(d)
Lexile:	1200L (what's this?)

About the Author

SHLOMO ARIEL, a licensed expert and supervisor of clinical psychology and marital and family therapy, is the co-director of the Integrative Psychotherapy Center in Ramat Gan, Israel. He is also the Coordinator of Research and Academic Development at the Israeli branch of Lesley College, Boston, Massachusetts, a member of the faculty of the Program for Advanced Studies in Integrative Psychotherapy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel, and the chairperson of the Israeli Association of Psychotherapy Integration.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Florence Kaslow
Acknowledgdments
Introduction
Culture and Family Therapy: An Overview
The Necessity to Incorporate Culture into the Theory and Practice of Family Therapy
The General Model of Culturally Competent Family Therapy:A Brief Outline
Family-Cultural Concepts Relevant to Diagnosis and Treatment
The Family's Conceptualization of Its Environment
The Family's Cultural Identity
The Family's Functioning and Lifestyle
The Family's Coping with Problems and Difficulties
The Information-Processing Framework
The Family as an Information-Processing System
Culturally Determined Family Dysfunction
Culturally Competent Family Diagnosis
Data-Collection Instruments and Procedures
Analysis of Diagnostic Data
Therapy
The Therapeutic Alliance in Culturally Competent Family Therapy
Planning the Therapy: Strategies, Tactics and Techniques
The Therapeutic Process
Epilogue
Appendix
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

An introduction to a general integrative model of culturally competent family therapy in which concepts, methods, and findings have been incorporated into a synthesis of various current theories. Drawing upon sources including social and cultural anthropology, sociology, and cross-cultural social psychology, psychiatry and linguistics, 13 chapters present an overview of culture and family therapy, family- cultural concepts relevant to diagnosis and treatment, the information-processing framework, culturally competent family diagnosis, and therapy. Ariel, a licensed expert and supervisor of clinical psychology and marital and family therapy, is co-director of the Integrative Psychotherapy Center in Ramat Gan, Israel and is associated with several universities. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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