Thursday, November 1, 2012

Pearls from The Family Crucible

Because a family comes into the therapy with such a sense of failure, it is important to show that they are unconsciously 'up to something' that is basically constructive.

Napier & Whitaker, 1978, p. 32

We try to keep the right balance of pushing and waiting, and sometimes we err in one direction or another.  

Napier & Whitaker, 1978, p. 99

Good old transferences...we therapists being stupid about it, flattering ourselves that the patient is really reacting in the beginning to us...but we are deluding ourselves if we think that the patient isn't always struggling with subtle and largely invisible ghosts and images out of the past.

Napier & Whitaker, 1978, p. 107

She felt pressured by her parents, and the [individual] therapy felt like more pressure.

Napier & Whitaker, 1978

There is another maxim:  the therapist will project his own family system onto the family he is treating.

Napier & Whitaker, 1978, p. 183

We gotta do our own family of origin work.  We gotta address the tendency toward co-dependence in our field.  The opposite of co-dependence is self-care.  We can find a happier medium between being other-centered and being self-centered - in extremes either is problematic, in balance - well that's called living well.

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