Family’s Construction of Reality

David Reiss is Vivian Gill Distinguished Research Professor at George Washington University Medical Center.

This is a beautifully written and significant book, a profound contribution to our understanding of the family… For every social scientist’s shelf.

• Introduction. Charting Our Course Part 1: Family Problem Solving and Family Interpreting 1. The Family Construction of the Laboratory Family Information Processing and Schizophrenia A Theoretical Sketch of Family Information Processing Three Measures of Family Information Processing Schizophrenia and Family Information Processing Beyond Family Information Processing: The Family Construes the Laboratory The Concept of a Shared Construct A Typology of Shared Constructs Dimensions of Family Constructs 2. Family Problem Solving and Shared Construing Strategy One: Comparing Three Groups of Families Strategy Two: Direct Assessments of Shared Construing Strategy Three: Pursuing Significant Alternate Hypotheses Part 2: Family Crisis and Family Paradigm 3. The Role of the Family in Organizing Experience Personal Explanatory Systems The Family as Originator of Explanatory Systems How Prevalent Is the Originative Family? 4. Crisis and the Development of the Family Paradigm Outline of a New Model Family Stress and Disorganization Vulnerability to Stress and Disorganization Family Reorganization 5. The Abstraction of the Family Paradigm The Need for Abstraction The Process of Social Abstraction The Results of Abstraction Abstraction and Paradigm 6. The Conservation of the Family Paradigm The Temporal Patterning of Crisis and Change The Medium of Conservation Interaction Behavior in the Conservation of the Family Paradigm The Specificity of Conservation Part 3: The Family's Bond to Its Social World 7. Orienting Concepts in Family--Environment Organization The Cycle Hypothesis Components of the Cycle Hypothesis Links between the Family and Its Social World Organizing Constructions in the Social Environment Paradigm, Code, Map, and Objective: Central Correspondences ' Family Paradigm, Links, and Environment: A Concluding Example 8. Exploring the Cycle Hypothesis The Organizational Objective Short--Term Links between the Family and the Environment Long--Term Links between the Family and the Environment Matching the Cycle Hypothesis and the Findings Conclusion. A Second Look at Shared Constructs Notes References Index