Gender and Power in Families

Ann Miller is a consultant clinical psychologist and family therapist who has worked and taught at the Marlborough Family Service in London for most of her career. She was instrumental, with others, in setting up the University College London Diploma in Family Therapy, which provided a non-traditional pathway into the profession, and in creating the Marlborough Cultural Therapy Centre, successfully providing a therapeutic service since 1995 for black and minority ethnic individuals, children and families who would otherwise have not engaged with services. Rosine Jozef Perelberg, PhD, is a Fellow and Training Analyst of the British Psychoanalytic Society, Visiting Professor in the Psychoanalysis Unit at University College London, and Corresponding Member of the Paris Psychoanalytical Society. She edited 'Gender and Power in Families' (with Ann Miller); 'Psychoanalytic Understanding of Violence and Suicide'; 'Female Experience: Four Generations of British Women Psychoanalysts on Work with Women' (with Joan Raphael-Leff); 'Freud: A Modern Reader'; 'Time and Memory'; and 'Dreaming and Thinking'. She is the author of 'Time, Space and Phantasy' and 'Murdered Father, Dead Father: Revisiting the Oedipus Complex' (2015). In 2007 she was named one of the ten women of the year by the Brazilian National Council of Women.

'Twenty years have passed since the publication of this important book. At the time it was the first of its kind in the UK, bringing together contributions from clinicians and academics, and putting culture, gender and power firmly on the systemic map. Much has been written about these topics since, and many fascinating discourses have since raged on both sides of the Atlantic. Yet, what strikes one when re-reading this book is how ground-breaking it was at the time, both conceptually and clinically - and how fresh and useful the ideas and implied practices remain today.'- Eia Asen, Systemic Psychotherapist and Psychiatrist, Marlborough Family Service, London, Visiting Professor, University College London'A powerful and important book, a milestone on the road as two powerful systems, feminism and family therapy, come together.'- K. K. Smith, Journal of Social Work Practice'The issues discussed in the book will become increasingly important over the next few years, and the book should be widely read.'- Matthew Hodes, The British Journal of Psychiatry'Now, as I read the rich and complex discussions that accompany the multitude of case examples provided in the book, I see yet another phase of the feminist project emerging: a revised "theory of therapy" . Through the rich variety of cases, commentaries, strategies and stories which burst through the seams of this text, one becomes immersed in the living transformation of a praxis.'- Virginia Goldner, Journal of Family Therapy

• Preface to the 2011 Edition -- Introduction I -- Introduction II -- Conceptual Frameworks -- A feminist perspective in family therapy -- Equality, asymmetry, and diversity: on conceptualizations of gender -- Strategies of Intervention -- Feminism and family therapy: can mixed marriages work? -- Feminism and strategic therapy: contradiction or complementarity? -- The struggle towards a feminist practice in family therapy: premisses -- The struggle towards a feminist practice in family therapy: practice -- Applications: Specific Clinical Issues -- The mother-daughter relationship and the distortion of reality in childhood sexual abuse -- Intelligence, achievement, and gender: the ramifications of a case-study -- Working with women in families -- What About Men? -- The place of men in a gender-sensitive therapy -- Masculinity and family work -- Applications: Wider Systems -- 'The little woman' and the world of work -- Why a group for women only? -- Psychotherapy, oppression and social action: gender, race, and class in black women's depression