Jim Sheehan – författare

With 42% of marriages ending in divorce and many cohabiting couples separating, family therapy has become a key aspect of counselling and psychotherapy. Beginning with descriptions of contemporary pre-separation family conflict patterns, this book progresses to examine the challenges faced by families and their assisting professionals as they transition through residential separation, parental struggle, mediation assistance, family court applications, and other patterns of unending high conflict.Focusing on practitioner needs, the skills required, and a range of helpful interventions that can be used to address specific contexts, each chapter has a four-part structure that includes:- The description of a topic-related theme, its related concepts and evidence base.- The making concrete of the theme through case vignettes of family conflict and their discussion.- The naming of the challenges faced by professionals, the skill set required, and helpful interventions they might use in their responses.- Concluding exercises designed to assist students and professionals towards an increasingly reflective practice.Written by a leading expert in Family and Conflict Therapy, a growing area of academic and professional interest, Family Conflict after Separation and Divorce is the only book to combine theory, research, and practice into one accessible text that helps promote the personal and professional development of practitioners and students alike.

How do experiences of hope and despair impact upon our capacity to meet life's challenges in narrative and family therapy? Clients' experiences of hope and despair can be complex, reflecting individual and family histories, current patterns and dynamics, the stresses of everyday life, and the social contexts of families' lives. This book analyses how therapists meet and engage with these dichotomous aspects of human experience. The editors place the themes of hope and despair at the centre of a series of reflections on practice and theory. Contributors from all over the world are brought together, incorporating a range of perspectives from narrative, systemic and social constructionist frameworks. The book is divided into three sections, covering:reflections on hope and despairfacing adversity: practices of hopereflections on reconciliation and forgiveness.Hope and Despair in Narrative and Family Therapy looks at the importance of hope in bringing about positive therapeutic change. This book will be of great use to family therapists, psychotherapists, counsellors, and students on therapeutic training courses.

Systemic psychotherapy has long been conceptualised and practiced as brief psychotherapy, in both the public sector and in independent practice, but it is now increasingly becoming a longer term practice.

This much-needed volume examines the process and practice of supervision in family therapy, with special emphasis on systemic practice. Expert trainers and supervisors from diverse disciplines take a systemic tour of the relationships between supervisor, therapist, and client, analyzing the core skills of effective, meaningful supervision—including questioning, listening, and reflecting—and their impact on therapy. These skills and others are applied to supervising therapy with individuals, couples, and families in areas including substance abuse, domestic violence, and research settings. Throughout the book, contributors share self-care strategies, so supervisors can stay engaged and creative, meet the many challenges entailed in their work, and avoid burnout.Among the topics covered:The resonance from personal life in family therapy supervision.Creating a dialogical culture for supervision.The supervisor’s power and moments of learning.Supervision and domestic violence: therapy with individuals, couples, and families.Systemic supervision with groups in child protection contexts.When the supervision process falters and breaks down: pathways to repair. The highly practical information in Supervision of Family Therapy and Systemic Practice is adaptable by readers to their particular supervisory or training needs. Novice and veteran mental health, social care, and social work practitioners and psychotherapists, will find it a substantial resource.