Family Therapy Beyond Postmodernism: Practice Challenges Theory

Postmodernist ideas are widely used in family therapy. However, it is argued that these ideas have their limits in meeting the richness and complexity of human experience. Psychoanalysis provides an alternative understanding, which may be used alongside other systemic ideas.Family Therapy, Postmodernism and Psychoanalysisexamines postmodernism and its expression in family therapy, raising questions about realities and realness, the subjective process of truth and the experience of self. It identifies difficulties in any sole reliance on narrative and social constructionist ideas, and puts forward the theory that psychoanalytic ideas can offer an alternative understanding. Areas covered include: * Attachment and the unconscious * Transference, countertransference and projective identification in the context of understandings of time * Analytic ideas about thinking and containment in considering the therapeutic relationship in family therapy. This book offers a sustainedcritical discussion of contemporary family therapy knowledge, and develops a place for psychoanalytic ideas in systemic thinking and practice. It will be of great interest to psychotherapists, family therapists and other mental health professionals.

Carmel Flaskas is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Work at the University of New South Wales, where she convenes the masters programs in couple and family therapy.