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DR. COUNTS is neither polemical nor proselytizing. He leaves his points open to hopefully valid criticism and validly hopeful heeding. I will concentrate on psychoanalytic concerns about the subject matter.
I agree with Dr. Counts' reflections on the futile efforts and wasteful effects of a polarized dichotomy between family therapy and individual psychotherapy. The volume and the vehemence of recent literature notwithstanding, there is, indeed, much to be lost and little to be gained by defining the value of a "new" method or endeavor largely in terms of its exclusion or abandonment of an old one. Often this proves to be another instance of "the light that failed" for those who insist on realizing the illusion of absolute and everlasting incandescence, where reality requires persistence in the hard task of searching for enlightenment. The converse is true in the case of those who decide they have seen the light forever, no matter how dim the flicker and how continuously dark the corners. When the willful pursuit of the will-o'-the-wisp yields to the resourceful use of imaginativeness we happily run across an effort such as Dr. Counts'.
I sympathize with his intent to determine what constitutes "the