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Do we need another textbook on Family Therapy? That was the first thought I had when I was asked to review this book. The APA Publishing Company had their fourth edition of the other textbook, “Marital and Family Therapy” published in 2000. Of course the two books are different in many ways, but cover approximately the same topics, even though the authors come from different academic backgrounds. Only Ira D. Glick M.D. is an author in both.
The “Family and Couple Therapy” textbook supposedly is more focused on clinical applications, but how the clinical material is integrated within the theoretical framework is not up to my expectations. I would rather have seen fewer topics and theories and more in depth clinical cases. But this is a problem of all textbooks; they have to be comprehensive, informative and help the reader to be a better therapist.
I have to say that doctors G.P. Sholevar, Ellen Harris-Sholevar and L.D. Shwoeri did an excellent job in balancing the different topics well divided in seven parts: the Introduction, Theories and Techniques, Family Assessment, FT with Children and Adolescents, Couple Therapy, FT with Different Disorders, Research in Family and Couple Therapy. One can see the enormous work and the care they had in being succinct and yet informative, both for the student and the teacher of FT. Useful is the listing of related topics at the end of each chapter and the well organized references and index, which give an idea of the huge amount of literature covered: 84 pages of tightly typed references. No other book in FT has such reach review of the field.
The above-mentioned authors are involved in different degrees with the writing of 11 of 28 chapters of the textbook. That makes this volume valuable in terms of the accessibility of the information, accuracy and consistency of the bibliography and references. I particularly liked the chapter on NAMI (National Alliance for the Mentally Ill) and FT. As a