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This book brings together many papers of major importance in the field of family therapy that have been published in the last twenty-five years and includes thoughtful commentaries by the editors.
Divided into two sections, the first dealing with theory and the second with practice, the book offers an eclectic view of the basis of family problems, from Bateson's celebrated double-bind paper of 1956, to the Vogel-Bell paper on the scapegoat, to Lidz's view of schizophrenia as stemming from unhealthy family constellations and treatable by the isolation of the patient from the family (by treating the family first without the patient and then with the patient, in conjunction with individual treatment for the patient).
The book is less diverse in its selections of treatment practice papers, emphasizing mainly methods of short therapy. The recurrent theme in these papers is changing the frozen family configurations, whether it be from the aspect of behavior, alliances, or feelings. The shorter the therapy the stronger the emphasis is on behavior.
This book is well worth reading. Although it does not go into much detail on any one treatment method, it provides the reader with an introduction and a useful bibliography to related materials. There are, as well, some interesting points for the analytic student: e.g., Ackerman, in a 1966 paper, making