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This book contains contributions by fifteen authors who have been working in the field of family therapy. It provides a general review of the literature. Descriptions of family interview sessions and case material illustrate the theoretical concepts that have been developing in the field. There is an excellent chapter on the theory of interpersonal transactions which Dr. Boszormenyi-Nagy has developed from a correlation of psychoanalytic writings with existentialist philosophers, especially Martin Buber. Existential concepts of subject-object observed in parent-child relationships are thoroughly elucidated. Other chapters describe such phenomena as mystification, confusion, identity struggle, reversal of generations, to which family therapists attribute the origin of psychopathology in children.
The book is of interest to psychoanalysts for several reasons. It provides a broad survey of a related field, introduces terminology used by family therapists, and familiarizes one with an existential transactional theory. It should help those analysts who use their psychoanalytic insights to assist colleagues working in related fields. A dialogue with mutual benefit can be the outcome of the merger of psychoanalytic knowledge of the individual and transactional phenomenology of the family; greater familiarity with family interaction will make the analyst more astute in evaluating the object relations of individual patients.
Family therapy is now being performed by many professional and nonprofessional people with different training and preparation for the work. But this volume presents the efforts of several groups of well-trained observers who attempt to conceptualize their observations on the psychopathology of the family and to organize the principles of therapy. They have described the phenomenology of the family in a meaningful way although the causative factors of the phenomena are not explained. Although the book does not