Integrating Social Justice into the Practice of CBFT: A Critical Look at Family Schemas

Many families come to therapy struggling with the negative consequence of social inequity. Family therapy modalities have been developed to address these negative consequences and attend to power and social equity (Transformative family therapy: Just families in a just society. Boston, MA: Pearson Education; Socio‐emotional relationship therapy. New York, NY: Springer). We argue that many family therapy modalities can be adapted to include social equity (Applying critical social theory in family therapy practice. AFTA Springer Series. New York, NY: Springer Publishing). Specifically, cognitive behavioral family therapy can be used to address the inequality in social systems that negatively affect the family system. We focus on schema formation and suggest an emphasis on societal schemas within the therapy milieu as a tool to help families see how societal inequality can affect the problems faced in family life.     

A Black and White Model for Teaching Family Therapy: Empowerment by Degree

In this article, I describe and reflect on the rationale, development and teaching of the first university‐based post‐graduate course in family therapy delivered to Aboriginal child, family and health workers. Alongside my Cultural Consultant, Shaun Coade, and with support from key staff at the Bouverie Centre in Melbourne, I developed and delivered the first four iterations of the La Trobe University Graduate Certificate in Family Therapy to Aboriginal students and a relatively small number of non‐Aboriginal students. Since 2008, the course has been successfully completed in six Victorian locations and is currently being delivered at Shepparton and in Cooktown, Queensland. The term, ‘Black and White’ was coined by Shaun and by the Aboriginal family therapy students to describe the delivery of a family therapy curriculum that meets mainstream University requirements while being embedded in Aboriginal culture and Aboriginal wisdom. A largely unanticipated bonus was the realisation that the model of teaching also has important implications for the mainstream teaching of family therapy. After providing a brief summary of enrolment and graduation rates, the article picks up on elements of the teaching and learning that proved to be central to the successful delivery of the course.     

Writing aboriginal history

you are what you make yourself to be: the story of a Victorian Aboriginal family 1842-1980, by Phillip Pepper. 144pp., 127 photographs. Melbourne: Hyland House. 1980. $11.95 (paper).     

Building Relationships with Aboriginal People: A Cultural Mapping Toolbox

Abstract

This article describes a cultural mapping tool developed specifically for working with Aboriginal people experiencing mental health problems. The tool has broad scope, drawing from ecological and systems approaches. It will assist social workers to understand cultural and family obligations and build relationships with Aboriginal service users. Students learning about cultural diversity have expressed concern about asking culturally-sensitive questions. Australian human service workers typically state they feel inadequate in addressing Aboriginal culture in their practice approaches. The three components of the cultural mapping toolbox, (a) the social and emotional wellbeing cluster map, (b) the community and cultural diversity map, and (c) the migration map, provide social workers with a way of supporting a culturally connected lifestyle in contemporary society.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Abstract

HANDBOOK OF DEMENTIA: PSYCHOLOGICAL, NEUROLOGICAL, AND PSYCHIATRIC PERSPECTIVES. Edited by Peter A. Lichtenberg, Daniel L. Murman, & Alan M. Mellow. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2003, 440 pp., ISBN 0-471-41982-6. Reviewed by Doug Messinero.

ESSENTIALS OF CRISIS COUNSELING AND INTERVENTION. Donald E. Wiger and Kathy J. Harowski. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2003, 221 pages, $34.95 paperback. ISBN 0-471-41755-6. Reviewed by Geraldine R. Brinkley.

HANDBOOK OF DEPRESSION. Edited by Ian H. Gotlib and Constance L. Hammen. New York/London: The Guildford Press, 2002. Reviewed by Karen Judd.     

USE OF FAMILY IN THE TREATMENT OF SCHIZOPHRENIC AND PSYCHOPATHIC PATIENTS*

Editor's Note. Occasionally, the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy will publish papers of major historical significance to the field of family therapy which, though written long before their appearance in the Journal, have remained unpublished and received little public circulation or attention. Such papers are those which, in the view of the Editor, would have been certain “classics” in the literature of family therapy had they been published when they were written, and which, despite their overdue appearance, are of significant enduring value. The first of these papers, by Dr. C. F Midelfort, appears here. Though essentially isolated from the family therapy movement that was soon to follow, Dr. Midelfort, in fact, published the first book on family therapy. The present article grows out of what was probably the first paper on family therapy ever presented at a psychiatric convention in the United States. In this paper, originally written almost exactly thirty years ago, Dr. Midelfort articulately presents a creative interweaving of an appreciation of the psychodynamics of family relationships with an ego-oriented family approach to severe psychiatric disturbance in one family member. It is an innovative presage of the flexible use of the principles of family dynamics, social psychiatry and biological psychiatry that has been “discovered” only very recently in family therapy with schizophrenics. The paper is introduced by Dr. John E. Bell, to whom the Journal is grateful for bringing it to light.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: Whitaker, Carl A. and Malone, Thomas P. The roots of psychotherapy. Kramer, Charles H. Becoming a family therapist: Developing an integrated approach to working with families. Lansky, Melvin R. (Ed.). Family therapy and major psychopathology. Freeman, David S. Techniques of family therapy. Bockus, Frank. Couple therapy.     

Book Reviews

Books and audio-visual materials reviewed: Harris, Mark (Video producer) FAST (Family Sensitive Training) Video Series — Casserole Negative; Experts at Balancing; No Flowers or Chocolates; Hanging in There White, Cheryl and Denborough, David, Introducing narrative therapy: A collection of practice-based writings White, Michael, Narratives of therapists’ lives Jackson, Sue, Wallace, Gael and Hawkes, Ponch, Women of substance Darlington, Yvonne, Moving on: Women's experiences of childhood sexual abuse and beyond Melbourne, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Bringing them home: A guide to the findings and recommendations of The National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families McKissock, Dianne, The grief of our children Asher, Alison, Soaring into the storm: A book about those who triumph over adversity DiNicola, Vincenzo, A stranger in the family: Culture, families & therapy Duncan, Barry, Hubble, Mark and Miller, Scott, Psychotherapy with ‘impossible’ cases: The efficient treatment of therapy veterans Maddock, James and Larson, Noel, Incestuous families: An ecological approach to understanding and treatment     

Negotiating belonging in Australia through storytelling and encounter

From 2010 to 2012 a diverse group of young people participated in an oral history theatre project, Chronicles, which aimed to support them to claim a personally meaningful Australian identity. Oral history theatre was used to facilitate a process whereby the young people were able to reconnect with their personal family histories, encounter Aboriginal young people and stories, and together interview Aboriginal Elders. Through this process, they could develop new understandings of their own social identities, and meanings of and possibilities for belonging. ‘Centring diverse lives, decentring whiteness’ and ‘a different starting point: Aboriginal ways of knowing’, were the two key outcomes that we report on. Bringing people from diverse cultural and social backgrounds together to share stories of history, culture and identity, offers a unique vantage point from which to rupture dominant narratives about belonging/non-belonging and show up whiteness, and together forge a new Australian identity reflective of everyday multiculturalism.     

Child Maltreatment in Remote Aboriginal Communities and the Northern Territory Emergency Response: A Complex Issue

Abstract

Forty years after the 1967 Referendum and 10 years after the Bringing Them Home inquiry published its report into the Stolen Generations, in June 2007 the Howard Federal Government launched an Emergency Response intervention in the Northern Territory, having recognised the urgent need to reduce the incidence of child maltreatment in remote Aboriginal communities. This intervention was developed in response to the Northern Territory Government report on child sexual abuse in Indigenous children that described the urgency of the situation. In the present review of the literature, the complexity of the issue of child maltreatment, in particular child sexual abuse, in Indigenous Australia is explored. The Northern Territory Emergency Response1 ¹The current Rudd Federal Government has adopted most of the policies involved in the Northern Territory Emergency Response and has called for a comprehensive and independent review to be completed by 30 September 2008. is examined in the light of research evidence, detailed in numerous government reports, that reducing child maltreatment in Aboriginal communities necessitates both Aboriginal self-determination and extensive consultation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people working in the field. The extent to which the Emergency Response is evidence based and the complexity of making a report about child maltreatment, in particular child sexual abuse, in a remote Aboriginal communities are explored. Implications for policy and practice are also discussed.     

Supporting Family Life: A Survey of Homeless Shelters

Survey data from a national sample of homeless family shelters (N = 59) were analyzed to describe the family support programming available to residents. Data were reporled on facility and resident characteristics and family support programming, as well as on facility admission criteria and program participation requirements. Four independent valiables (length of stay, shelter capacity, sponsorship, and program philosophy) were examined for their relationship to the family-oriented services offered. Facilities sheltered an average of 17 families, with a range of 2-200; the average length of stay for families was slightly over 5 months. Regarding family programming, services of an educational nature were more popular than those focused on providing support or therapy/intervention; services to parents to further adult development were more often offered than those either directed to parents in their parenting roles or to the family as a unit. Vbtually all shelters (98%) applied eligibility criteria to families seeking admission. The most common reasons for exclusion were active drug (86%) and alcohol (83%) abuse by a family member; 40% also refused acceptance to falnilies with adolescent n'lales. Seventy-eight percent of facilities mandated panicipation in some support services. Smaller shelters operated with greater numbers of exclusions (x = 5.98773; p < .05); larger shelters had higher percentages of mandatory family programming (x =

9.21823; p < .06). These findings shed light on shelter directors' beliefs about the etiology of family homelessness and proper steps to solve the problem.     

Acceptability of an Aboriginal Wellbeing Intervention for Supporters of People Using Methamphetamines

Families and workers often suffer significant stress while supporting people who are experiencing problems related to methamphetamine use yet there is little evidence on how best to help. Small pilot studies can provide valuable information about potential ways to intervene. This paper presents a pilot study of an Aboriginal family wellbeing intervention with workers in an Aboriginal health service. The pilot indicated that participation in the intervention improved the psychosocial empowerment and wellbeing of workers, that these workers perceived the program as relevant to families, and that this was an intervention they felt they could deliver to clients themselves.

IMPLICATIONS

• An Aboriginal family wellbeing intervention was piloted and found to improve the empowerment and wellbeing of workers. Participants regarded it as highly relevant for families supporting people using methamphetamines and other drugs.

• This research has added to our knowledge about how to assist those supporting Aboriginal people using methamphetamines and other drugs.

     

Risk,Recovery and Resilience

Abstract

From 1999 to 2004, the Child and Youth Care Agency for Development (CYAD), a South African Non-Government Agency (NGO), has been working in partnership with the University of Victoria's International Institute for Child Rights and Development (IICRD) and Aboriginal Liaison Office (ABLO) to identify and reinforce community and cultural assets in supporting child and family resilience. The project, entitled Circles of Care: Community and Support for Children Affected by HIV/AIDS, has developed and piloted a model for community capacity building that supports traditional African community values, beliefs and governance structures (understood as Setso) in reinforcing child resilience through child rights based advocacy that partners children and traditional leaders (identified as Morena) and healers (called Dingaka).     

Book Reviews/Comptes rendus

TANYA BASOK, Keeping Heads above Water: Salvadorean Refugees in Costa Rica. PER BRASK and WILLIAM MORGAN (eds.),Aboriginal Voices: Amerindian, Inuit and Sami Theater. BRIAN BURTCH, Trials of Labour: The Re-emergence of Midwifery. SALLY COLE, Women of the Praia: Work and Lives in a Portuguese Coastal Community. WALLACE CLEMENT and JOHN MYLES, Relations of Ruling: Class and Gender in Postindustrial Societies. JAMES E. CÔTÉ and ANTON L. ALLAHAR, Generation on Hold: Coming of Age in the Late Twentieth Century. GLORIA GOODWIN RAHEJA and ANN GRODZINS GOLD, Listen to the Heron's Words: Reimaging Gender and Kinship in North India. DAVID LYON, The Electronic Eye: The Rise of Surveillance Society.     

Transcultural Therapy with Aboriginal Families: Working with the Belief System*

A framework for conducting transcultural therapy with families is considered. This emphasises the importance of developing cultural sensitivity, competence, and the role of cultural consultants. The paper then applies this framework to Aboriginal families. The author explores the indigenous belief system about health and healing, demonstrating the importance of body, land and spirit to the Aboriginal people. Continuity and change in belief and health practices are then traced from the traditional setting to the mission or reserve and urban setting. A case study demonstrates how to work with this belief system and provides practical recommendations for family therapists. On a broader level the paper demonstrates the compatibility of systemic thinking to the Aboriginal world view and draws from the literature of transcultural psychiatry, geography, medical anthropology and family therapy.     

Aboriginal Women's Perceptions and Experiences of a Family Violence Transitional Accommodation Service

Abstract

This article presents a qualitative study of Aboriginal women's perceptions and experiences of a transitional housing program in South Australia that was established to assist long-term homelessness and family violence. The aim of the study was to explore the experiences and service outcomes for Aboriginal women and their children and to identify both facilitators and barriers to the effective operation of the program. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 13 Aboriginal women and thematic analysis was used to report their collective stories. The women's stories showed individualised, flexible, and open-ended support as well as practical outcomes of stable, safe housing for themselves and their children were particularly valued. The women reported that these features of the program augmented feelings of strengthened confidence and self-efficacy. The authors argue the domestic and family violence sector has the opportunity to learn from the perceptions and experiences of Aboriginal women, particularly allowing time and commitment to working long-term with families.     

Mediating affect in John Pilger’s Utopia: ‘the good life’ as a structure of whiteness

ABSTRACT

This article proposes that whiteness should be thought of as an affective structure, theorizing whiteness in terms of optimism, possessive subjectivity and multiculturalism. The article shows how the optimism of ‘the good life’ [Berlant, L., 2011. Cruel optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press] is linked structurally to whiteness in the construction of the Australian nation-state. In this context, Utopia [2013. Film. Directed by John Pilger. Australia: Antidote Films] specifically identifies whiteness as an affective structure. The article develops by unpacking this claim. First, I consider how the affective structure of the Australian nation-state is encountered through the mutual mediation of ‘media’ and ‘place’. I focus on the example of the film's journey to Rottnest Island – formerly an island prison, now the destination of holiday makers – to highlight how the optimism of arrival links whiteness to the present. Second, I develop an analysis of the affective surfaces of whiteness by analyzing the film's encounter with ‘White Man faciality’ [Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F., 1987. A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press] and Indigenous ‘slow death’ [Berlant, L., 2011. Cruel optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press]. Through producing a series of faces, Utopia portrays whiteness as a deflective surface that propagates the ‘onto-pathology’ of white Australia [Nicolacopoulos, T. and Vassilacopoulos, G., 2014. Indigenous sovereignty and the being of the occupier: manifesto for a white Australian philosophy of origins. Melbourne: Re.press]. Utopia also portrays whiteness as an absorptive surface in which Aboriginal self-possession – including, in the form of life – disappears. The film emphasizes the loss of Aboriginal life through illness and suicide linked to incarceration, overcrowding and state-induced impoverishment. The article concludes by locating media (including Utopia) within the tension between absorption and deflection as a tension between the different spatial actions of the affective relations that mediate whiteness.     

Book Review

Book reviewed in this article: Farrelly, Frank, and Brandsma, Jeff. Provocative therapy. Gomberg, Edith S. and Franks, Violet, (Eds). Gender and disordered behavior: Sex differences in psychopathology. Gordon, David; Therapeutic metaphors. Grinder, John and Bandler, Richard. The structure of magic II. Headley, Lee Adults and their parents in family therapy: A new direction in treatment. Kilgore, James E. Try marriage before divorce. LoPiccolo, Joseph and LoPiccolo, Leslie. Handbook of sex therapy. McCubbin, Hamilton I, Dahl, Barbara B., and Hunter, Edna J. Families in the military system. Rueveni, Uri; Networking families in crisis. Sager, Clifford J. & Hunt, Bernice. Intimate partners: Hidden patterns in love relationships. Wells, J.G. Current issues in marriage and the family.