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Leaving whom? Motherless families: problems of termination for the female family therapist
Author(s) -
Jones Elsa
Publication year - 1983
Publication title -
journal of family therapy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.52
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1467-6427
pISSN - 0163-4445
DOI - 10.1046/j..1983.00602.x
Subject(s) - family therapy , psychology , psychotherapist , marital therapy , social psychology
The issue of planned termination is seldom addressed by family therapists. Given the goals and assumptions of most family work the concept may indeed be irrelevant, but there are circumstances where it is necessary not only to understand the principles of planned termination, but the factors in client, family and therapist which can make it difficult to terminate at all. This may be the case where a female therapist has been working with a family where father is the single parent (motherless family): the family may experience itself as incomplete and attempt to draw the therapist into the family to fill the gap left by mother and marital partner, and pari passu the therapist may assume that the family cannot well cope without her. Some strategies for resolving the problems of termination which may arise from such assumptions are described.