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THE MARGINALIZATION OF FAMILY THERAPY: A HISTORICAL AND CONTINUING PROBLEM
Author(s) -
Shields Cleveland G.,
Wynne Lyman C.,
McDaniel Susan H.,
Gawinski Barbara A.
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
journal of marital and family therapy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.868
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1752-0606
pISSN - 0194-472X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1752-0606.1994.tb01021.x
Subject(s) - family therapy , mental health , misfortune , multidisciplinary approach , psychotherapist , psychology , isolation (microbiology) , medicine , sociology , perspective (graphical) , social science , artificial intelligence , computer science , microbiology and biotechnology , biology
Family therapy, and marital and family problems, are mariginalized in the larger fields of mental and physical health care, which is a misfortune both for family therapy and for other mental health professions. The early family therapists, who had multidisciplinary backgrounds, attempted toestablish a new, nondisciplinary paradigm and also tried to expand the perspectives of the more traditional mental health disciplines. More recently, family therapists have exerted greater effortsto establish marriage and family therapy as a differentiated, autonomous profession. These alternatives each involve dilemmas for the family therapy field. The positive side of becoming a distinctive profession is greater internal strength and clear professional identy; the downside is the threat of increased marginalization in rlation to the other professions, a tendency toward intellectual isolation, and hence restricted opportunities for invigorating new challenges. Family therapy now needs to develop new modes of interchange, collaboration, and selective integration with otherhealth care professions. Such interchange will be beneficial both to family therapy and to other professions.