Family Therapy: An Intimate History

By Lynn Hoffman

Book Overview

Because Lynn Hoffman has been in the field for almost forty years and has worked with so many of its influential thinkers, the book is also a history of family therapy's evolution. Her knowledge of family therapy is intimate and deep; her perspective is clear-eyed and often wryly humorous.

Readers will be reminded that, however big and impressive the theories, family therapy is very much a human endeavor. Hoffman revisits the experiences, ideas, and relationships that have informed her journey and presents them both as she perceived them at the time and as she perceives them now looking back. Through this process of reflective conversation, she creates not only a legacy out of the people and situations that acted on her most powerfully but also a countertradition to the strategic approach that influenced her so strongly early in her career.

But this is not just history. Throughout her career Hoffman has been in the forefront of family therapy. She has interacted with and sometimes worked closely with many of family therapy's influential thinkers and actors, including Jay Haley, Virginia Satir, Dick Auerswald, Harry Aponte, Peggy Papp, Olga Silverstein, the Milan team, Peggy Penn, Harry Goolishian, Harlene Anderson, Tom Andersen, and Michael White. The evolution of her thinking has paralleled the major developments in the field. As she braids together continuity and innovation, she finds her own voice--a 'different voice'--and her own style--more open, more inclusive, and less controlling. In the second half of the book Hoffman demonstrates the many possibilities inherent in 'not knowing, ' in working with a reflecting team, in looking for the 'presenting edge, ' and in grabbing the 'emotional main chance.'

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393703800
• ISBN13: 9780393703801
• Release Date: October 2001
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 318 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.3" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

What every therapist needs to know

Lynn Hoffman is one of the most brilliant writers and teachers in the field of family therapy. Few have her capacity make the difficult comprehensible and the obtuse theoretical accessible. This book like her earlier ones brings together the diverse roots of family therapy and their impact on present and future directions. There is no other work like it. The best family therapy book of this year.

Postmodern Philosophy: An Autobiography

Part memoir, part text, this book will provide practitioners and psycho-historians trying to decipher and understand the cultural contributions of family therapy with their own version of the Rosetta Stone. Family Therapy:An Intimate History offers readers a map of the key concepts and theories that will guide our thinking and practices into the 21st century. This book is a much needed sequel to family therapy's other flagship (also authored by Hoffman), Foundations of Family Therapy. In Foundations of Family Therapy Hoffman presented all the major developments and types of practice that have taken place in the profession in the last half century (e.g., systems thinking, cybernetics, structural family therapy, etc.). In her latest effort she points out what I've come to think of as the "cracks in the foundation" that have resulted in our seeking new voices and more collaborative models of practice that put the voices of our clients before the voices of our theories. Ironically, driving this shift in thought and approach to the work are some very complex thinking and erudite concepts that fall under tent terms with names like narrative, constructivism, social contstructivism, and social constructionsim. An alternative title for this volume could be Postmodernism: An Autobiography. Hoffman unpacks the history of the ideas and events that brought postmodern thinking and concepts into the therapy arena. Documenting its migration from philosophy, biology, literary critisism, cultural anthropology, and other disciplines Hoffman provides some of the best interpretation and commentary available on the ideas of such heady thinkers as Foucault, Derrida, Bateson, and Maturana and Varela. The wide angle lens Hoffman uses to examine these developments in the field are punctuated with intimate portraits of some of the most tender and useful therapy conversations that students and (both new and seasoned) practitioners will find in print. One particularily moving example of this sort of storytelling is "The Christmas Tree Story" about a young man and his lover's attempt to use his death and dying from AIDS as a way of celebrating his life, honoring their relationship, and reaching out to his parents and family. What makes this book so special is not the poetic voice of Hoffman's writing or intellectual rigor she brings to bear on all her subjects, rather it's the intimate relationship she establishes with her reader and personal insights she provides into the developments she's discussing. This is generous writing from one of family therapy's most brilliant thinkers and one its most decent and generous citizens.-Jonathan Diamond, author Narrative Means to Sober Ends

Going Back to the Roots

There is a new generation of professionals working with families that will greatly benefit from Lynn Hoffman's newest book. Lynn was fortunate enough to be at "the right place at the right time", when the family therapy pioneers started its development. Lynn was never totally in and neither totally out. This provides her with a unique lens to write about the development of the therapy with families. She entered through the backdoor and slowly established herself as one of the best poetic writers of the family therapy literature. It is a personal account, seasoned with the historical struggles of a new discipline.