The ESFT Book Is on It’s Way!

What are the Experts Saying?

For anyone who thought The Golden Age of Family Therapy was over, read this book! The authors, all highly seasoned family therapists and renowned trainers, offer a powerful adaptation of the therapy model that changed how clinicians think about human problems: Minuchin’s Structural Family Therapy. Ecosystemic Structural Family Therapy balances compassionate validation of families with sophisticated change techniques, offering detailed and reader-friendly methods for assessing, understanding, and intervening boldly and confidently in all relevant systemic levels of analysis. Modern Cognitive-Behavioral approaches are increasingly catching on to the power of contextualism. This book points to where systemic thinking in clinical work began. And this is an update all of us, from any therapy perspective, should read!

– Scott Temple, PhD, MHSA, Emeritus Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Iowa Health Care

For anyone who has wondered, “Whatever happened to structural family therapy?” this book is a must read. Unlike the plethora of evidence-informed treatment manuals that prescribe how to bring about first-order change in an identified patient, Simms and colleagues’ Ecosystemic Structural Family Therapy is a theory-driven roadmap for effecting second-order, relational change in multiply challenged families, particularly those facing adversity, hardship, and intergenerational trauma.

As in Salvador Minuchin’s structural family therapy, the therapist must “see, understand, and respond” to the family interactions in every session. Yet in ESFT, this adage is embedded in a comprehensive logic model that goes well beyond Minuchin’s explanation of how observable dyadic and triadic interactions reveal a problematic family structure that sustains emotional disturbance. That is, ESFT’s logic model is informed by contemporary theorizing on attachment, power/privilege, cultural humility, strengths-based interventions, alliance building, emotion regulation and executive functioning to guide a nuanced understanding of each family’s past (“How did they get here?”) and present functioning (“Why are they here?”).

Two aspects of this book are particularly noteworthy. First, the authors describe clinical supervision in the ESFT model as not only an educational process but, notably, as a means of promoting trainees’ self-reflective entry into a unique family system. Second, the authors introduce multiple process and outcome measures, along with much illustrative case material, to promote therapist adherence and competence and to assess family-based outcomes. Finally, I’d be remiss if I failed to mention the compassion these authors have for the families they work with. Read the many case studies closely – there’s a gem on every page!

-Myrna L. Friedlander, PhD – Vincent O’Leary Professor at University at Albany, State University of New York: Department of Educational & Counseling Psychology- School of Education, Psychological Services Center

Minuchin’s pioneering ideas on Structural Family Therapy with disadvantaged children and families in South Philadelphia, followed by Lindblad-Goldberg’s long-term commitment in empowering families to “become their own best resource for change” are the foundation of this new book on Ecosystemic Structural Family Therapy. The Authors expand beautifully the original ideas of the initiators and describe individual fragilities in children and adolescents in the context of their multigenerational family systems and cultural and socio-economic factors. In a toxic society, where individual labels and over-use of medications are increasing dramatically, the book is very important contribution in order to humanize and de-pathologize the Mental Health System, giving back to families their competence and capacity for transformation and healing.

-Maurizio Andolfi MD, Child Psychiatrist, Director of the Family Therapy Academy (Rome), Former clinical member at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic in the 70s.