Directive Family Therapy

Directive family therapy pioneer Jay Haley and Madeleine Richeport-Haley explain their innovative techniques for solving problems

Directive Family Therapy is the final work of a widely recognized giant in the international family therapy field. This text is the pre-eminent state-of-the-art sourcebook on practical, innovative techniques to effectively solve problems throughout the life cycle stages. Directive family therapy pioneer Jay Haley, PhD(who passed away in 2007), and, Madeleine Richeport-Haley, PhD provide practitioners with creative directives to clearly identify problems, formulate well-designed treatment plans, and then successfully carry them out to achieve lasting therapeutic change. This essential text explores fascinating case studies illustrating the powerful, highly effective problem solving directives. The work is extensively referenced, and includes a full and complete bibliography of Haley's published works and a list of the authors' collaborative films.

Directive Family Therapy presents highly instructive, revelatory stories about working with real life clients and provides dynamic, innovative, and oftentimes surprising solutions to a wide range of specifically detailed problems and clinical issues. All stages and issues in the life cycle are addressed, including birth, child development, raising children, problems in adolescence, becoming a couple, aging, and retirement. Also included is a detailed appendix containing a variety of poignant, insightful interviews featuring Haley’s reflections on the early years of practice and the development of directive family therapy.

Problem areas addressed in Directive Family Therapy include:

• firesetting
• bedwetting
• fear of dogs
• violent behavior
• teenage rebellion
• incest
• drugs
• panic attacks
• abuse
• fights within couple relationship
• eating disorders
• alcohol abuse
• affairs
• sexual shyness within a couple relationship
• shoplifting
• and more
  
  

Directive Family Therapy is invaluable for mental health professionals of every experience level, and is a useful family therapy resource for educators and students in MFT programs and psychology?and a fitting and poignant memoir to the work of a profoundly gifted family therapist.

Jay Haley, PhD, was a professor at the California School of Professional Psychology, Alliant International University. He was widely acclaimed as a pioneering therapist, master teacher, chief architect of strategic therapy, and one of the founders of family therapy. He was director of training at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic, co-founder of the Family Therapy Institute in Washington, DC, and founder of Family Process, the basic journal in the field. Dr. Jay Haley passed away in 2007.

Madeleine Richeport-Haley, PhD, is an anthropologist filmmaker who trained with Milton Erikson. She collaborated with her husband, Jay Haley, for 18 years, producing therapy training films and the book The Art of Strategic Therapy. Her numerous publications have added a cross-cultural healing perspective to the therapy field.