Rating: 
Summary: The Family Crucible
Review: The authors have succeeded in writing a serious treatise about marriage and family therapy with the characteristics of an, hard to put down, emotion packed real life drama. I felt as if I were the "fly-on-the-wall" watching as a two caring and skillful therapists worked with a seriously disfunctional familly listening, helping, supporting, cajolling, teasing, pushing. I saw problems of scapegoating the children fall one by one by the wayside until the parents and the parent's parents faced the hard issues they had so skillfully avoided through the dynamics they set up among themselves. This book best illustrates why sometimes familly therapy and not individual therapy can be the right solution. Add to that a "hold-on-to-your-chair" style of writing made this book impossible to put down.
Rating:
Summary: A Fantastic Read!!!
Review: The Family Crucible is MUCH more than a review of the tecniques involved in family therapy. It is an invaluble resource because every family, not just those in critical situations, undergoes stress, change, and conflict. I would not describe this as a "how-to" book. Rather, it's an "ah-hah" book - it would be impossible to read this without seeing some aspect of your family in the pages. VERY insightful as well as just a good read.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent book about family dynamics!
Review: This book is a "must-read" for everyone who has a family. It takes you through the experience of family therapy through one family. I learned a lot and loved reading it.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating..amazingly interesting!
Review: This book is one of my favorites of all time! My "Couples and Family Therapy" professor highly recommended it- it's a hallmark book in the family therapy field. If you are interested in family dynamics- the scapegoated child, the symptomatic child, adultery, depression, promiscuity- it's all in here.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating..amazingly interesting!
Review: This book is one of my favorites of all time! My "Couples and Family Therapy" professor highly recommended it- it's a hallmark book in the family therapy field. If you are interested in family dynamics- the scapegoated child, the symptomatic child, adultery, depression, promiscuity- it's all in here.
Rating:
Summary: Rocked my World!
Review: This book literally rocked my world. It was recommded by my psychotherapist and proved to be so incredibly helpful in understanding the multi-generational shaming process passed down through my family. I now have the courage to ask my family to stop spapegoating and judging me! And to simply accept responsibility for their own issues.
Rating:
Summary: Fasinating, fun to read
Review: This book reads like a novel yet provides insightful looks at a family, and families in general. Read it. You will be entertained, you will see yourself, and you will learn a lot.
Rating:
Summary: Fasinating, fun to read
Review: This book reads like a novel yet provides insightful looks at a family, and families in general. Read it. You will be entertained, you will see yourself, and you will learn a lot.
Rating:
Summary: Reads like a novel
Review: This book was assigned reading for my Family Case Seminar class in my counseling psychology master's program. I picked up this book, and could not put it down. Mr. Napier is invited to join the great Carl Whitaker as a co-therapist for a family who is in crisis. He takes us into the therapy room and gives us a blow by blow account of several sessions throughout the course of the therapy. We get to see the family dynamics, and watch them shift as healing occurs. The author becomes transparent, letting us in on his thoughts and feelings as he participates in the therapy. Dr. Whitaker's interventions are often unconventional and surprising. I really cared about what was happening to the members of the family as the book progressed. The book begins with the family concerned about the daughter's acting out behavior, and her battles with the mother. We find that the conflicts between the parents and their children were used as a way to hide from their own conflicts within the marriage. The children literally took on their parent's problems. When the adults became more involved with solving their problems in the marriage, the children felt less burdened and their behavior shifted. The story of this family is told in a refreshingly honest manner.
Rating:
Summary: Published in '78, still relevant today
Review: This is an insightful and engaging read. Everything is wrapped up in the complex dynamics of the family. Napier and Whitaker take the approach that 12-year old daughter is having some issues, then bring the whole family in and conduct therapy on them as a family. The problems of the individual are so deeply intertwined with the problems of the family. Napier and Whitaker do a bang-up job at presenting the material. This could have easily been a book of boredom filled with psycho-babble dry academic lifeless trifle, but no, it's not. Instead "The Family Crucible," makes the point of family therapy by telling a story, an extended case study. We follow along with the family of five as they show how one member's problems is related to the family. The therapy shifts from daughter to son to parent-interaction with daughter and son, and finally the couple's marriage that really is at the heart of the issue. The good docs even go so far as to call in the grandparents to get at some real issues the family is dealing with. You begin to care about this family seemingly as much as Napier and Whitaker do, and you want the best for them. Along the way, the authors share their poignant view on family dynamics and also, somewhere along the way...there's a reader epiphany. There's the oh, there's the yes, there's the "that explains it." In our ever growing quest here on this earth to live together and understand humanity and the humanity we call family and live with day to day, this book goes miles beyond any expectation. Get your hands on, "The Family Crucible," and talk with your family about it. I know, I am.
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