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Biomedical subjects

A Cooklin

Publications and source records attributed to A Cooklin.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

Eliciting children's thinking in families and family therapy.

In this article, I introduce a way of talking between a therapist and children, which aims to be more adaptive to the family therapy context than the modes of communication with children often reported by individual psychotherapists. Although the recent increase in articles concerned with the role of children in family therapy is welcomed, I suggest that the common recommendation of the use of "play" and nonverbal methods of communication with young children can at times introduce its own constraints on a child's thinking. A method of engagement in "dialectical" conversations with children is described, and illustrated with verbatim case examples. It is argued that this offers one route to a discourse commonly used between children, and one that acknowledges their capacity to think.

Adult↗

Family therapy outcome research: a trial for families, therapists, and researchers.

This article describes the process of an evolving research project. Initially conceived as a study investigating outcome measures and their sensitivity to change after a course of family therapy, the project soon changed its focus. As unexpected results were recorded, the clinical research team became destabilized and the individual team members responded by making their own "sense" of the data, reflecting their respective clinical and scientific positions. As clinicians and researchers began to challenge each other's belief systems, the project entered a new stage. The interactions within the team became of increasing interest and themselves objects of research. The recursive nature of re-search was demonstrated, and the act of writing this report completed the circle, as the various authors tried to achieve a balance between reporting the content and the process of this project.

Family Therapy↗

An institution for change: developing a family day unit.

This paper describes the theory and structure of a day unit designed to intervene in the systems of families who present with severe or multiple problems to agencies attempting to help them, but who are difficult to engage in a therapeutic pact and unresponsive to attempts at outpatient therapy. An analysis of these families is offered in terms of the relations between internal and external boundaries and difficulties in making transitions in the daily contexts of life. The principles of the unit are described in terms of the creation of an artificial extended family, the intensification of sequence and patterns of interaction, and the making and traversing of boundaries. Particular attention is paid to the function of agency interventions in family patterns and to redefining the relationship between family and agencies.

Adolescent↗