ABSTRACT
Family therapy has evolved a great deal since the publication of the first handbook overviewing family therapy in 1971. Family therapy has morphed over time from a provocative challenger to the mental health establishment to a widely practiced set of methods that represent best practices in relation to a variety of problems and issues. Family therapy has also moved from an alternative therapy to a set of methods that often coordinate and integrate with other methods of treatment. Alan Gurman and David Kniskern’s Handbook of Family Therapy marked the emergence of family therapy as an established discipline. One point of consensus is the core importance of the central concepts of systems theory such as feedback and mutual influence at the center of the practice of family therapy. There remain a core of broad schools of treatment that form the foundation of couple and family therapy. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
