ABSTRACT
Family therapy is a relatively new and innovative treatment approach. When the family therapist works with a client experiencing problems, the client’s family is either present or pictured in the therapist’s thoughts during treatment. Pathology from a systems perspective has moved assessment and treatment from an individual level to a family systems level. Family therapists who incorporate psychoanalysis in their practices use many of the same premises stressed by others who use the Freudian approach. Family therapists who implement this approach to family therapy have almost completely divorced themselves from traditional psychological theories. The chapter examines the communicative-integrative family therapy approach to treating the problem of child maltreatment. Family therapists working with maltreated children must maintain a close working relationship with both the child and parents. The family therapist must be aware that very disturbed children may have to live in a therapeutic milieu for several years before they can reunite with their families.
